Anyone having a home file server? share your experiences

michael baxter · 6 Jan 2007 at 18:18

Naro,

Yep, no monitor, keyboard or mouse! Just a gigabit network connection!

Not sure if it provides print server features, you'd have to check at their website. What do you mean by BT server?

Regards,

Michael

eLbot · 6 Jan 2007 at 20:18

fumbles said:
...with this I also streamed TV to the entire house using VLC with its multicasting capabilities... As the VIVO of my video card works well with winxp.

I think I may have got the wrong end of the stick but could you explain how you streamed VLC content to your TV’s? What sort of end-point clients did you use? I’m currently trying to get a couple HD capable media hubs spec’d that will be able to run all the file formats I have on my media server on Tv’s but I’m getting thoroughly confused as to whether or not I will need a full fledged PC or if there are any other solutions.

Hawk Tuah · 6 Jan 2007 at 20:22

Mine is a P4 1.6 with 1gb ram, a 4gig laptop drive and a 200gig ide drive. I built the whole unit from scratch and has just one 120mm fan on top running at tick over. Very very quiet.

Running XP Pro on it and VNC to remote desktop in. No keyboard, mouse or monitor. Just a box in the corner.

I'm currently using it as a security camera server and general file sharing.

Hawk Tuah · 6 Jan 2007 at 20:27

eLbot said:
I think I may have got the wrong end of the stick but could you explain how you streamed VLC content to your TV’s? What sort of end-point clients did you use? I’m currently trying to get a couple HD capable media hubs spec’d that will be able to run all the file formats I have on my media server on Tv’s but I’m getting thoroughly confused as to whether or not I will need a full fledged PC or if there are any other solutions.

I got one of these.

http://www.freecom.com/ecproduct_detail.asp?ID=2345

Works perfectly. Works as a usb hard drive when plugged into the PC, then plug it into the TV and it will play all the films, music or photos stored on it.

naro · 7 Jan 2007 at 06:30

michael baxter said:
Naro,

Yep, no monitor, keyboard or mouse! Just a gigabit network connection!

Not sure if it provides print server features, you'd have to check at their website. What do you mean by BT server?

Regards,

Michael

BT = bit torrent

naro · 7 Jan 2007 at 06:32

Bug One said:
Mine is a P4 1.6 with 1gb ram, a 4gig laptop drive and a 200gig ide drive. I built the whole unit from scratch and has just one 120mm fan on top running at tick over. Very very quiet.

Running XP Pro on it and VNC to remote desktop in. No keyboard, mouse or monitor. Just a box in the corner.

I'm currently using it as a security camera server and general file sharing.

after trying VNC, i think i would also wanna try to follow u and just let it run by itself without keyboard, mouse and monitor.

your laptop drive is only for OS?

Cyber-Mav · 7 Jan 2007 at 06:40

my server is used for file serving, ftp server, print server and general download box. soon to become a web server too.

its an 1.4ghz athlon with 768mb crucial sdram pc133, abit kt7a-raid mobo. has heatsinks all over the place including the mosfets on the mobo. designed to run in hot environments on a 24/7 basis. only has the psu, 1 case fan the akasa amber 8cm and the cpu fan which is a silent boost. 40gig maxtor hard drive in zalman cooler.
very quiet overall and ultra reliable. running windows server 2003 datacenter edition.

here is a pic.

this pc just replaced my older server (p3 450) which has been running for almost 7 years constantly thanks to the ups. only downtime i got was for upgrading os or windows updates.

naro · 7 Jan 2007 at 06:49

is 40gb enough for a file server??

Cyber-Mav · 7 Jan 2007 at 07:04

naro said:
is 40gb enough for a file server??

yep, especially when i have about 7 gigs of files to serve.

lay-z-boy · 7 Jan 2007 at 09:41

My file server is my old main rig, its also got a rather large number of hard drivers

p4 3.2c undervolted on a 9500
ga8knxp with zalman passive thing
1gb corsair
fx5200 with zalman passive thing
tagan 330w psu
thermaltake xaserIII
2*80gb
2*160gb
2*250gb
2*120gb
1*400gb
windows server 2003 enterprise edition

also broadcasts tv to the network and acts as a game server.

Was easy to setup and works very well, not quiet though

markyb · 7 Jan 2007 at 09:59

I was going to post a similar thread a few days ago...

My file server...

Intel PIII 733mhz
Modded Akasa Socket A Cooler with 14Db Coolermaster 80mm Fan
512mb SD-133 Ram
20Gb 7200rpm Hard drive / Soon to be replaced.
24mb o/b Riva TNT Vanta Graphics Card
1.44 Floppy disc Drive
8x BTC DVD-RW Drive
250w Enlight PSU
Creative Sound Blaster Live! 1024
No keyboard and monitor is hooked up to the second port of my Hyundai N91.
Windows 2000 Pro SP4

Pretty low spec to everyone else, although it does everything I want. Its been on since the start of December and is so quiet. Just has two fans in it both very low speed.

