What Does a NAS or Home Server can Do?
(Network Attached Storage) or NAS is basically a set of hard drives connected to your network, so any computer in your home can access them. This is great thing for bigger households or people with having multiple computers that all need to access the same data. They are also usually quite low power and low cost, they don't require a monitor, mouse, keyboard. Once you have installed the software then you can configure every aspect of your NAS from a web browser on your other PC/computers.
Home Server usually has a different connotation than NAS, but they are pretty similar. The main difference is that home servers can perform more tasks than just a storage. They can also do things like download files for you, stream media to devices & so on. NAS devices come with more & more functionality out of the box. The terms NAS and home server are often used interchangeably. The device we make in this guide can be as basic or as extreme as you want no matter what you call it.
You can buy a lot of great NAS devices but they'll come with their own good software. However, we are going to use some free, open source software which is called Free NAS to repurpose an old computer instead. You can just fill your old PC up with drives, stick it in the closet & forget about it without having to spend a lot of money. Alternatively, you can build your own quiet, low powered home server for pretty cheap & configure it in a bit more to your needs. Whatever kind of PC you use setting up the software is similar across the board. Here is the details how to do it.
What is the Difference Between NAS4Free and FreeNAS 8?
Free NAS 8 is the newest version of Free NAS but Free NAS 7 (now called NAS 4 Free) is still very popular among all the folks including myself (what I use on my server at home ). So which one should you use ? Each has their own strengths & weaknesses. In my experiences with each, here are some things that I have found that will help you to decide:
NAS 4 Free is better for older hardware specifically those hardware that has less than 2GB RAM.
Free NAS 8 is easier to use when it comes to basic stuff like adding drives, sharing them over the network & adding plugins for torrenting, streaming media & so on. NAS 4 Free is a little simpler to troubleshoot particularly when you are installing programs outside the sanctioned system. Free NAS 8 has a lots of advantages if you're going to RAID your drives.
In general, I'd like to recommend Free NAS 8 if you just want to share drives across the network & maybe install a few of the pre built plugins. NAS 4 Free is better with old computers or those that want to install more advanced extras that are not available as plugins for Free NAS 8.
Both are good softwares but which one you will use depend on your specific needs. If you still are not sure then give them both a shot and see which one you like better.
What You will Need:
You can install Free NAS on different systems using a number of different methods but here are the things you will need for our method:
A PC with minimum of 2GB RAM. Free NAS recommends that you've at least 4GB for its ZFS filesystem but if your old computer is not loaded up with RAM, the older but more stable UFS filesystem will work fine for most people needs. Note also that some plugins like the Usenet ones are 64 bit only so you will need a 64-bit compatible computer to use them.
The Free NAS Installer Image available here. A 4GB or larger flash drive, network with DHCP reservations, static IP addresses. It's definitely preferred. If you do not have this then managing your NAS may get pretty annoying since its IP address will change whenever you reboot it.
Free NAS is designed to run on a flash drive or compact flash card rather than one of the drives in your PC/computer. If your PC/computer does not have the ability to boot from USB, you will have to follow some slightly tweaked instructions here (& you won't be able to use one of your drives for storage). For this we will be booting from a 4GB USB drive.
Install Free NAS:
To install Free NAS you will need to grab a 4GB flash drive & the Free NAS installer image. You will want to grab the USB image not the live CD. If the computer on which you are installing Free NAS is 64 bit capable, grab the 64 bit image otherwise you will want to grab the 32 bit image from the 32 bit tab along the top.
Step One: Burn USB Drive
The first step is quite different depending on your operating system.
For Windows users: to install Free NAS on your flash drive, you will first need to download Win 32 Disk Imager & 7 Zip (if you do not have them already). Here what you need to do:
Download the Free NAS image archive & open it up with 7 Zip. Copy the Free NAS IMG file to your desktop & exit 7 Zip.
Insert your flash drive. Start Win 32 Disk Imager & click the blue folder icon. Browse your Free NAS IMG file you just extracted.Choose your flash drive from the drop down on the right then click the Write button to write the image to your drive.
For Mac users: To install Free NAS on your flash drive, you will need an app called Keka, as well as a little command line work:
Download the Free NAS image archive and right click on it. Choose 'Open With Keka' from the menu. It should be automatically extracted the Free NAS IMG file to the same folder as the XZ archive.
Insert your flash drive. Open Disk Utility from /Applications/Utilities & select your flash drive in the sidebar. Click the Erase tab & format it, ensuring it only has one partition. It does not matter what you format it as, we are going to overwrite it in a minute. Unmounted the partition after its created.
Open a Terminal window from /Applications/Utilities & run the following command:
diskutil list
Note the path of your USB drive in the list. This will be something like / dev / disk1.
Run the following command:
dd if =~/Desktop/Free NAS-8.3.1-RELEASE-p2-x86.img of=/dev/disk1 bs=64k <br>
Be SURE to replace the 'if' path & the 'of' path with the correct ones for your system (the first being the location of your Free NAS image the second being the path to your flash drive ). If you do this incorrectly then you can cause severe data loss.
Give it time to finish the copying process. When it is done, you will get a message saying it completed successfully.
