Building a home file server - What OS and other possibilities

russ9898

russ9898

russ9898

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Hi,

Im currently in the process of building a home file server. Mainly to store my music, bluray rips etc etc.

What OS would you recomend i install and what other possibilities are there? I do download from torrents and newsgroups is there any software i can install on the file server and remotely manage via my desktop pc? Ideally through internet explorer or something similar rather than having to keep remote desktoping in.

Specs are -

AMD 4600 x2
2gb DDR2 Ram
750w PSU
2 x Gigabit ethernet ports
3 x 1.5TB
2 x 1TB
1 x 500GB

Any help or input is really appreciated as this is my first server build.

Thanks,

Russ
 
^^^ what he said... I've used xp pro, ubuntu server, dabbled with freenas etc. but whs does all I want. The killer feature for me is the drive pooling so you don't have to keep shuffling things around when disks fill up. Plus the client backup, duplication, etc.

Add something like SABnzbd+ for usenet. Job done;)
 
Ive just been reading up on drive pooling. Looks very impressive.

So do you have one drive allocated as a system drive and the rest as storage devices which are all pooled together? What happens in the event of a drive failure?
 
The system disk is partitioned with 20GB for the OS, the rest for data.
If you lose a disk then you lose all files on that disk (that's what backups are for!), but the good news is that files are not split across disks and you don't lose anything on other disks.
If you turn duplication on, then a copy of files on those shares will be held on a second physical disk so it's a simple form of redundancy and protection against single disk failure.
If the system disk goes, then plop a new one in, do a reinstall of whs - it should detect the other disks and then you restore anything lost that wasn't duplicated. Not had to do this yet ;)
Though I use duplication, like raid it's not a substitute for backups...
 
Pity Microsoft have for all intents completely abandonded whs by removing drive pooling in veil; and in any case why not just go hardware raid5?

Unless your intent on playing with a server os; just because I'd just stick win7 on it and have done. It will do 99% of what you want probably 100%
 
ermm OP
Are you going to use dual processors for a home server? For fileserving?
That seems like an incredible waste of electricity.

A v low powered system will provide equal results.
What else are you going to use it for?
 
use windows home server myself

only had my server running a few weeks but very happy with the results.
drive pooling and duplication is great.

as wongo says, SABnzbd for usenet on the server and download the NZB status add-on for firefox on PC.

I also have Utorrent setup with webui you can control torrents from the server on my main pc via firefox.
 
Depends on how comfortable you are with Linux.

I am using CentOS and give or take a couple of hiccups it is fine.

Configuring the two NIC I had to do from the command line, not hard if you follow the many guides available.

Software raid will provide some redundancy or use hardware raid.

Samba is really pretty easy to setup with the GUI.

Beware that the new advanced format drives need a bit of tweeking when creating partitions or performance will suffer. The tweeking is not so difficult when you get your head around what needs to be done.

Small footprint for the OS (disk and memory).

CentSO is based on RedHat Linux. Some prefer Ubuntu (Debian), I find the structure of Redhat derived systems to be more intuitive for me. Personal thing I think.

NIC bonding without switch support (bonding_alb) but your NICs must be able to change MAC addresses on the fly (see more here).

I enjoy tweeking and learning and my job revolves around UNIX (Solaris) so I am generally fine with Linux.

If you are more of a Windows guy then take your pick :p.

RB
 
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Ahem, who's this wongo character? :p

Dunno whether this will help the OP at all but here goes.

My choice of server OS over time has partly been driven by how much I have wanted to 'play' and learn new stuff, e.g. software raid5 on linux. Nowadays though I want a server that works reliably with minimal hassle. Previously if a disk in a raid5 array dropped out, I'd feel that my relative lack of experience diagnosing and recovering degraded arrays might make a single hardware failure into a large 'restart from scratch' job. Similarly, as docs/photos/audio/video libraries have exceeded 500GB, then 1TB, then 2TB, etc. it's been a pain moving stuff around between disks and keeping backup disks in-sync.
WHS might not be the most exciting server OS but it makes life pretty easy. Swapping a 1TB for a 2TB drive the other day for a bit more storage was a doddle (try that under raid5), and it's reassuring to know that all the (windows) pcs round the house are backed up. It won't be right for everyone, but it's worth thinking whether you're after something to tinker with or something to just quietly sit in the corner getting on with the job.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
ermm OP
Are you going to use dual processors for a home server? For fileserving?
That seems like an incredible waste of electricity.

A v low powered system will provide equal results.
What else are you going to use it for?
Click to expand...

It's an "x2" CPU, not 2 of them
 
Something I do with my server is I setup utorrent to auto load torrents from a file and save to a default directory, then I share that folder out and map it to a network drive, I have firefox set to save torrent files to that network drive, makes downloading much easier, I also have extractnow setup to automatically extract rar files (grrr so annoying), I then sort through my downloads every so often when I get a chance.

I run server 2008 on my home server, this is overkil but I had a space license, XP or even windows 2000 would have done me fine for all I am using it for.
 
Bubba said:
Something I do with my server is I setup utorrent to auto load torrents from a file and save to a default directory, then I share that folder out and map it to a network drive, I have firefox set to save torrent files to that network drive, makes downloading much easier, I also have extractnow setup to automatically extract rar files (grrr so annoying), I then sort through my downloads every so often when I get a chance.

I run server 2008 on my home server, this is overkil but I had a space license, XP or even windows 2000 would have done me fine for all I am using it for.
Click to expand...

I do all that with my £100 WD NAS :)
 
I do something similar but with the addition of Dropbox so I can do it anywhere :)

Oh and wd nas's are nasty lol. Only good for doorstops the amount of issues I had with a worldbook thing. Wouldn't touch with some elses barge pole.
 
Working fine for me, it's non critical and cheap so works fine for me.

Point still stands though, most of what people want to build servers for can be achieved for less money and hassle with a basic NAS
 
iaind said:
I do all that with my £100 WD NAS :)
Click to expand...

Yes but I can also run newsgroups and I have used it from time to time for ps3media server for some encoding, also my server can support more than 10 hard drivers. Oh and this server only cost me £100 + hard drives.
 
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