Home made NAS vs prebuilt one

[Jayb118]

Hey guys,

I was looking at gettng an NAS to attach to my wireless network but heard a lot of stories of people building their own from spare parts saving a lot of money.

Im looking for a setup that I can use for storing and sharing files, share my printer and maybe a media server to stream music and videos.

Oh and I need to be able to read and write to it from both PC and Mac.

So im looking for opinions, build one myself or buy one?

Many thanks

 

[DelJo63]

Im looking for a setup that I can use for storing and sharing files, share my printer and maybe a media server to stream music and videos.

A NAS is storage only, so the print sharing and media server software will not run there -- you can of course place the media files on it too.

Oh and I need to be able to read and write to it from both PC and Mac.

Just format the HD as FAT32. Windows will only format 32gb of fat32 -- perhaps you could use the Mac. If the disk is very large (eg: 1 TB), I would create two partitions.

So im looking for opinions, build one myself or buy one?

IMO, the priority of choices would be

1. Buy a dedicated product
2. Use an old system as a file/print server
3. lastly build your own