Thinkpads Forum

Is it possible to use my T60 as an NAS, or do I need a dedicated server?

Lately I'm using my T60 (Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5500, 1.5 GB RAM, XP Pro) exclusively at home using the AC adapter, connected wirelessly to a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wireless router, which has DSL internet. I have two desktop PCs and a printer connected to the router by Cat5.

My main PC (AMD Athlon 64 3200+ and 2 GB RAM, running XP Pro) has my latest data (email client and its data and a fair amount of database information that's being updated on a nearly daily basis). Occasionally, I copy this info to my T60 because it's useful to have it, but I can't change anything on the laptop and have it updated to my main PC unless I go to some trouble, for instance sending myself an email. Of course, this is cumbersome. I fetch new email to my laptop, where I have the email client configured to leave the messages on my ISP's server so that they will show up on my main PC later.

I'm thinking of putting together a fairly simple NAS with a small form factor and low power consumption, based on either the Intel Atom CPU or Via-7. However, I'm wondering if it's at all feasible to use my T60 in this capacity. I don't often turn off my T60 in the way that I turn off my main PC (every day, sometimes more than once). Instead, I put the laptop into suspend by closing the cover. Since the NAS I'm contemplating is really just a laptop without a screen (MSI Wind PC Atom 1.6 MHz CPU Intel 945GC 1 x 200Pin Intel GMA 950 Barebone: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... search3-20 ) I'm thinking that I can maybe instead use my laptop as an NAS and keep my latest data on its hard drive, accessing it from my main PC over the network. Evidently this would be simple if the laptop were left on all the time, however I'm wondering if the laptop could be wakened from sleep or suspend by the main PC, with a sort of Wake on LAN functionality. Is this possible? Would it be possible even with the laptop's cover closed? Thanks for guidance in this!

Is the laptop XP or Vista? I use "offline files". From the laptop, open an explorer window it the directory you want to keep a copy of. Right-click and drag the folder to the laptop's desktop. choose "copy". Right-click the folder and select "make the file available offline. Whenever the laptop is turned on, the sync will occur.

richk wrote:Is the laptop XP or Vista? I use "offline files". From the laptop, open an explorer window it the directory you want to keep a copy of. Right-click and drag the folder to the laptop's desktop. choose "copy". Right-click the folder and select "make the file available offline. Whenever the laptop is turned on, the sync will occur.

This sounds promising. The laptop and the main PC (I only rarely use the other PC) are XP Pro. I think I understand what you're describing. The folder you're talking about initially is on my main PC, and obviously on a shared drive. So far, I haven't been able to get sharing working, but I haven't put much effort into it. If what I read somewhere is correct it is because I have a blank password in use on my main PC. What I read was that file sharing will only work if you don't use blank passwords. If I put an actual password in there for logon I think maybe file sharing across the network will work.

BTW, I bought the laptop around Thanksgiving 2006 and Vista hadn't yet shipped. My T60 was Vista certified and I was supposed to be able to get a free Vista upgrade CD (I believe a shipping and handling fee of ~$15-20 was in effect). Can I still get that disk? I'm not sure it's a good idea to "upgrade," I've heard that Vista has been something of a disaster.

I think either vista or xp is fine, but I've found it easier when the 2 machines are running the same OS

I learned the art of networking on Win95 and had finally mastered it on Win98. Then Microsoft brought out XP which appeared to be designed to protect idiots from themselves, and most recently Vista which appears to be designed to protect everybody from themselves!

I would definitely use XP Pro unless you're a networking and Vista expert.

My solution to the dilemma of keeping data unified isn't the greatest (for common reasons), but my recent-most hack-job consists of mapping a network drive to a main machine and marking the folder for availability offline. In my case, the main machine runs Windows XP Pro and the 'client', my Thinkpad, runs Windows Vista.

It seems to work well, so far...

Ideally I would put this data on another fileserver, or NAS, as you seem to plan but I'm waiting for the funds to purchase something reliable first (after many bad experiences). I've considered rsync scripts and such, but Windows's offline files features seem to suffice.

I think it's definitely possible to use the thinkpad as you want - my thinkpad resumes from sleep even when I don't ask it to. I haven't yet ruled out stray local broadcasts triggering WOL, but I'm fairly certain the functionality is there.

Growly wrote:My solution to the dilemma of keeping data unified isn't the greatest (for common reasons), but my recent-most hack-job consists of mapping a network drive to a main machine and marking the folder for availability offline. In my case, the main machine runs Windows XP Pro and the 'client', my Thinkpad, runs Windows Vista.

It seems to work well, so far...

