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help building a fileserver?

X

xphantg0d

Gawd
Joined
Jun 9, 2004
Messages
633
I am thinking of building a fileserver to backup stuff on.
What specs do you recommend it have? (other than lots of HD space (I have a 200gb to put in already))
And is there any special software you recommend?
the cheaper the better ;)
 
What are you storing? (porn, word docs, mp3s, isos)
How many people will be accessing it? (1, 10, 20 ,30, ect...)
How much will you be storing? (20Gb, 40Gb, 80Gb, 160Gb, Ect...)
How fast do you need it? (GigaBit Ethernet, 10 and 15k drives, ect...)
 
You really don't need any type of software, other than the OS. I'd recommend a server OS, but if not, anything that offers networking and security is fine. I'd atleast stick some anti-virus software on there to protect your files. I also like having a copy of Ghost Corporate to back up all my client machines.
 
GlobalFear said:
What are you storing? (porn, word docs, mp3s, isos)
How many people will be accessing it? (1, 10, 20 ,30, ect...)
How much will you be storing? (20Gb, 40Gb, 80Gb, 160Gb, Ect...)
How fast do you need it? (GigaBit Ethernet, 10 and 15k drives, ect...)
Click to expand...

It would be attached to a 4 port 802.11b router (the computers that will be using it most will be wired to the router). just for 3 or 4 computers but it probably wont be accessed by more that 1 or 2 people at a time.

It would be storing pretty much everything. Pictures, ISOs, downloads, documents, some songs i ripped from cds i own, Movies from family events, you know the usual stuff.

And as far as how much i am storing i have a 200gig hd i will put in it and but will probably be full pretty soon so i am gonna need to add a hd later on.
 
djnes said:
You really don't need any type of software, other than the OS. I'd recommend a server OS, but if not, anything that offers networking and security is fine. I'd atleast stick some anti-virus software on there to protect your files. I also like having a copy of Ghost Corporate to back up all my client machines.
Click to expand...

What server OS would you recommend?
 
Well if you plan on storing lare files and getting them fats a quick network is always good. But for pictures and stuff wireless will be fine.I am assuming that the computers accessing the isos will be wired. You won't need scsi drives and should use ide drives.

Duallie 1800+ MPs with onboard raid and 512mb of ram.

Also as far as a server OS you may be fine just running windows 2000. But Windows Server 2003 is a decent server os if you want to stay microsoft.
 
I'm sure people will be screaming for Linux, but I kinda like Win 2003 Server. It's stable and has some nice features built in. If you don't have access to Win2003 or Win2003, you could probably pick up Win 2000 Pro cheap on Ebay....or XP Pro, which would cost more. The Windows Server OSes are probably too expensive for home use, but if it's an option, I'd use Win2003 Server. I have it running on all mine.
 
xphantg0d said:
Do i really need raid and that much proccessing power? It is only for 3 people.
Click to expand...

Nope, that would be overkill for your needs.
 
you could use a 600mhz p3.

But use linux, or windows 2000 will work fine. I would get a REAL ethernet card, something like this Other than that you could use RAID for faster acess/redundancy.
 
Forgive me for hijaacking your thread, I just have some questions along the same line.

I'm planning on building something similar using pieces from prior computers and my current one so that I have one gaming computer and another media computer that serves two modded x-box's (only soft-modded enabling them to play any kind of movie file and stream from a central server, planning to add more hard drives and back up my dvd movies to hard drive to stream them, digital on demand done right!), this gaming computer I will build, and my laptop.

My question is what does Windows Server 2003 offer for the purpose of serving files that Windows XP Pro does not? Why is it preferred over the latter? The priority is to get the majority of my files (doc's, etc.) off this my main, gaming computer because its slowing down when I'm having it serve files and game at the same time. Which I can understand. ;)

I figure this 2.4C P4 with hyperthreading is more than enough to serve as a rudimentary file server and storage center and delivery system for files. I've been eyeing those SATA 160gig 8megcached Hitachi/IBM Deathstar (oops, I meant Deskstar) 7k250's over at Newegg for less than a 100 each as additional storage. Probably put a DVD burner on the media server to enable me to burn the files it has to dvd or cd at any time I might need to.

Anyone see any problems with that plan and what OS should I be using to do this and more importantly why should I use that OS over Win2k or XP? Thanks!
 
i recently used my old celeron 600 to build a file server. loaded win2k on it and used Ser-U FTP server. it is the BEST!. i really didnt want to do the native windows because of it's complication over different OS. and ftp voyager is also great for it's 'simple' mode so people who access' the file server feels like they are using file explorer. just my 2 cents
 
TekieB said:
you could use a 600mhz p3.

But use linux, or windows 2000 will work fine. I would get a REAL ethernet card, something like this Other than that you could use RAID for faster acess/redundancy.
Click to expand...

A REAL nic? What would be a fake nic? I have used linksys and dlink network cards in some of my home servers, and never had problems.
 
My file server consists of a P3 650MHz, with 1GB of RAM, and 288GB SCSI RAID5 array running FreeBSD 4.9. You don't need much CPU power, since server operations are memory and I/O intensive.
 
You might want to consider a backup solution.... For home, grabbing another cheap 200 gb drive and doing a RAID 1 (Mirror) might save you some headaches if a drive goes out... also might consider burning important things to DVD.

The current setup I have is:

AMD K6-2 500Mhz, 384 MB RAM running 100Mbit with Dual 200 Gig WD in a Mirror (RAID 1) using a promise controller. Running FreeBSD/Samba

On my workstation I have a single 200 GB WD drive and every night it syncs the fileserver->workstation drive... so if the file server blows up, I'll still have a copy. I use 'robocopy' (from the NT 4.0 Reskit, works fine under XP, W2K,etc).

I then have Norton antivirus scan the workstation hard drive and if I find anything 'bad' then I'll scan and remove it from the network drive (it runs faster to scan a local disk).

For home use this works fine... I have it filled with mp3s (all my CDs), movies, software 'setup' programs, patches, etc. Everything is a wired 100Mbit network (fast ethernet) and ran 7 users at a LAN party without problems (downloading mods, patches, game server running on it, internet firewall/nat, dhcp server, ftp/samba server, etc)

I'm going to rebuild it cause the hardware is old (fan is almost dead, psu is a peice of junk, motherboard is bent, etc).... I'm thinking of just getting a cheap dual Pent II or Pent III, throwing 512 megs of ram in there or so or go with one of those small form factor cases.
 
Pixeleet said:
A REAL nic? What would be a fake nic? I have used linksys and dlink network cards in some of my home servers, and never had problems.
Click to expand...

Some of the integrated and cheap ones aren't very efficent at transefering data, and they use up more CPU power to work.
 
Ah, now I see... kinda like the same downfall you get when using an onboard NIC ;)
 
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