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B1ng

B1ng

B1ng

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Joined
4 Jan 2010
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208
Location
Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire
Hi all,
Currently looking into the best method of setting up an old machine of mine to sit on my home network as a Media Server, able to stream and share files to PC and Xbox 360. I would like to be able to control it via remote connection from my Windows 7 pc, and to act as an FTP and Torrent machine. Could those familiar with this type of thing (this is untrodden territory for me) please advise of the best way to go? The machine is fairly capable, and is simply awaiting the install of an appropriate OS and any software.

Thanks in advance.

Josh.
 
The machine spec. is as follows:

-2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
-2GB 800MHz DDR2 RAM

Currently has an old GPU fitted but will be removed; want it totally manageable via Remote Desktop once up and running. Not to mention the various SATA hard drives i've cobbled together. Got a smallish one for the OS, plus 2 others for storage/backup.
 
I have a PC with Windows Home Server v1 installed and its been great for over a year now.

Asus K8N with a 2Ghz AMD Sempron and 1.5Gb RAM. Few cheapo SATA cards and about 6 hard drives (all different sizes). WHS sees it as one big drive and sorts out the duplication of folders. (for protection of drive failure).

I have all my Music and Videos on it, stream to my modded Xbox v1 with XBMC on it fine.

Do all admin via RDP or the WHS console. uTorrent is setup and all automated with webui installed too.

Can even stream music to iTunes devices and listen via the web thanks to Firefly Media Server and a Flash plugin for it which shows on the web.
 
B1ng said:
The machine spec. is as follows:

-2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
-2GB 800MHz DDR2 RAM

Currently has an old GPU fitted but will be removed; want it totally manageable via Remote Desktop once up and running. Not to mention the various SATA hard drives i've cobbled together. Got a smallish one for the OS, plus 2 others for storage/backup.
Click to expand...

Has it got an onboard gpu?
 
Take a look ay FreeNAS or Openfiler as just 2 examples

lots of support at forum sites and guides etc via Youtube

both these examples can be administered via browser based GUI's (remotely from Windoze based machines) so you can remove the GPU after install etc

A steep learning curve for a newbie but worth the time and effort to make use of your old machine and gear. :)
 
I'd go with whs.
You can run it headless without any problems.
I used to run whs v1 installed on a similar spec machine to yours, I then removed the video card after I built it and managed it via rdp.
I now use whs 2011 on an hp microserver for all my media, 18 tera's of it which is presented as a single drive disk pool using DriveBender.

In fact you can install windows server, in unattended mode, to a headless machine without issue, I've done it with whs 2011 to an hp ex470 media smart server, installing from a USB stick with a pre-configured unattend.txt file.
 
darrenbe said:
I'd go with whs.
You can run it headless without any problems.
I used to run whs v1 installed on a similar spec machine to yours, I then removed the video card after I built it and managed it via rdp.
I now use whs 2011 on an hp microserver for all my media, 18 tera's of it which is presented as a single drive disk pool using DriveBender.

In fact you can install windows server, in unattended mode, to a headless machine without issue, I've done it with whs 2011 to an hp ex470 media smart server, installing from a USB stick with a pre-configured unattend.txt file.
Click to expand...

what size drives you got in the HP then? 6 x 3TB's?
 
5 x 2GB caviar greens in the microserver, then 4 x 2GB in an external eSATA enclosure.
I have installed a dual port eSATA card because the on board external eSATA port only supports a single drive.
I've still got capacity for another external enclosure.
 
Although I understand that it will support 3TB drives, I thought it wont support 4TB drives due to limitations of the AMD SB800 Southbridge.
I've not tried 3TB drives, but its certainly an option that I'd like to persue, means I dont have to go with another external enclosure to add more capacity.
Im currently using data duplication with DriveBender, so I effectively end up with 9TB useable out of the total 18 Tera's...Im down to my last 1.5TB of useable space!

To illustrate how flexible these boxes are, I have another Microserver that has three 250Gb drives in it, that runs 2008 R2 Core and Hyper-V for my Lab enviroment (currently 5 2008 R2 VM's).
I use core because i dont need all the other componenets and it reduces the surface area considerably.
 
darrenbe said:
5 x 2GB caviar greens in the microserver, then 4 x 2GB in an external eSATA enclosure.
I have installed a dual port eSATA card because the on board external eSATA port only supports a single drive.
I've still got capacity for another external enclosure.
Click to expand...

cool :)

Guessed it was something like a external source to expand the storage space.

I just kept looking over at mine and was puzzeled about how you got all that storage space in :)

Being lazy here... but I'll pick your brain anyway .... if you pulled a 2TB drive from your Microserver ( or external enclosure ) and replaced it with say .... a 3TB one... would the drive pool re-adjust itself and rebuild etc using Drive Bender?
 
You could cleanly remove the 2tb drive from the pool, give it time to move off all the data as necessary, then insert the new 3tb and add it to the pool.
Drivebender will then redistribute the data automatically including the new drive.
simples.
 
darrenbe said:
You could cleanly remove the 2tb drive from the pool, give it time to move off all the data as necessary, then insert the new 3tb and add it to the pool.
Drivebender will then redistribute the data automatically including the new drive.
simples.
Click to expand...


Magic.... thanks for the info :D

time to think about upgrading my RAM and moving to WHS + drivebender
 
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