Ideally I would put this data on another fileserver, or NAS, as you seem to plan but I'm waiting for the funds to purchase something reliable first (after many bad experiences). I've considered rsync scripts and such, but Windows's offline files features seem to suffice.

I think it's definitely possible to use the thinkpad as you want - my thinkpad resumes from sleep even when I don't ask it to. I haven't yet ruled out stray local broadcasts triggering WOL, but I'm fairly certain the functionality is there.

So, you don't actually have a network drive then? You are using your laptop for the "live" data? You say your laptop resumes from sleep on certain events. Does it do this even if the cover is closed?

Next thing I'm going to have to do is simply to get my machines to talk to each other, share information over my LAN.

I ran into a guy yesterday who's pretty sophisticated and he urged me to give Ubuntu a shot for a NAS OS. He said that for what I want to do it would be rather simple even though I have no experience with Linux/etc. I was thinking Windows Home Server, having heard a lot of great things about it, but evidently it wouldn't be hard to have my needs met with free software. Mainly I want to share some data and work out an effective backup system. My backup system is stone age. Getting some hands on experience with open source OS's might be worth while.

sktn77a wrote:I learned the art of networking on Win95 and had finally mastered it on Win98. Then Microsoft brought out XP which appeared to be designed to protect idiots from themselves, and most recently Vista which appears to be designed to protect everybody from themselves!

I would definitely use XP Pro unless you're a networking and Vista expert.

I don't know anything about Vista and my networking knowledge is sketchy, just what I picked up working as a database administrator in a networked environment (running NT 4.0) for a couple years. I'd call it a good introduction, but that predated XP even.

sktn77a wrote:I would definitely use XP Pro unless you're a networking and Vista expert.

The network/server performance in Vista is very significantly better than XP at every level, including setting up simple home networks.

Cheers,

Bill B.

Muse wrote:but evidently it wouldn't be hard to have my needs met with free software.

Free NAS is pretty easy to set up, but you end up with media that you can't easily connect directly (that is at drive interface level) to a Windows system, which is useful if you ever have a 'server' (or NAS platform) crash and need to recover data in a hurry using a client environment.

For my home network (5 family member users) I ran Free NAS for a while and it worked well, but it was "yet another platform" that I needed to support and in the end I decided that Windows client platforms could do just as well so I changed over to Windows running as a simple server.

That started out with XP Pro on an old desktop box, and over time has grown somewhat, with new Core 2 Duo hardware and then a software upgrade to Vista x64.

Cheers,

Bill B.

Muse wrote:So, you don't actually have a network drive then? You are using your laptop for the "live" data? You say your laptop resumes from sleep on certain events. Does it do this even if the cover is closed?

Sorry I wasn't clear: I don't use a dedicated fileserver for keeping my documents unified (though I do use them for other things), but I do use network drives (Windows filesharing). The "live" data is on my main PC (where I do the other half of my work) and the thinkpad maps the data through a Windows file share to drive U:\. I marked it as an offline folder so that I could write to and read from the drive when I'm not connected to the network (Windows maintains a cache), and so that whatever changes I did make would be automatically synchronised when I plugged back in.

I'm not sure if this is what you're after though, so apologies if it was irrelevant... My thinkpad seems to turn itself on even when the lid is down, which isn't a good thing for me but probably a good sign for others.

Muse wrote:I ran into a guy yesterday who's pretty sophisticated and he urged me to give Ubuntu a shot for a NAS OS. He said that for what I want to do it would be rather simple even though I have no experience with Linux/etc. I was thinking Windows Home Server, having heard a lot of great things about it, but evidently it wouldn't be hard to have my needs met with free software. Mainly I want to share some data and work out an effective backup system. My backup system is stone age. Getting some hands on experience with open source OS's might be worth while.

I recommend Debian if you want to get yours hands a little dirtier. It requires (and yields) a little more technical knowledge, but strikes a balance with ease and uniformity in configuration and administration and has a very wide development and user base with documentation for just about anything. More technical distributions tend to require a disproportionate commitment (time, effort) that, while fun, sometimes just can't be afforded. The other extreme is those distributions which make everything easy and neatly packaged - like Ubuntu (which is essentially Debian) - and these are neat, if a little boring... :p

Setting up a home fileserver in Debian is quite straightforward, and you'll find plenty of help around. I've seen FreeNAS and would recommend that too, but it does have its downsides as Bill points out (though pretty much any non-windows O/S will end up using something other than NTFS for it's file format, meaning that you'll need to commit to using the O/S in most cases to keep files accessible directly without a network). I've also heard good things about OpenFiler while we're throwing ideas out there...