As I learned and said a couple months ago, November will see this product ready. My estimate the price would be about 800$ could be near enough - it starts from 500$.

They could have done better with the design - it looks like a Soviet era product from USSR.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/11/0...system_ss4200x/

The article kind of left open if this had wireless built-in?! It's a NAS, but does it have WiFi? Does it work with OS X 10.5 TimeMachine?

I was thinking that that would be the only backup that I could reliably use from a laptop. TimeMachine going over Wireless saving a delta every 10 minutes, or a larger delta every couple of hours. The main point is, I don't want to have to think about backup, and I don't have my machine tethered to the desk, it's a laptop and it gets carried around.

The article kind of left open if this had wireless built-in?! It's a NAS, but does it have WiFi? Does it work with OS X 10.5 TimeMachine?

I was thinking that that would be the only backup that I could reliably use from a laptop. TimeMachine going over Wireless saving a delta every 10 minutes, or a larger delta every couple of hours. The main point is, I don't want to have to think about backup, and I don't have my machine tethered to the desk, it's a laptop and it gets carried around.

I don't think any business wants WiFi with this device. It's not meant (but could be used) as a backup device.

It is a low end, but not that low to be WiFi.

If anyone insists, it's ethernet interface can be plugged into a WiFi router.

It's a bit misleading to say that you'll get 4TB for $500 (or even $800). What you're getting is a barebones server that has 4 *empty* bays, which you can populate with up to 1TB drives, for a maximum of 4TB. Those drives aren't going to be cheap. Considering that a cheap 1TB drive costs around $350, you're going to be spending at least $500+$1400 for an actual 4TB.

Secondhand PC with celeron 800 mHz and 128 mb ram with an onboard 10/100 network port along with freenas will do the trick...

Total cost (without the drives obviously) around 2500 Baht!

Stuff 4 500Gig drives in and you have a lovely 2TB NAS...

Not that much more then a simple usb2 external enclosure for a single drive!

Relatively easy set-up as well with a comprehensive GUI like you would expect from an external device (much like a router or adsl modem), and lot's of compregensive manuals and tutorial on-line enabling you to get the most out of it...

Secondhand PC with celeron 800 mHz and 128 mb ram with an onboard 10/100 network port along with freenas will do the trick...

Total cost (without the drives obviously) around 2500 Baht!

Stuff 4 500Gig drives in and you have a lovely 2TB NAS...

Not that much more then a simple usb2 external enclosure for a single drive!

Relatively easy set-up as well with a comprehensive GUI like you would expect from an external device (much like a router or adsl modem), and lot's of compregensive manuals and tutorial on-line enabling you to get the most out of it...

Would that be NAS? To make the equipment NAS you need the code that will look after backend disks.

To imagine what is needed: if there are 10 movies on the disks and 400 people watch them (common on airplanes or in hotels) from different points, NAS code has to serve them as each of the viewers was the only one.

Would that be NAS? To make the equipment NAS you need the code that will look after backend disks.

Yep it does all that. Although a 100 mbps lan connection won't be able to serve video to 400 different clients

FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.

The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.

Basically the NAS devices you buy ready made are exactly the same, a low speed cpu, some memory and the NAS operating system along with a web-interface to set it up the way you like. Only thing is that if you want to buy a NAS offering 4 hard drive slots, you'll pay a lot more then the above mentioned set-up.

Admittedly the pre made NAS devices will be more easy to get going for the uninitiated with some wizards built in etc, on the other hand Freenas will offer much more powerful tweakability and is not at all hard to get going, on top of it it has a very active forum where questions can be asked and will get answered, something you will not have with the pre-made devices...