Brian's Brain

A month ago, I alerted you that Microsoft's Windows Home Server O/S had just entered the invitation-only public Beta 2 phase of its development cycle. I submitted a beta tester request, providing no indication within it that I was a member of the press, but pointing out my diverse collection of Macs, PCs and other NAS-friendly LAN clients....and my application was accepted!

The Beta 2 setup and documentation bits currently reside on my laptop hard drive, awaiting installation on their new hardware home. I'm targeting a two- (RAID 1) or three-drive (RAID 5) configuration, and a microATX-or-smaller system form factor. But which motherboard should I choose? The ASRock P4Dual-915GL that I bought from Egghead in August of 2005, after the hack of the developer build of OS 10.4 for x86 was leaked by the OSx86 gang (the P4Dual-915GL is very similar to the mobo that was in the developer systems Apple started shipping after the 2005 Worldwide Developer Conference), is at first glance a likely candidate.

But upon further inspection, the P4Dual-915GL has two fatal limitations; no built-in Gigabit Ethernet support, and the entry-level ICH6 variant on it doesn't support Intel's Matrix Storage RAID utility. I 'could' surmount both obstacles with add-in cards, but such augmentation would defeat the whole purpose of building a compact, inexpensive and low power NAS. I also have an Intel D945GTP motherboard out in the garage but its feature set is overkill for the focused NAS application, and anyway I hope to turn it into a small form factor Media Center Edition system in conjunction with an Ultra Products case.

Instead, if I can find a mini-ITX case big enough to fit at least two 3.5" HDDs inside, and in my abundant spare time (hah), I've concluded that I'm going to tackle building my NAS out of Via's EPIA-EN12000EG or VT-310DP motherboard. Both have got everything I need and more; I daresay I probably won't find a use for the graphics and video acceleration support, or for surround audio capability, with a storage-centric operating system. But the mobo's abundant USB2 and (on the EN1200EG) IEEE 1394 capabilities may come in handy if I decide to supplement the internal HDDs with additional external storage. And Via's mini-ITX systems' low power operation is legendary; see for yourself, in my 2004 two-part review series.

My decision to go with Via hardware also opens the door to non-Microsoft O/S-based NASs, which Via's longstanding embrace of Linux and alternative operating systems makes feasible. To that end, peruse the following collection of links that I've assembled over the past few months if you're interested in following in my footsteps (or, more likely given my workload right now, blazing the trail on my behalf):

• Turn your old XBOX into a NAS Device
• A Look at FreeNAS Server
• FreeNAS makes it easy to add storage to home networks
• OpenFiler: A Better Free NAS Than FreeNAS?
• Network-Attached Storage With FreeNAS

Followup: See here for ExtremeTech's take on home server construction, based on Windows XP Professional.