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NASLite is a Linux distribution which fits onto a 1.44MB floppy disk. It turns virtually any x86 computer into a Network-attached storage box. It can run on computers as slow as a 486 and makes files available to clients running Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. Other versions are available which support different networking protocols or booting from a USB Mass Storage device.
Networking Capabilities
NasLite lets you take any old computer (486DX and above) and turns it into a simple file server. Since file serving takes up very little processing speed as opposed to network speed or hard drive speed, almost any old computer will work. It just needs support for PCI and IDE, and since it uses a floppy to boot, you can toss your CD-ROM drive and attach 4 disk drives to serve. You need to place an Ethernet card on the PCI bus, but NasLite supports many of the common brands out there.
Naslite has three variants which can serve up data in three different ways. For Windows users, Samba is the way to go since it will make your Naslite server look like a typical windows server. If you are using Linux, you could also use NFS, or if you prefer, you can set up the server to use FTP. You can administer the server using telnet (or directly from the machine itself) and it also comes with a web server so you can access the logs for errors and usage.
Compatibility
NasLite can cope with new large hard drives that typically can't be supported by older machines. NasLite bypasses the BIOS and talks directly with the drive, so that old Pentium machines can serve a terabyte of video without much of a fuss.
Limitations
There are definitely limitations to the software: there are absolutely no security features so anyone can add, view, or remove data from the server, making it is a lousy solution for businesses. NasLite only supports ext2 file format, which means if the server goes down unexpectedly, the next time it boots it will check each disk for errors easily taking a couple hours if you have 4 large disks. It also serves up the drives as four separate shares instead of a big one, so the user has to structure his storage accordingly. Finally, NasLite uses some older technology that limits the largest possible file size to 4 GB, which can be a problem if you are storing large files.
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