[aklug] low-power, bare bones Linux-based drive cage

So, this is partly because I haven't been able to find what I want so far, and
partly "dear lazyweb."

I'm looking for a device to site on a network as a backup device. Basically,
a NAS box with three or four drives bays and a low-power motherboard. Maybe
even RaspberryPi-ish in a case with drives attached.

I know I could get a micro (or nano) ATX case, motherboard and CPU, but even
an Intel atom, or the cheapest Core i3 would be more power than we need.

It doesn't need major speed: it will be rsync'ed to, and probably run
rsnapshot jobs. Something along the lines of an ARM box running Linux would
be great.

It seems all the NAS boxes I find are either 1) enclosed CPU with some
"blackbox" OS on top, so I have to use another job to run the backups, then
copy the files over (i.e. they only export via NFS, SMB, etc), or 2) it's just
a drive bay with a eSATA/USB, which means I still need another box to do that
actual backing-up.

So, basically, what I'm looking for is something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/RAID-Enclosure-Subsystems/SubCategory/ID-509

But with:
1) a Motherboard
2) a network port
3) a way to install an arbitrary linux distro
4) low-power (ARM or dead-cheap x86)
5) cheap (as possible)

Something like this is cheap:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859324024

But then, no drive bays.

Something like this looks fun:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822165223

But, it has some built-in OS, so not the level of tinkering I'm looking for. I
suppose if someone could point me to a cheap NAS device I could then flash with
OpenWRT, that would work quite well.

j

-- 
Joshua Kugler
Part-Time System Admin/Programmer
http://www.eeinternet.com - Fairbanks, AK
PGP Key: http://pgp.mit.edu/  ID 0x73B13B6A
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