Building a new file server

[hiodie]

So I am planning pulling my storage hard drives out of my HTPC and putting together a filer server. The basic use will be for storing media, as well as backups of my documents (documents should be small, less than 50gb total). In the future I would like to be able to access this server from the internet (still need to look into this, but I've read VPN is the best way to do it?).

Currently, I have no intention of RAID, as I do not have the funds for it and most of the data can be replaced if a hard drive fails. I would like to duplicate the documents backup onto 2 hard drives, but everything else doesn't need it.

I do not think I have any hardware questions at the time, as this will probably be built using an Intel Atom 330 board that I have, but I do have a question on the software. I have a copy of Windows Server 2008 from MSDN that I can use. Unfortunately, I know nothing about running servers, nor most of the terminology. For my use, would I be better served running something like FreeNAS? Or is it simple enough to setup Server 2008 (not sure if it's R2) for the basic use of a file server?

 

[Savi]

sounds like you should look at Windows Home Server, Been using it my self now for about 2 years and I love it. specialy if you dont want to do raid, really look at WHS

 

[hiodie]

Yeah, I understand that is my best choice...but I'd like to puss out and not buy it if possible. I've already spent enough of putting the two builds together. I could also put Win7 Pro on it, but I would think either of the other two options would be better.

 

[vraa]

Try FreeNAS first, it's free and I even suggets sub.mesa's zfs guru

ZFS requires no hardware raid, is samba and ssh accessbile