NAS recommendations? Cheap? worth it over a server?

[whatnow]

I have a PC I use solely for network shares and it's a total waste of money to leave it running 24/7. I thought about getting two NAS enclosures instead to support my drives.

Is this a wise idea to save money? I.e. if I had the pc running no monitor, just drives, VNC'd and burning DVD's of my downloads is this a better solution than having say, up to 4 NAS enclosures and having to potentially piss about a bit burning via wired network when I download a DVD?

Anyone had this issue before and come to a good conclusion? Or has anyone regretted buying a NAS setup?

TIA you lovely people

[casio]

personally i used a linux disto to create my own nas and built it using an old pc id got so the price of running it will be the same as running a pc the smaller nas devices though i would have thought would require less power (wouldnt need to cool the cpu as much -if at all) for value and ease of use id go with the pc route as its easier to add hdd's to in future and no i dont regret my nas box with 1.3TB of storage and access from anywhere in the house its great and per pence value the linux distro was free the hardware i had so i didnt have to spend anything the nas devices are expensive and then theres running them on top

btw this was the version of linux i used
http://www.freenas.org/
if you dont use linux all the time its not as easy as some of the other flavours but i dare say that you'd get through it following the instructions on the site cos its not that difficult

hth

cas

[blacksheep]

almost any linux distro will do - just add samba and you're done. To make it even easier install swat with samba and it gives you a nice web interface to set it all up.