Quote Originally Posted by 'Ellusionist',index.php?page=Thread&postID=164291# post164291
Just seems like a lot of work to me

1) I don't see the need for 4-8GB RAM in an NAS. That's like putting 1GB RAM in a printer. It's just not needed.
2) If you're going SCSI, why not go 10,000 RPM? The extra 300RPM you're gaining will definitely make your project worth zilch. (7200RPM Conventional SATA [Non-NAS] --> 7500RPM [NAS])
In my case, my existing home file server fills several purposes; backup location for TimeMachine for a couple Macs, backup location for a Vista box, a couple Linux servers, one lone Windows 2003 server (don't ask), central storage for source control, other files, central media library, central location for a tape drive. I greatly enjoy the flexibility of being able to have a computer die for no apparent reason and lose no data.

The purpose for that RAM is to keep the recent disk blocks in memory so a future request in handled from memory instead of a read from disk. Multiple machines requesting the same data blocks for the boot up of the operating system and those .MPQ files could then be serviced by memory instead of disk. While this low latency/high bandwidth working set is increasingly less important with a single 1 GB ethernet connection there is a more important driving factor - we're a community of luxuries and the smallest RAM module I have is 2GB.

The 7500 RPM drive was a typo, it should have read 7200 RPM - it was late, and still is.