diy home server

HighlyCooL

Right so, im looking to build a server/ file server on the cheap, but reliable, nothing fancy.
The end result is to have a 1tb raid1 set up for backing up the important stuff, and then 2tbs for music and music and that. It must be able to work with apple, windows, ps3 and a media extender. hopefully in time host a small website and a data base of it. at the moment i have a computer out in the shed a friend gave me, not to sure the spec, but the ram is missing, and its got a sata interface. i have 4 1tb sata drives, 1 160gb sata drive(for OS maybe) a dvd-rw sata. how do i tie all this together with out braking the bank is the problem, and how do i do it right. i have been looking at NAS but i dont like the way its all done over ftp and http interfaces. i would like to be able to click in my computer and see another few hard disks but in saying that, when im in college still be able to access whats on the server. am i asking two much?

any help would be great,
HC

cian1500ww

Did something similiar myself using Ubuntu Server, even had it streaming video content over the network to my Xbox. Take a look at the Ubuntu Server Guide here: https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/serverguide/C/index.html A program called Samba will allow you to share the content over your network, works fine with Windows but I'm not sure about Macs. VNC will give you remote access to the machine and Putty will give you remote command line access.

kdouglas

For simplicity of setting up, look at something like freenas or openfiler.

These will provide you with a nice simple web browser based interface that you can just click to set up things like samba (for windows shares) etc...

HighlyCooL

i am looking at a synology ds 410 are these any use! my friend has one and swears by it!

techguy

I've been using Server 2003 on an old Dell Dimension (700mhz, 320MB, 40GB). If you're a student check out Microsoft Dreamspark, where you can get lots of Microsoft products for free. Not sure if it's just limited to comp sci students, but i'm going to assume you are CS

I use it as a web server (PHP, MySQL), file server and download box.

You say you have six sata devices and want RAID. I doubt your machine will have six SATA ports and probably lacks onboard raid.

A RAID card will solve your problem by providing RAID and more SATA ports. You should consider RAID 5 for the 4x1TB drives.. I'd also put the OS on that array as drive failure won't require OS reinstall like it would if you had it on the 160GB drive.

That Synology DS box looks nice and will work fine as a file server but won't let you stream content to other clients. I'd go with building up your spare PC if it can take a RAID card and four hard drives.

techguy

techguy wrote: »

I'd also put the OS on that array as drive failure won't require OS reinstall like it would if you had it on the 160GB drive.

What if you have to do a os re-install? will it not be alot simpler to keep it off the raid array?

techguy

Deleted User wrote: »

What if you have to do a os re-install? will it not be alot simpler to keep it off the raid array?

Just make an 80GB partition on the RAID array. Put the OS on that then all you have to format is the 80 gigs. The rest will remain intact..