Lifehacker has an article on how to set up a NAS for backups, streaming your media and downloading torrents.

At its most basic, network attached storage, or NAS, is a great way to share files on your local network. But it’s also a perfect solution for backing up your computers, streaming media across your home network, or even torrenting files to a central server. If you have an ageing computer lying around, you can turn it into a NAS for for free with the open-source FreeNAS operating system. Here’s how.

What Is Network Attached Storage?

“A network attached storage box is a computer on your network specifically designed to store files. Any computer on the network can access files on a NAS, which makes them great for bigger households, and they’re also nice for when you don’t want to store a bunch of external drives on your desk.

Unlike regular file servers, NAS units are usually built for a specific purpose, like backing up your data or streaming media to other machines. They’re also usually quite low power and low cost, and they don’t require a monitor, mouse or keyboard – once you’ve installed the software, you can configure every aspect of your NAS from a web browser on your other computers.”

Since FreeNAS has mostly enterprise features (“home features” will appear in FreeNAS 8.1), this article deals with FreeNAS 0.7.

Josh Paetzel, IT director at iXsystems and project manager for FreeNAS, left some usefull comments on Facebook with regards to this article: http://www.facebook.com/freebsdnews