Sean,

Friday June 24 2016 20:38, you wrote to me:

 SD> There's a version of NAS4Free for the RPi.  Oh, now you've got me
 SD> thinking...I have four external hard drives that need to be connected
 SD> to the network.  Might look at the RPi 3 for that.

 SD> Thanks for the idea. :)

 SD> My wallet thanks you too. *snicker*

A well built NAS will save many hours of grief if built right by protecting
data integrity.  Just remember it is not a backup.  The important things
are to use drives made to operate in RAIDed configurations as those which
are not may experience enough errors to get dropped.

NAS4free appears similar to FreeNAS - supports ZFS.   I would recommend
using a minimum of 4 drives in a RAIDZ-2.

ZFS likes memory and you would want a minimum of 4GB of ram to get by
(note: recommended is 8GB). If could manage it ECC should also be used for
memory.

If done right will be bullet proof - excluding hardware failures, power
surges or lightening.

I spent a decent penny for my build but it wasn't done simply to fulfil a
need.  It was relevant to the type of work I would be doing - supporting
storage environments.

We could talk more in depth if desired.  It need not be expensive to build.
 I was tossing out 500GB Hitachi RAID capable drives recently.  Just
couldn;t sell them... :(

Take care,

Matt

---