Everyday I'm Shufflin'

It's been a while since I've updated my blog, so I've got a lot to cover.  Let's start with my NAS situation as it's changed substantially since I've last posted.

My desire to use my wife's old PC as a NAS was completely abandoned.  There was an issue with trying to shut it down.  When I'd try to shut down the NAS from it's web GUI, it wouldn't shut down and just hang.  So instead of trying to figure that out, I swapped computers yet again.

I took apart my Windows XP computer, got a new case for my Windows 7 machine, and shuffled everything around yet again:

From left to right:
NAS, empty case, wife's old compy.

NAS Specs:
Rosewill R101-P-BK 120mm Fan MicroATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Rosewill RFA-120-BL 120mm 4 Blue LEDs LED Case Fan
CHAINTECH 7NIL1 462(A) NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ Barton 2.1GHz Socket A Processor
Rosewill RCX-Z100 One ball bearing for over 45000/hrs life CPU Cooler
1.2 GB PC3200 DDR 400 RAM
Transcend 2GB Compact Flash (CF) Flash Card Model TS2GCF133
SYBA SD-CF-IDE-BR IDE to Compact Flash Adapter (Bracket Version)
MSI RX9800PRO-TD128 Radeon 9800PRO 128MB 256-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card
Rosewill RC-209-EX PCI 2.3, 32bit, 33/66Mhz SATA Controller Card
LG CD-R/RW Drive (CED-8120D)
HIPRO HP-P303W PSU

The empty case is a Foxconn 300 Watts MATX Mini Tower Case.  I bought it in 2004 for $30 and has been a pretty nice case.  It just lacks hard drive space, access to the far side of the case (or the side where my wife's computer is in the picture) and HD front audio.  This was the case my Windows 7 machine was in up until recently when I bought an NZXT Vulcan for that computer.

For my wife's old computer, the specs are on the first post of my blog, although it's changed too with the addition of the following:
DVD-116ME DVD ROM
Floppy Drive
Zonet Firewire/USB2.0 PCI Combo Card Model ZUC2400
Dynatron BH-610/C61G 60mm Ball Cooling Fan/Heatsink
And I've removed the hard drives from this computer.  (More on that later.)

Additionally, the heatsink currently in the NAS I had originally bought for my wife's computer when it was going to be the NAS (because her heatsink/fan was on it's last leg and was loud.)  But being I bought it new, I felt I would keep it over the 8 year old Dynatron, and moved it from the Athalon 1200 to the Barton XP and put the Dynatron on the Athalon 1200.

This NAS configuration ended up being quite a boon to the project.  Not only did the NAS become less problematic, but actually ran faster.  My wife's computer running as a NAS only ever topped out at 25 MB/s.  With the new hardware (and a SATA drive installed) I was able to get 37.5-60 MB/s.  In fact it was kinda fun to watch the system as I transferred files to the NAS.  The CPU temp would slowly climb, once it reached a threshold, the transfer would pause to allow the CPU to cool back down, and then it would start again.  Very nice.

As for the HD for the NAS, I'm still waiting for prices to reach pre-flooding prices (or about $70 for a 2TB drive).