# Solved: Making a JBOD?



## toxinsnake (Jun 25, 2007)

I'm trying to make a jbod since I can't find one that I liked online. I don't have any important data on the drives so I don't need a raid setup. I just want to make a case that I can connect to a router and let me access the individual drives, not concatenation, so I don't have to worry about losing all of the data, also I may add in hard drives later. I needed something that would let me get files from one location instead of transferring from one computer to another. Any idea of how to do this?


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## toxinsnake (Jun 25, 2007)

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this.


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## Soundy (Feb 17, 2006)

What have you looked at that you "don't like"? Almost all NAS boxes support JBOD configuration. Sounds like all you want to do is have the drive space there, which ALL of them do.


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## toxinsnake (Jun 25, 2007)

I didn't know that almost all NAS boxes support JBOD configuration. What I didn't like was how expensive the NAS boxes were, I thought it might be cheaper to make one instead. Also, yes I did want the drive space because I just wanted a place to store all of my movies into, so I don't have to check all of my hard drives.


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## Soundy (Feb 17, 2006)

JBOD is nothing special - just an acronym meaning "Just a Bunch Of Disks". No RAID level, no striping or spanning or mirroring. Each disk you put in it will show up as a separate drive in your system. So if your concern is not having to search through drive letters for stuff, JBOD won't benefit you much over just adding internal or external drives to your computer. 

If you want to build your own NAS (Network Attached Storage), you'll need a separate PC, and you'll need to install an OS on it, and then share all the drives so other machines can see them on the network. Then you can use something like Windows Home Server, which creates automatic pooled shares that can automatically expand to make use of whatever drives you add - the "Movies" pool, for example, would automatically use whatever space it needs on whatever drives you allot to it, and machines accessing it from the network would just need to connect to the "Movies" share. Since it's based on Windows Server, though, you would need a fairly substantial PC.

Or you could use something like FreeNAS, which is a Linux-based setup with an automated install that can do something similar with a lot less hardware. It's also open-source and thus much cheaper than a Microsoft solution.

Most of the better ready-built NAS systems will have such shares already set up, as well as supporting UPnP media services, so you don't have to worry about network shares - as long as you have UPnP-enabled playback devices (Xbox, computers with Windows Media Player, etc.), they'll find the shared media automatically by "sniffing" the network. Many of them also support Bonjour, which is Apple's version of the same thing, so iTunes will find the shares automatically. And so on. And many of them have web and FTP services built in, so you can access your files from anywhere.

All of that is stuff that CAN be done with DIY setups... but it's a lot easier because you just unbox the thing, install your hard drives, and plug it in.

In the end, though, the CHEAPEST and quickest way would just be to add internal or USB external drives to your main PC, and then share them on the network. The catch to that is that your PC would have to be running all the time when you want to access them.


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## toxinsnake (Jun 25, 2007)

So do you know of any good cases and motherboards that would let me make my own NAS?


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## Soundy (Feb 17, 2006)

Umm... just about anything. "NAS" is yet another generic acronym meaning Network Attached Storage - nothing special about it.


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## Martial33 (Nov 1, 2002)

ya, I was looking at this.....

8 bays for 300.00


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