Old computer to file/media server - Will this work?

tingies

tingies

tingies

Associate
Joined
20 Oct 2009
Posts
6
I have an old computer sitting and doing nothing which I wanna turn it into a file/media server to use it as a hub for my home network.

Specs: Pentium 4 @ 2.4Ghz (socket 478 - Northwood), 1.5GB DDR memory, ATI 9800, Abit IC7-G motherboard (Intel i875P) with onboard Gigabit, 400W PSU.

I don't wanna spend any money on upgrading stuff other than necessary components that I will need to turn this thing into a full time media server. I plan on installing four to eight 1/1.5/2 TB HDDs. The motherboard has 4 SATA slots. I'm thinking of building a RAID5 array and I would like to be able to expand my space by adding additional drives once it's full. One thing to take into consideration is that there are only PCI slots. Are there any PCI RAID cards out there that will support this?

The 9800 is pretty close to its death plus it has become very noisy. I wanna change it with a really cheap and quiet card. Performance is not a factor so anything cheap and quiet will do as long as it's AGP.

I've been looking at hdd's and I'm thinking that I should go for green drives instead of 7200 RPM ones. This way I will keep the noise and temps down. It seems that the 1.5TB drives have the best price/TB ratio. Which are known to be the most reliable so far?

Will the CPU and available memory be able to handle all this? Is the PSU sufficient enough to power so many hard drives?

As far as OS goes there's a few options. I haven't had experience with windows 7 and I never really touched anything with Linux. Even though I've read and heard good things about Ubuntu I think I will have trouble setting this box up with it because I have zero experience with it. I would like to try windows 7 because I plan on building a new gaming rig with win7 in about two months. Is win7 worth it or should I just use ol' trusted xp? Or even maybe indulge myself in a little adventure and try Ubuntu?

My budget is €250-300 before buying hard drives / OS.
 
I'm no expert, but if you are not running 3D stuff, that 9800 may be able to run OK with no fan, so may be worth trying before you pay money out on a replacement.

Also may be worth trying to see if you can overclock that CPU if you need any extra grunt, the IC7 is a great board (I'm still using one in this PC !!).

With the OS if XP can do everything you need stick with it

Diddy
 
This would be fine as a file server.

Multi port PCI RAID cards do exist but are rare, but you can get PCI-X cards such as teh Adaptec AAR-2810SA but they are not the fastest in the world but what you say you need it would be fine. You can fit a PCI-X card in most PCI slots with the extra bit hanging over the end (provided their is nothing to get in it's way)

I ran 6x1TB WD Greens (WD10EADS - older 3 platter model) in RAID5 in a machine running an E7200 (Dual 2.5Ghz) and 4GB ram on Windows Server 2003......however I was also running Virtual Server and 4 further instances for W2K3 server (on another single disk) and it was fine on the file serving side.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom