Yep, networked attached storage (NAS) sure is riding the cusp of the wave right now, with more and more folk jumping on the bandwagon.

But…£400 barely buys you something to house 4 hard disks.

Want to know how to do this on the cheap?

Well, here is my super cheap NAS that can take 6 hard disks and do much more than your typical NAS box.

First things first – if you have some spare hardware or an old PC lying arround then great – you might not have to buy anything!

Here is the scenario – an old PC can be configured to be a NAS device. Attach it to a gigabit network and that’s that. All done!

Just setup some Windows or Linux shares and away you go – most folk really don’t need RAID or Drobo type systems – which add a layer of complexity that simply isn’t required.

For example, if you don’t need multi multi terabyte storage, and most of us really do not – then a modern motherboard will run 4 to 6 hard disks…now that 2TB disks are less than £60, 8TB will set you back a paltry £240. Do you really need 8TB? No, thought not – good even cheaper!

What most folk do not understand, because manufacturers don’t want you to know, is that if RAID systems fail, you could lose all your data in one hit.

This includes Drobo and similar systems – yes, they will cover you if a hard disk fails, but if the RAID hardware itself fails, your going to have real fun recovering anything. You can’t just plug the hard disks into another machine – you have to recover the original RAID array.

And recovery is not going to be cheap.

So, the simple solution is to use a PC on your network, dedicated as the NAS box and share everything from there. Even better, buy a brand new bare bones PC for £150, and two 2TB hard disks for less than £120. (These are not recommendations, just examples – you can buy your hardware from anywhere – I am not affiliated with Novatec in any way.)

For £270 you now have 4TB of disk space you can share across the network!

Try getting a 4TB Drobo for that!

Better still, use the motherboard RAID to mirror two hard disks, so that when one fails you won’t lose the lot.

And there’s more – with this system, if the motherboard fails and you can’t even switch the PC on, just remove the hard disks and connect them to any other PC and whoa, you can see all your data!

So, you only bought a single hard disk? No problem, the case will take many more.

You want to stream music and video over the internet – no worries, there are free apps to do this on both Linux and Windows systems. (e.g. VLC will do this).

So there you have it, a no nonsense NAS system that is expandable, reliable and future proof. What more could you want?