Help me plan a file server.....

B

Bugster

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Jun 30, 2000
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I've never had an oppertunity to build a server before...so bare with me


I want to build a file server for my PCs at home. How powerful of a PC do i need (Cel 600, 196MB ram OK?), and what kind of OS is preferred (XP Pro, win2003..etc). Accounts and permissions?

Teach me please!
 
a celeron 600 would work, but you will 90% likely have a motherboard that only supports up to 127gb on the hard drives.. which would do me no good, cause i would by stickign 300+ gb drives in a file server if i were to build one..

what is your budget, and what do you have already?
 
i was planning on buying a Amd 2100+ XP with mobo and ram from a user on the forum to use, but another user had the Celeron combo for a little cheaper...so i guess its safer to the get the AMD setup.

I also just bought a 320GB hard drive to use as well...so i guess my budget will be as much as it takes to finish this...as long as i dont go insane.


edit: also i should mention, i wanted something that is low on power consumption as well. Just doing my part for the envirnment :).
 
600 Celeron would be fine and frankly the likelihood is you'll be fine on the hard drive recognition as well. If not you can either upgrade the BIOS on your board if available, and it should be, or you could always buy an IDE or SATA controller card that will solve that problem anyway. Just depends on the price difference in the two solutions your looking at if that is worth the trouble or not.

OS depends on how much you want to manage the permissions and users and how many users your going to have remotely hitting the resources. . Sounds like XP pro would be fine for you. Then you'd just run a standard workgoup and setup the users accordingly, via NTFS permissions. Any specific question should be a quick google search away but it's fairly straightforward.
 
600 Celeron will be fine. You don't need much processing power unless you're serving many people.

Stock up on RAM and HD space if you want a good file server. My server has 1.25 gigs of RAM, with around 600MB of physical memory available at any given moment. It will usually dip down to the 300's when I'm transferring gigabytes of por, err, data. ;)

Stick with Windows XP / 2000.
 
As much as I hate muddying the waters, if you don't want to shell out the 100+ cash on the OS license for the MS stuff, linux is free and works as well ( if not better ) in a p2p enviroment as any windows alternative.

Merely mentioning this so you know your options.
 
actually, i don't know how much these used cpu/mobo combos are that you are looking at.. but this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813185043 has always intrigued me.. the cpu uses very little power and doesn't get very hot.. i would try to run one passive if i could, but at the same time.. it's a file server so yu can throw it in a closet... is cheap.. supports ddr..

so for $100 you could get that and a 512mb stick of ram.. or go for a 1gb stick even..

i don't know about upgrading the bios to break the 127gb barrier.. or whatever it was.. cause i went through it with several motherboard.. if they are not ata 100 or 133.. then they just plain can't support a drive bigger than 120gb to its full capacity.. you can buy a controller card.. but you might as well spend that money on a better motherboard instead..
 
well, if you wanted to go Gigabit.. you need PCIe or PCI-x NICs.. nics on the standard PCI buss are bottled neck at around 30MBs.. still 3x faster than 10/100, but not crazy.
 
scottatwittenberg said:
actually, i don't know how much these used cpu/mobo combos are that you are looking at.. but this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813185043 has always intrigued me.. the cpu uses very little power and doesn't get very hot.. i would try to run one passive if i could, but at the same time.. it's a file server so yu can throw it in a closet... is cheap.. supports ddr..
Click to expand...


Wow, thats a really neat board. I think im gonna get it, trade my extra sdram for some ddr and get a cool lookin' mATX case for it. THanks man!
 
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