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So, how would you do this file server?

N

NecessaryEvil

Guest
Unknown number of harddrives. Assume eventually 8..hopefully 120gb or larger.

Asterisked items mark items I already have.

Common components:
Lian Li PC-7
PC Power & Cooling 450W PSU*
512mb PC-2100
3com NIC or 2 (along with whatever is onboard)*
DVD-ROM
USB Floppy*
USB/Firewire DVD+-RW*
USB/Firewire 200gb*
Boot drive.
Eventually, 8 large RAIDed harddrives.
OS (either W2K Server or W2003 Server)


The variable components.
Intel:
Abit IC7-MAX (this gives me Highpoint RAID, but no RAID 5)
P4 ?? mhz. Maybe even a Celeron...but I kind of doubt that.
USB Keyboard & Mouse (no PS2 ports on the IC7)
AGP Videocard

AMD:
Shuttle MN31N
Athlon ????+ (I might look into trades for this...nothing too powerful needed)
PS2 Keyboard & mouse*
Video is taken care of onboard.
a used Highpoint RocketRAID 404 for $50 from a friend.


to me, it looks like the AMD setup is better. However, I could go always do the intel setup and still get the RocketRAID 404 for it and simply get a different motherboard(as long as it has Firewire).

So...[H], what do you think?
 
If your goin cheap then go for a 2500+ or a 2800+ BARTON. As far as mobo goes I would get a ABIT nf-7 v2.0. Depending on what your using the server for you may need another 256 or 512 stick of RAM. Why are you going for external HDDs?? Internal ones will save you money and they are faster especially when you have then setup in RAID.

GL:D
 
I'm not goign with external drives.

I have an external 200gb right now that gets shared between my desktop and the 2 laptops (depending on what I'm doing).


I plan on having an internal RAID...I'm replacing the external as my primary storage area as I'm going to outgrow the 200 in about a month.

I just want the firewire so I can use external drives. (yes I know I could just use USB 2.0, but I'd rather have a dedicated bus to storage media)

Why would a file server need more than 512mb RAM?
 
Whatever you do, don't go Celeron... AMD owns the low-end CPU market. A 2200+ or something would be nice, if not overkill.

For a file server, I'd be surprised if the RAM usage was ever over 512 megs unless you were gaming on it or something. From my personal experience, you can usually run a file server just fine off of 256 megs with a good O/S. 512 should be plenty...
 
it depends on what you want to do with it, if your going to use it just for a local file server i wouldnt think so, but if your going to use it as a DL bitch and a gaming rig, then id say it wouldnt hurt

if you dont plan on haveing any optical drives, you can get a mobo with onbaord, set up hds in a raid, and then the other 4 in the standard ide ports.

or toss a controler card in there, to hook your optical drives to, youg going to need alot of cooling in there if your going to have 8 hard drives a fan runing across as many drives as posible would help a great deal
 
Originally posted by RS3RS
Whatever you do, don't go Celeron... AMD owns the low-end CPU market. A 2200+ or something would be nice, if not overkill.

For a file server, I'd be surprised if the RAM usage was ever over 512 megs unless you were gaming on it or something. From my personal experience, you can usually run a file server just fine off of 256 megs with a good O/S. 512 should be plenty...
Click to expand...
I agree with what he's saying. What kind of files will you be serving?

and just so you know, even game servers don't have to be *too* good, as long as there aren't too many players...I ran a ut2k4 dedicated server on a Via Epia 800MHz (it's like a PII 500, ugh), 256MB RAM. No lag, even with 9 bots on Assault. Still need to do more testing though.
 
movies, mp3s, etc.

I'm just outgrowing my 200gb...and if I'm going to go, I'm going to go big.
 
If the machine is just going to be a fileserver and you plan on storing tons of stuff on it I'd definetly go with Gigabit NICs.

On top of that I would use Linux/BSD as my fileserver instead of windows but that's just my preference.

I'm not sure what the mobo you listed has but I'd get one with onboard gigabit as well. I have the p4c800-E Deluxe which makes me very happy.

James
 
I'm setting up a file server for my family also.
Sadly I don't have money like you :-P

I'm going to have to go with little 20GB HDD's I guess.
Btw, DONATIONS are welcome! lol.
 
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