Laptop (with FreeNAS running) as NAS? Good idea or not?

[sCAPe]

Hi,

I have looked all over the internet for finding a cheap and good NAS, but haven't found one. The better ones are really expensive and are a little bit over-sized for what i am planning.
I had a Buffallo Linkstation, but it was way too loud for me in idle-mode!
The only good NAS which is capable of Sleep-mode and also wake-up on lan is the Plextor PX-EH25L. The others don't support wake on lan at all or they are simply too expensive.
The Plextor Model costs about 240.- EUR and i don't want to spend that much and since i have tried the Buffallo Linkstation i am extremely sensible regarding fan-noise and loudness of the NAS..

I am thinking of turning an old IBM Thinkpad X20 into a NAS. :grin:
Don't know if this is a good idea or not, but i would like to hear your comments and thoughts on this.

Reason why i thought of a Laptop is, because Laptops usually don't consume as much power as normal PCs. So the power-comsumption would be really low.

Then to the Laptop i would attach an external USB 2.0 Harddrive-Enclosure with a 300GB Samsung drive.
On the Laptop i would like to install FreeNAS as it seems to be really nice to configure and brings the HDD into sleep mode after a certain amount of time.

So, basically the Laptop would be Ultra-silent with the HDD in sleep-mode and could also be turned-on via wake-on-lan. :cool: Does anyone have experience if this works correctly?

As for performace, this IBM Thinkpad X20 has a PentiumIII 600MHz processor with 256MB of RAM. Think this should be enough for a NAS.

I want to use this combination in order to store all my multimedia-stuff on the NAS and be able to access it via XBMC and also via my PC/Wireless Laptop. Plus i could also stream from my Nokia dBox2 Settop-box to the NAS and record TV-Shows on it. :cool:

Another question would be if FreeNAS supports a Print-Server? So i could also connect my USB-Printer to the Laptop for print-sharing. Does anyone know this?

Please tell me what you think about this combination (Laptop + external USB 2.0 HDD as a NAS) regarding performance / power-consumption / loudness .
Would be nice to hear some comments..

Cheers,
sCAPe

[Gamester17]

Yes I've tried FreeNAS with XBMC and it works. However note that most USB Harddrive-Enclosures do not support idle spin-down, most of them do not pass on the spindown command to the drive and thus spin the drive at top-speed 24/7, but there are some USB Harddrive-Enclosures which have their own spindown function and spin the drive down around 10-minutes or so after it idles.

http://xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=NAS_%28Network_Attached_Storage%29

I think it would a better idea to find and buy (or try to get for free) a old/used midi-tower computer with a Intel Pentium-III or AMD-K6 500-733Mhz CPU and 256-512MB memory, then put the harddrives internaly. Those old computers usually comes with a 200WATT power-supply and only one fan as those processors don't get so hot.

I don't know if FreeNAS can be used as a print-server directly. If not then what you could do is install Windows XP on the computer and run FreeNAS under a VMware player (there is a ready image available on their website that you can use for that), but then you have Windows XP that you have to pay for and it also use up a lot of resources.

[sCAPe]

Thanks Gamester for your reply.
The main-reason why i want to use a laptop is the power-consumption. I think the laptop will consume in idle-mode 20-30 W .. I have to try that first, but in any case it must be lower than a normal PC (also the old PCs i think consume much power and have just too big cases..).

Can you recommend any HDD-Enclosure with spin-down time or any external USB 2.0 HDD Drive?

[Gamester17]

I don't think a 'old' normal PC with a Intel Pentium III use that much power, the PSU might say 200W but the whole computer probebely only uses ~65 as average with one drive and maybe ~95W with two, maybe even less. Remember the USB drives going to use power too, (probebely ~20-30W each).

I haven't tried them myself but I believe Maxtor's OneTouch™ and Basics™ USB-drives feature spin-down, (otherwise I generaly recomend Seagate or Samsung for the harddrives if you gone get a USB-enclosure without a drive). Sorry, I don't know of any enclosure-only that support spin-down, guess you have to google for that if no one else here does either(?)