a simple server

[Maarchk]

Hello,

I want to toss together a little server to hold my music, movies, and other things that i would probably be accessing or ftping in and out of while i'm on the road. Thus it will probably be on 24/7 and i dont want to create an amazingly high power bill. Is there any suggestions on whats very efficient?

I have some 200 gb harddrives, but i was wondering, should i jsut get a slow cpu and toss in a lot of ram so it can do its thing?

Thanks for your help,

mark

[hapoo]

if you just want it for simple file serving / ftp then you can run it off any piece of ish hardware you have laying around. Your biggest bottleneck is going to be which OS you choose to run. You can put a really small flavor of linux on there and it'll fly, or you can put a heavy OS that'll take more resources but offers more features.

[Jeffbx]

You don't even need a ton of RAM for a file server - 256 or 512 would be fine.

I'd recommend picking up one of these & popping your 200GB drives into it:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=2d31cel3&s=bsd

[Hiro]

You don't even need a ton of RAM for a file server - 256 or 512 would be fine.

I'd recommend picking up one of these & popping your 200GB drives into it:
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=2d31cel3&s=bsd
Jeffbx's suggestion would do you just fine. I'd probably use this time to learn Linux as that would be the best OS choice for this project. You could use Windows XP Pro if you didn't want to go the Linux route, but you will need more memory.

[mechmike0034]

Langa Letter: A Complete Terabyte File Server For About $500:

http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=183702383

Interesting stuff...

[MikeD]

Jeffbx's suggestion would do you just fine. I'd probably use this time to learn Linux as that would be the best OS choice for this project.

:stupid:

Grabbed a few Dell OptiPlex's from an old employer of mine and just started building, tearing down, building, tearing down. Over time you'll get the hang of things.

Don't always rely on the GUI route either. Get into the command line stuff as well. :thumb:

[zero2dash]

Langa Letter: A Complete Terabyte File Server For About $500:

http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=183702383

Interesting stuff...

...and MechMike comes through with another awesome link. :thumb:
That's crazy...I can't believe I just saw a screenshot of an XP computer/Drive Management with 24 hard drives (the 4 physical drives split into 6 partitions each)...just...nuts. :drool: I mean I know it's easily doable but - I never thought I'd see a computer listing 24 hard drives.

/then again I don't have much experience working with servers :)

[mechmike0034]

Cheap servers: http://www.retrobox.com/rbwww/home/search_results_servers.asp?bin_id=world

Just throwing things out...

[Airencracken]

mmm terminal...

:drool:

[Maarchk]

Thanks all. I'll do some research with those links and hopefully come up with something good. 24 hard drives.. thats just sick. Its like a different hard drive of pr0n for every day in a month ;)

But no, thats not what my server is for... hehe.

[rajatQ2]

wow. if you're looking for a cheap system with LOW power comsumption, VIA makes a lot of little boxes that run around 1ghz for $400 or so, complete. you can get a cheapo dell for less than that, but these via's are tiny and powerful. my boss picked one up from newegg.com. They've got lots of barebones kits for dirt cheap too.

A good NAS software (with limited security, mind you) is freenas : http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/
"NAS (Network Attached Storage) server supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, RSYNC, SSH, AFP protocols, local and MS Domain authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. Fit on a 32MB Compact Flash or USB key."