build your own network attached storage device
Linux Journal builds a low power NAS with an Arm-based server and USB hard drives.
As an experiment, and finally to get rid of that large, inefficient and ugly tower case, I decided to use the new Trim-Slice as the base for an ultra-low-power, ultra-small replacement file server. The Trim-Slice is built on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform, and the specific model I purchased features a 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, 1GB of RAM and a 32GB SATA SSD.
via Linux Journal.
We have been playing around with the QNAP TS-659 Pro II unit over the last month or so. Based on the Intel Atom D525 platform, it has 6 bays and dual GbE ports, making it a candidate for the high end SMB market.
via AnandTech
AnandTech dissects, thoroughly reviews, and benchmarks the Synology DS211+:
Synology has a sensible model number nomenclature in which the last two digits refer to the year through which the model is intended for sale. The first set of digits refer to the maximum number of bays supported. Some models have a + at the end, signifying higher performance. Today, we have the DS211+ for review. The DS refers to the product category, Disk Station. 2 indicates a 2 bay model, and the 11 indicates a 2011 model. It is supposed to have a higher performance compared to the DS211 which was released in November 2010.
SmallNetBuilder walks through building a 16 drive RAID5 NAS with FreeBSD 6.
rubbervir.us shows how to quickly turn an old computer into a file server running Samba.
Debian Admin has an article detailing NFS setup and tuning.