I have been using my FreeNAS based NAS server for over a month now. It is rock solid and super easy to setup. I waited for a sale on Segate 750GB hard drives and when it came around I picked up 4 of them and then some barebones computer parts from NewEgg. $360 for the hard drives and about $200 for the computer parts for a grand total of $560.

Here is the barebones computer running an AMD 3400+ processor and a gig of ram. I will most likely upgrade it in the future but for now its fine as FreeNAS has a low overhead.


Here is the 4x 750GB hard drives


The drives installed in the computer and wired up.


The BIOS screen showing all 4 of the hard drives + the OS drive and CD drive.


Here is me accessing the NAS over the network from my Mac.


MMMM almost 2TB of formatted RAID5 storage. It works great over the CAT6 Gigibit ethernet and over the Airport N Wi-Fi.