17. 03. 10
NAS or Network Attached Storage is a way to store data outside of your computer. It's a bit like having an external USB drive attached to your computer but a lot more versatile. As it's name implies, it's a device with storage on board that lives on your network. There are many NAS devices available on the market but you can do nearly all they do with a spare PC and FreeNAS.
FreeNAS is, yes you guessed, free and it has all the key features expected these days from a device on your network. From the basics of Windows file sharing and FTP to the real test of a modern network device, Xbox 360 and Sony PS3 compatibility. I have an Xbox 360 and until I started using FreeNAS, I had to use a Windows PC with Windows Media Center to access media outside of the Xbox which is not the friendliest system to get to grips with.
The protocols supported by FreeNAS are: CIFS (samba, used for Windows file sharing), FTP, NFS, TFTP, AFP, RSYNC, Unison, iSCSI (initiator and target) and UPnP.
FreeNAS can also be installed on hard drive, USB stick and also comes as a live CD. All versions work fully so it's your choice of installation. You can have a bank of RAID configured hard drives down to a drive-less system booting from CD with or without a USB stick. It can even monitor it's own drives and email alerts if there's a problem.
What more could you possibly want from a NAS system? You can use it to store music and movies at home, share commonly used files at work or even use it as backup storage for your PCs and servers.
FreeNAS.org will also show you how to add more packages to the system. Take a look round the FreeNAS site to see more and why not download the live CD version and try it out (it's really quite small)?
It’s right that freenas is an simple way to share files between computers. It is very simple to install and to make the basic configuration.
I find anyway more hard to share these files with commercial device like DLNA compatible TV. I have a recent Sony TV and BluRay reader and a Onkyo AV and I didn’t find the way to autorise them to access to Freenas. I tried different DLNA profile without any success.
ANy thought or practical configuration ?