The server is used for...

24/7 Ventrilo server for me and 5 other mates when playing Battlefield 2142 (Which is a lot

)

FTP Server, uploading/downloading personal files.

Download rig, I use VNC to access it from work or round my parents.

Been using it everyday now for almost a month, the hard drive will probably be upgraded soon but other than that its great.

naro · 7 Jan 2007 at 14:58

lay-z-boy said:
My file server is my old main rig, its also got a rather large number of hard drivers

p4 3.2c undervolted on a 9500
ga8knxp with zalman passive thing
1gb corsair
fx5200 with zalman passive thing
tagan 330w psu
thermaltake xaserIII
2*80gb
2*160gb
2*250gb
2*120gb
1*400gb
windows server 2003 enterprise edition

also broadcasts tv to the network and acts as a game server.

Was easy to setup and works very well, not quiet though

nice setup..

may i know how you broadcast TV to the network??

naro · 7 Jan 2007 at 14:58

markyb said:
I was going to post a similar thread a few days ago...

My file server...

Intel PIII 733mhz
Modded Akasa Socket A Cooler with 14Db Coolermaster 80mm Fan
512mb SD-133 Ram
20Gb 7200rpm Hard drive / Soon to be replaced.
24mb o/b Riva TNT Vanta Graphics Card
1.44 Floppy disc Drive
8x BTC DVD-RW Drive
250w Enlight PSU
Creative Sound Blaster Live! 1024
No keyboard and monitor is hooked up to the second port of my Hyundai N91.
Windows 2000 Pro SP4

Pretty low spec to everyone else, although it does everything I want. Its been on since the start of December and is so quiet. Just has two fans in it both very low speed.

The server is used for...

24/7 Ventrilo server for me and 5 other mates when playing Battlefield 2142 (Which is a lot )

FTP Server, uploading/downloading personal files.

Download rig, I use VNC to access it from work or round my parents.

Been using it everyday now for almost a month, the hard drive will probably be upgraded soon but other than that its great.

nice... may i know how to set up a FTP server?

1337z0r · 7 Jan 2007 at 15:04

Use software like Filezilla for a FTP server

.

markyb · 7 Jan 2007 at 17:48

Any decent FTP program will work.

Im using ServeFTP, about £25. There is a 30 day trial of it on there site here

afraser2k · 7 Jan 2007 at 18:16

I'm using:

Case: Chyang Fun 7989CM (came with 200w PSU iirc)
Motherboard: Epia M6000
CPU: Built-in VIA Eden 600MHz (fanless)
RAM: 1x512Mb PC2700 Crucial DDR
HDD: 1x120Gb Western Digital (IDE)
FDD: 1.44Mb Sony
Opt: NEC ND3500A DVD+RW (IDE)
O/S: Debian Sarge 3.1 (2.4.x kernel)

Due to the nature of the Epia M6000 I use the on-board network/sound/video as it's only doing file server duties. I run DNS/Samba/LAMP/SSH and streaming audio through GNUmp3d, which I hope to test tomorrow to see if I can listen to my music from work. I've run a Ventrilo server for a few friends off it with some success as well. The system is pretty much silent with only slight sound from hard disk access or the cases power supply fan. Might look into making it completely silent with a new case/external brick.

I'd hate to think about the cost of running these servers 24/7 though.

Dark_Angel · 7 Jan 2007 at 19:24

Cyber-Mav said:
40gig maxtor hard drive in zalman cooler.
very quiet overall and ultra reliable. running windows server 2003 datacenter edition.

Maxtor and Ultra Reliable? I never thought I would see that!

lay-z-boy · 7 Jan 2007 at 21:03

naro said:
nice setup..

may i know how you broadcast TV to the network??

House aerial lead > ati theater 550pro tv tuner > pci slot

It came with some included proprietary software software that allows you to broadcast the set channel or allow users to tune in and change the channel.
Windows media encoder can do the same sort of thing but with more latency and preset channel watching only.

Davey Dave · 7 Jan 2007 at 21:17

Using a Via C3 800MHz chip (HS only, no fan) so it's totally silent. It used to live at the end of my bed. Quite a weedy processor but I do samba file sharing, email/smtp server, apache, mysql, jabber server, slimserver (for 2 squeezeboxes), my IRC bouncer (psybnc) as well as running nzbperl in daemon mode - and it handles it all with no problems on Debian Sarge 3.1 (256Mb RAM, 250Gb disk).

It will get upgraded with my current P4 3GHz and to Debian Etch 4 when I build a new C2D system.

sja360 · 7 Jan 2007 at 21:21

the_chicco said:
My file server is actually a Virtual Machine with Windows 2003 Enterprise R2. It's serving about 3TB of files. I'm using VMware ESX 3 running on Dual Opteron 275's, 16GB of Ram, 10TB of disk space.

This ESX box also houses my DC's, Exchange, BES, Sharepoint, etc.

that surely cant be just for home use, you must be running some sort of business with that amount of storage?