interested in building my own NAS. what parts have you used and (because i know naff all about them) can i link them through my router (WNDR3800) to accept both mac & pc connections?
I've got a thread up
here.
I used a cheap second hand CPU/mobo. It's only 1.4Ghz, but that's plenty for my needs. The bonus is that it runs so cool it doesn't need a fan and the power consumption is tiny. I started with 512mb of RAM, but upgraded to 2gb when one of my RAM sticks decided it no longer wanted to work.
I use a 40gb HDD for the OS (FreeNAS) and 2 x 1tb HDDs for storage.
All housed in an Antec case with a cheapo PSU (again, because the power drain is so small you don't need a powerful PSU).
There's plenty of freeware OS you can use. I stuck with FreeNAS because it's fairly simple to use. From what I've read, unRaid is pretty good if you're wanting to use a massive RAID array but it's not free.
Another thing that my little NAS project added to my geekiness was that I'm now semi-proficient in Linux command line commands.