Needing recomendations for Older free NAS software

[maxwellmelon]

I have an older 2ghz 32 bit intel cpu with 512mb of ram that I am looking for a free basic NAS software to run on it off of a usb drive or flash card. It needs to be remote management or atleast capable of booting up without user involvement. I just need to have basic file transfer service on it to treat as a mapped network drive would be fine, not even worried about its speed. I have 4 500gb spare ide hard drives and this old pc that works fine still. not caring about raid or anything else.

All the free programs ive seemed to find and try require 64 bit cpu or more ram (I even tested them even though I know my hardware didn't meet requirements). Unless you know of an older version that will work for me most the current free ones I find don't seem to support older hardware or low amount of ram.

Thanks

 

[skittle]

freenas is x64 only as of version 9.3
nas4free has 32bit
openmediavault has 32bit
can also setup any BSD or Linux distrobution. very easy. Lots of options..

 

[maxwellmelon]

freenas is x64 only as of version 9.3
nas4free has 32bit
openmediavault has 32bit
can also setup any BSD or Linux distrobution. very easy. Lots of options..

well even the NAS4FREE 32 bit was still wanting more Ram then I had so it would not actually startup. I know I could do it with Linux or even a windows install but I was trying to find something lighter (only software that's needed)

haven't seen openmediavault ill look into that one, if it works for me ill give you best answer thanks.

 

[skittle]

nas4free and freenas typically ask for more ram because they use ZFS which recommends ~1GB ram per 1TB storage.

All you really need is debian or freebsd (or any other) setup with 'samba'.

 

[McHenryB]

NAS4Free requires a minimum of 512MB, so it should run on your hardware. You were probably trying to use RAID or, as Skittle says, ZFS. Just use a UFS filesystem.

Many people think it a superior product to FreeNAS (it's a fork of FreeNAS).