Cheap NAS server idea's?

[dysmorphic (OP)]

i have come to the conclusion that i need a bunch of storage. i have used 90%-ish of my laptop hard drive. i might as well integrate it all into the grand scheme of connecting everything into my home network. one of my main problems and is indeed public enemy no. 1, all of my data. music mostly but it all comes to 900gb or so...give or take...

i have a few options open to me, use an existing 8 year old gaming rig, an 8 year old mac book pro, or one of the 2 or 3 other older laptops i have. then again, i could just buy something off of the shelf for say 500$ and be done with it all. the NAS diskless system and then 2 or 3 drives is around 500 bucks. it is however 500 bucks well spent as the NAS devices i saw were pretty fucking awesome if you were to put a few hundred for just the device alone and then add a couple hundred to several hundred for drives. but when it comes to 500$ i could buy two or three 4tb drives and then raid5 them on the gaming rig and add an SSD for the OS drive. that would give me a shit ton of upgradeable options as far as running media server and what not.

or i could use that mac book pro and run a USB NAS device. it could do all of what i am looking for too as well as run some other services. just purchase the USB NAS, the 2 or 3 drives and connect it all to the PC in question. then it too would be dedicated and completely self sufficient. i like that idea. i would even put the components into a more user friendly case so i could get into it all when needed and it would look far better then everything just sitting out. i read a few good reviews out of a lot of searching so even though it seems like this might work out, i get the feeling it wont be what ill be most happy with.

i definitely have the technical aptitude to handle most everything that would be required even if i were to have to fabricate some sort of encloser for the device but i would rather as much of the work be done for me as possible and i am certainly not above swapping parts out of one thing and adding parts to another one. would be a great way to get my brain working like i want it to again lol!

anyway, i am super buzzed, it is really early, i haven't slept much at all because my fucking back hurts. so i thought i would see if anyone wants to engage in a little friendly tech wizardry 

[Chip]

i have used FreeNAS on some boxes and have done so for years.

i also have 3 Netgear NAS boxes ... if you use FreeNAS, which is great btw, then you need a reliable box to run it on.

it gets installed to a USB stick this giving you full use of your existing drive(s).

Questions ?

FreeNAS also supports heaps of plugins - for a better "Cloud" type experience.

FreeNAS is built on FreeBSD and is free.

there is a cloud server on our server, if you are interested in that type of tech.

i can't stress enough how cool FreeNAS is ... it taught me alot about Linux.

[dysmorphic (OP)]

ya man freeNAS is the way to go. i had been looking into it for a while now.

so i have my old gaming rig which will run the NAS no problem. just picked up three 4tb drives for it and 8gb more memory.