Thinkpads Forum

Hi there,

I have contemplated my backup situation (presently consisting of some FW800/USB 2.0 IDE enclosures ) and I have decided that rather than buying a NAS which would cost more than my X200, I could just use an older ThinkPad as a NAS.

The idea is to use something like a T43 running FreeNAS, a secondary HDD in the Ultrabay, and simply have the OS mirror the drives to each other.

Is this a good idea? What model should I be looking for? Nothing real elaborate, reliable, takes a second HDD* and then all should be well. The T42 or T43 is what I had my eyes on, I would like an X series machine but I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as an X series machine that can do what I'm looking for and is "reasonable".

*: The PATA thing is a problem, of course. Fortunately my backups are <200GB so that is not that big of a deal but SATA HDDs have come down a lot in price.

P.S. I've been liking my X200 since I got it about a month ago, and have thought about a X220, but I'm not sure what it would do for me that I particularly need. mSATA SSD is very attractive yes but 1366x768 I'm not sure about. Since I run a Debian OS I kind of need the vertical room. I considered the T420s for my next machine (or the T420, depending how far USB 3.0 ends up getting adopted) but it's something I'd have to think about. A X201 mobo upgrade for the X200 is shockingly pricey -- by the time I get the parts (mobo ~150-170$, palmrest about $30, and something else) I'm half way to a X220 with a Core i7...

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

I can't provide any guidance on NAS software but I can comment on "reasonable" X series systems. An X61 with matching UltraBase and an UltraBay 2nd HDD adapter could fill the bill. Or a cheap X300 with a similar HD adapter in place of the optical drive. The X61 solution would use standard 9.5mm high, 2.5" SATA drives but would be slightly bulky due to the UltraBase; the X300 uses 7mm high SATA drives and would retain the same overall profile as a "normal" laptop. While you haven't specified what your reasonable price range is, I have recently purchased a couple of X300 systems off eBay for $113 and $141 (2 to 3GB of memory but no HDD).

I would not recommend a T42 system as you might have to deal with ATI video chip issues. A T43 (with Intel graphics) would be better for reliability if you really wanted to go with a T4x solution.

ref: http://cgi.ebay.com/itm/140981667917 (X300 3GB; $113)
ref: http://cgi.ebay.com/itm/370805613346 (X300 2GB; $141)
ref: http://cgi.ebay.com/itm/300689145212 (X300/X301 2nd HD adapter $22)

I was recently playing with FreeNAS, and from my experience I think you might be a little disappointed if you tried to set it up as you describe. FreeNAS is made to run as a "live" install, and will take the first drive it sees and make a very small (~2gb or so IIRC) partition on it that is mostly for swap, and then lock out the rest. This would make a 2-drive mirror setup impossible, or at the least not useful. You could get around this by running FreeNAS on a small external drive (or if the system supports booting from it, even a USB flash drive) and then have your mirrored drives inside the system, but that would not be without risk either.

Personally, I would suggest you buy either a NAS system that is already set up to be a NAS, or pickup a cheap used desktop (perhaps a SFF of some sort if you want) and then put hard drives in it of a more modern flavor.

All the NAS systems are too expensive.

In principle, I only have ~120GB of data, and I expect that to top out at no more than 150GB. Even the compact NAS stations cost more than a laptop alone and those are the cheap ones. Furthermore, the laptop has the advantage of a built-in UPS (mostly...), full keyboard and display so no remote login/management needed (not that it's that hard, but...)

I suppose I could go with a fanless PC or those microATX form factor machines, two SATA drives is all that I'd be worried about. But they still cost more than a slightly used laptop.

Then the problem of the T42/43 systems is that blasted PATA storage. About two years ago I desired a HP 2510p for mobile use. Good because it is one of the few 12" laptops with a built-in CD drive, bad because of that 1.8" PATA drive. PATA used to be cheap but now it is something nobody really uses anymore and it's too expensive.

X60s are probably something I should look at, I suppose. A cheap 1.83GHz is plenty enough -- I was curious about the T42/43s because of the legacy Windows compatibility meaning that I could run NFS 4 with a better solution than mediocre integrated graphics...

Further thoughts? What is the risk you speak of? I am certain I can obtain some cheap 4GB ultra-compact flash drives which will be barely noticeable, that can be the boot volume for sure. I'm also slightly concerned about migration (replacing hard drives every two to three years for insurance purposes) and secondary backup purposes (i.e. backing up to external USB 2.0 enclosures for back-up of the backups).

Actually for backup/archive drives I don't always have them on. I only turn them on when I need them, grab what I need, sync some data, then eject and power off again.