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Using old comp. for file server

M

Mustin

n00b
Joined
Jan 24, 2008
Messages
54
This will be my first attempt at making a file server for media. From what I have searched, the athlon 64 3000+ will handle being a server but my question is, will the board? If my system works then I will be buying 5 TB to start.

Computer specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ socket 754
Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M
DDR 400 1 gig (dont remember)
WD 120gb for OS

USES:
Loseless backups of DVD & Blu-ray movies I own (ripping performed by faster PC)
Family pictures and video
Music
Topgear & Final Gear HD files
Useless date

Will the PCI raid controllers work with my system?
Should I upgrade?

Looking forward to everyones advice and opinions. Thank you again for any help.

Cheers,
Jeremy
 
You mention a 120GB drive for the OS but i was wondering what OS you are planning on using.

Look into a product called unRAID (do a google search). It is what i use for my server OS at my house and it is working very well for my needs.
 
Forego the raid and get WHS and be done with it. That machine will be plenty for WHS.
 
You didn't specify, but you sound like a perfect candidate for WHS. If you go with WHS you won't need an add-in card that does RAID. WHS allows adding in drives over time, you just add them to the 'pool'. Turn duplication on for the folders you have important data in, it'll make sure to hold a copy of the data on a second drive somewhere in the pool.

Here's my suggestions:

1. Get Windows Home Server, $99.
2. Get a gigabit PCI card since your mobo only has 10/100.
3. When you add more hard drives get a Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV-8 PCI-X (will work with PCI) add-in card for 8 more SATA ports, $99. You'll have a spare PCI slot for another if you add in a bunch of drives eventually.
 
[LYL]Homer;1034239484 said:
You didn't specify, but you sound like a perfect candidate for WHS. If you go with WHS you won't need an add-in card that does RAID. WHS allows adding in drives over time, you just add them to the 'pool'. Turn duplication on for the folders you have important data in, it'll make sure to hold a copy of the data on a second drive somewhere in the pool.

Here's my suggestions:

1. Get Windows Home Server, $99.
2. Get a gigabit PCI card since your mobo only has 10/100.
3. When you add more hard drives get a Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV-8 PCI-X (will work with PCI) add-in card for 8 more SATA ports, $99. You'll have a spare PCI slot for another if you add in a bunch of drives eventually.
Click to expand...

This sounds like a great idea. I am also glade to hear my old POS will handle the work load. This might be the route for me.
 
Would you suggest a gaming gigabit card? I only ask because I will be streaming to my a/v components.

Also, should I get a larger hard drive for the OS... I read this helps with WHS or did they change something?
 
No you don't need to get a gaming gigabit card. I recommend an intel but if you don't want to spend as much on a network card then any cheap gigabit card would work. For os you can dump the 120GB and put 2x 1TB hard drives on the onboard sata and other drives on the sata card recommended earlier for a capacity of upto 10 sata hard drives total.
 
Mustin said:
This sounds like a great idea. I am also glade to hear my old POS will handle the work load. This might be the route for me.
Click to expand...

I ran a s939 A64/3200+ with 1gb RAM before my current WHS setup (see sig) and performance was 95% the same.

I suggested a gigabit card, but of course you should have a gigabit switch and gigabit NIC's on client pcs. It really makes a difference vs. 10/100.
 
Thanks again for all the help. Hopefully I can start buying up parts by the end of the month.
 
Hey, gonna bump this in an attempt to get some answers since I'm in a similar situation. I'm putting together a 2-hard drive raid 1 for a small business computer so that another computer can dump their documents and quickbooks files onto the network drive for storage and collaboration (not intensive AT ALL, 2 computers max). Would there be a cheaper fake-raid solution than the Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV-8 PCI-X since I really don't need anything intense at all.
 
Yakyb said:
Attean -> you would be better off with a NAS for that situation
Click to expand...

I'm going to kind of disagree with this response. Why? Because if you have an old machine laying around gathering dust, then WHS in this situation has a lot of benefits over a NAS.

1 - It's a Network storage solution
2 - System Backups
3 - If the desktops in question are running XP Pro, Vista Business, Vista Ultimate or the Windows 7 RC, then you can get RDP access via the net to them. Not a huge deal admittedly BUT, it's a nice feature to have, as well as you can access your files from the WHS website, even if the local machines aren't running one of those OS's

The WHS hardware requirements aren't very high, and you get a lot of bang for the buck.
 
I believe the reason he recommended a NAS was for QB file sharing.

Those guys are notoriously picky as to how they are stored if not used in a Server 2003/2008 environment.
 
Does WHS allow for you to use Quickbooks and Office ON the computer acting as the server? I'm not looking to get a separate box.
 
I believe the reason he recommended a NAS was for QB file sharing.
Those guys are notoriously picky as to how they are stored if not used in a Server 2003/2008 environment.
Click to expand...

Ok, I can buy that, and I didn't know that about QB. Are we talking multi-user access (ie, two people in the same file at the same time) that it has a problem with?

Does WHS allow for you to use Quickbooks and Office ON the computer acting as the server? I'm not looking to get a separate box.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... That's a tough one to answer. WHS is server 2003 with extra stuff bolted on, and is designed to run headless (no mouse, keyboard, or monitor). Having said that, there are lots of people doing stuff with WHS that MS has said won't work - mostly they just don't support it - so if something get's borked you can't go crying to them. You can also run Virtual PC and Virtual server on WHS and do things inside the guest OS - I do this on my WHS and it works fine.

WHS has a 120 day trial for available for download. Maybe a NAS is best for you. I was just suggesting WHS if you had an extra machine laying around (which is common for most people on this board I'd bet)
 
Haha understood. Thanks for the great feedback. I'd have to look into using an old system to do it, but it'd probably be more trouble than it's worth, and have a larger energy footprint when I could just raid1 a NAS on an already running machine.
 
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