Fileserver question..

bledd · 15 Oct 2006 at 11:53

i want to use an old pc for simple fileservering and backup

i have these hard drives for it..

old 20gb spare drive
400gb sata2 drive
400gb sata2 drive
400gb sata2 drive
400gb sata2 drive

if i use the 20gb as xp drive, will it affect performance on the 400gb drives? they'll be on sata controllers

would it be worth getting a faster -say 80gb 8mb cache WD drive for windows to run on?

if the 400gb drives are shared, do files pass through the 20gb drive first? or would they go straight from the sata controller to network card

basically asking if the 20gb drive will hamper performance

i'm not asking how to configure the other drives, i can do that myself

hp7909 · 15 Oct 2006 at 11:59

IMO I think it might affect performance BUT because being 20GB, must be an old HD? Most likely 5400RPM? & must have been heavily used previously (i.e. wear & tear)?

Can't 'afford' a 20GB partition on one of the 400GBs?

& 1.5625 terabytes :eek:

nice

bledd · 15 Oct 2006 at 12:05

for £83 for each drive brand new, i couldn't say no

i'd rather not have the os on them, might just do some testing later with my other 200gb drive as the os holder..

hp7909 · 15 Oct 2006 at 12:16

bledd. said:
for £83 for each drive brand new, i couldn't say no

i'd rather not have the os on them, might just do some testing later with my other 200gb drive as the os holder..

While 'testing' also think of power consumption & heat :eek:

& remember for file-serving the performance doesn't have to be that extreme – the network being the limiting factor!

Also, if using XP you can get away with (tried & tested) 15GB including PageFile

bledd · 15 Oct 2006 at 13:04

i'm using an nlited xp, so only need about 150-200mb for os, and then a bit more for pagefile, but 20gb is the smallest non-useless drive i have

on a gigabit network

pleased with it so far, just dont want the 20gb drive dragging it down

the drives are in this thing..

so no heat issues as they wont be getting accessed 24/7 and there's decent fan on the back, and case airflow is maximum -no cover

unknowndomain · 15 Oct 2006 at 13:14

Many pc manufacturers say that no cover actually causes problems with airflow which can not only not make an improvement but infact be detrimental to the heat disappation, that said I'm not sure how true this is but running with the side of the case off is only going to increase the amount of dust that gets in the case, and dust is bad! very bad! - Just a friendly word of advice

whitecrook · 15 Oct 2006 at 20:41

If it's a 7200 rpm drive it should be fine, as long as you sticks wads of RAMS in. At least a GIG would be ideal.
and as long as you keep it a separate system drive to the raid array, you'll be able to replace it simply by imaging that disk onto the new one.

bledd · 15 Oct 2006 at 20:53

all i'm asking is will the files have to pass through the C drive first, or do they skip it out completly?

aix0 · 15 Oct 2006 at 21:10

I wouldn't have thought that the system disk would be a factor when the files being accessed are on another disk.

bledd · 15 Oct 2006 at 22:46

thanks, i was hoping you'd answer, you seem like a wize owl

aix0 · 15 Oct 2006 at 23:48

I'm flattered.

I spent about 5 minutes trying to go through the process of accessing remote files in my head, just got all blury after that.

bledd · 16 Oct 2006 at 01:13

see, you're a pc king, you've got files in your head

unknowndomain · 16 Oct 2006 at 10:25

Applications are stored in the memory so the file serving part of windows would be loaded in memory?

aix0 · 16 Oct 2006 at 13:43

bledd. said:
see, you're a pc king, you've got files in your head

lol!

Captain Fizz · 16 Oct 2006 at 14:21

The OS drive will have no effect on the sharing of files on storage drives.

All that Windows needs to allow access to a storage drive is already loaded into memory - So the speed of the OS drive is completely independent of data access via the network.

The 20GB drive will do fine as an OS one... Once the File Server is up, it won't be rebooted often.