Step Two: Boot & Configure Free NAS
Now that you've your Free NAS flash drive ready to go, it is time to get Free NAS started. Here are the things we recommend doing to get it set up:
Plug the flash drive into your computer & turn it on. Make sure to boot from the flash drive. You need to tweak a few BIOS settings in order to do so.
It will take a few minutes to start up. When it is done, it will give you an IP address at the bottom of the screen. Head back to your main computer & type that IP address in your browsers navigation bar. You should be greeted with the Free NAS web interface. Before you do anything else you will want to change your username and password for this web UI since right now it does not have a password which is very insecure. In the left hand sidebar, go to Account > Admin Account > Change Admin User. Give yourself a new username & click the 'Change Admin User' button. Next along the top of that pane click the 'Change Password' tab & give yourself a new password. This username & password only applies to the Free NAS web interface, so you will want to create a user for yourself as well. To do this go to Account > Users > Add User in the left-hand sidebar. Give your user a username, a primary group (as the admin, I made my primary group "wheel") & a password. (Note: If you are adding drives from an old Free NAS 7 installation you may need to change your User ID to 1000 instead of 1001 in order to access those drives). Optional: If you've other people in your household that are going to access data on your home server you may also want to create a group for them at this menu. For more information on this see our guide to file permissions. Lastly, go to System > Settings & change your protocol to HTTPS (for enhanced security) & your timezone to your location. If you do plan on using your NAS to access the internet, you will also need to go to Network > Global Configuration & set your IPv4 Default Gateway to your router's IP address. I also like to change my NAS' host name to something other than 'freenas' (so I can easily spot it on the network) but this is optional.
Take some time to poke around Free NAS configuration settings & tweak anything you see that you might want to change. The above steps should get most people going but if you have specific needs (like if you are using static IP addresses instead of DHCP reservations) you may have to tweak more.
Step 3: Add Your Disks
Now that your Free NAS system is up & running, it is time to add your hard disks to its pool. Here is how:
Go to Storage > Volumes > Volume Manager in the left hand sidebar to add a new, blank hard drive.
Give your new hard drive a name, choose it from the list of connected drives & choose a filesystem. If you have a more powerful machine, ZFS is Free NAS' recommended choice but UFS is great for lower powered system. Click the 'Add Volume' button. This will wipe the drive so make sure you have backed up anything you need from it first. Once your volume shows up in the left hand sidebar, click on it & choose 'Change Permissions.' This part is up to you but I like to change the owner to my username. You can also change the group if you desire I have created a group called 'family' as the owner of these drives so other members of my household can access them. Once again see our guide to file permissions for more details on what all this means.
Repeat this process for all your attached hard drives. If you are using drives from an old Free NAS system, you will want to choose 'Import Volume' instead of 'Volume Manager' in step 1. Then just select what filesystem it is already using & you will be able to use your existing data.
Step 4: Share Your DisksGo to Storage > Volumes > Volume Manager in the left hand sidebar to add a new, blank hard drive.
Give your new hard drive a name, choose it from the list of connected drives & choose a filesystem. If you have a more powerful machine, ZFS is Free NAS' recommended choice but UFS is great for lower powered system. Click the 'Add Volume' button. This will wipe the drive so make sure you have backed up anything you need from it first. Once your volume shows up in the left hand sidebar, click on it & choose 'Change Permissions.' This part is up to you but I like to change the owner to my username. You can also change the group if you desire I have created a group called 'family' as the owner of these drives so other members of my household can access them. Once again see our guide to file permissions for more details on what all this means.
Repeat this process for all your attached hard drives. If you are using drives from an old Free NAS system, you will want to choose 'Import Volume' instead of 'Volume Manager' in step 1. Then just select what filesystem it is already using & you will be able to use your existing data.
When your hard drives are all set up, it is time to share them over the network. We are going to use CIFS since its preferable for households with Windows machines or with multiple operating systems. If you have an all-Mac household look into AFP as an alternative.
Go to Sharing > Windows (CIFS) Shares > Add Windows (CIFS) Share in the left-hand sidebar.
Give your share a name & click the Browse button next to Path. Navigate to the drive you want to share.Click OK. It will ask you if you want to enable the CIFS service. Do not do so just yet. Click No then go to Services > CIFS in the left-hand sidebar. Change your Net BIOS name to whatever you want & tweak any other settings you want. The defaults should be fine for most people.Repeat Steps 1-3 for the other drives you want to share.When you are done, go to Services > Control Services & flip the CIFS switch to 'On.'
Now, go to your main computer. If it is a Windows machine, open Windows Explorer & click on the "Network" shortcut in the left hand sidebar. You should see your Free NAS machine pop up, & from there you can navigate to any of your shared drives. If you are on a Mac, just open the Finder & go to Go > Connect to Server, & type smb://freenas (or whatever your CIFS share's netBIOS name is) & click Connect.
When prompted, enter your username & password (the one we created from the FreeNAS "Users" settings earlier) & you should be able to create and edit files right from your PC.
Congratulations, you've a fully operational file server.
Now you can use these disks for whatever you want. You can store data on them, use them for backup or even access them directly from your home theater PC.
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