General Information

It supports sharing across multiple operating systems, including Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems. NAS4Free is easy to set up in most home and enterprise environments and will allow you to manage and share large amounts of data easily across your network. NAS4Free also incorporates many different streaming features for sharing your multimedia with other devices on your network.

NAS4Free includes ZFS v28 (RAIDZ, RAIDZ2 & RAIDZ3) Software RAID (0,1,5), Disk Encryption, S.M.A.R.T / Email Reports, includes the following protocols: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, TFTP, AFP, RSYNC, Unison, iSCSI (initiator and target), HAST, CARP, Bridge, UPnP, and BitTorrent. All of which are all highly configurable by using NAS4Free's great web user interface.

NAS4Free can be installed on an extremely wide range of hardware. Anything from an actual server to an old repurposed computer you may have laying around. Please check the hardware compatibility wiki as well for more details.

Live Version:
The LiveCD/LiveUSB mode allows you to try out NAS4Free for the first time or run a NAS4Free server using your LiveCD/LiveUSB via cd-rom/usbstick and a USB/Floppy disk in which the NAS saves your configuration files.
What this means is that every time you boot from the LiveCD/LiveUSB, NAS4Free will load the required config.xml file that stores all your server settings. To update to newer revisions of NAS4Free you will have to download a new LiveCD iso (~154Mb) or prepare a usbstick with the LiveUSB (~212Mb).

Full Installation:
The full install allows you to install NAS4Free to a internal hard drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD) with a system, data, and swap partition. With this method, you do use a valuable IDE/SATA port that could be used to have an additional storage drive.
To update the system you would have to download the full LiveCD/LiveUSB iso/image file, boot from it and select the upgrade option.

Embedded Installation (preferred method):
The embedded installation method is truly what NAS4Free was designed for. With an embedded install you would install the system onto a USB key or a compact flash card (CF). You do still have the option of installing embedded onto a HDD/SSD, but again you lose a valuable IDE/SATA port that could be used for additional storage drives and defeats a key advantage of having an embedded system.
The other advantages to using the embedded installation are the flash devices are more energy efficient and the software will load into system memory elimiating unesesary system writes to the drive and will maximize the life of your system.
The updating process with and embedded install is also much easier. With an embedded system update you download a special firmware (~77mb) that is in an .img format which is much smaller than the LiveCD/LiveUSB iso/image. Once you download the firmware, updating is a breeze. All you do is open the webgui in your browser of choice, select firmware from the system navigation menu, enable firmware updates, browse to the downloaded the image file, click update, and let the system do the rest.
The system will load the file, update the system, reboot, and you're done!

Check out some of the screenshots of NAS4Free and be sure to look at the extensive documentation and how-to's on getting started with NAS4Free. If you have any questions or need support please come visit us on our IRC channel or ask a question in the NAS4Free forums.

The NAS4Free team hopes you enjoy your experience with our software and that it is your perfect NAS solution for your home or business!