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home server

BronzdragonBronzdragon
edited September 2007 in Technology
Hey internet people,
My father/family wants a server for at home. My home situation is 5 computers, 3 of which are laptops, 1 laptop and 1 desktop run vista. The others run XP. My father has bought a cheap laptop to run as a server, he installed orb on it BUT, it sucked. orb is slow and pain full. my father is considering a Synology product. my family is big on the photo's. like, three of them have camera's and on a day out they shoot about a gig a day. so the server needs to handle that well, besides that my father has a HUGE collection of music which we have an external hard drive for.
What would you use? Thanks for the help.

Comments

  • cosmicenemacosmicenema
    Why are you using a laptop as a server? Is there a reason beyond 'got it for cheap'?

    Totally just curious. Thanks,
  • AprecheApreche
    I imagine you just want a file server to put photos on so that they can be accessed from any other computer in the house? Drobo is the new hotness in that department for people who don't know what they are doing.
  • BronzdragonBronzdragon
    Why are you using a laptop as a server? Is there a reason beyond 'got it for cheap'? Totally just curious. Thanks,

    power consumption.
  • cosmicenemacosmicenema
    I would agree that some kind of consumer grade NAS would be your ideal solution. You can get hard drives with network adapters or something more flexible like the Drobo. I saw a "Media Vault" product at CompUSA the other day in a 300 gb or 500 gb model. This doesn't offer as much storage as the Drobo but you can still swap out drives.
  • BronzdragonBronzdragon
    We have one of those network drives, and it works pretty good, except for the fact that it doesn't work in vista, let alone linux.
  • OmnutiaOmnutia
    edited September 2007
    Does anyone know of a small box with the following capabilities?
    1. Expandable storage
    2. Can act as a print server
    3. Has bittorent client of some kind
    4. Low power consumption
    5. Could possibly connect to a TV (directly would be a plus)
    6. Is silent
    Nvm, found something, any improvements would be welcome.
    Post edited by Omnutia on
  • ThaedThaed
    I have spent a lot of time trying to find a cheap solution for a home network file server. I have two solutions, neither perfect. One solution is to buy a router that also accepts a USB hard drive. This lets you turn any external USB drive into a NAS. I assume you could hook a Drobo up to that. I am having problems with Vista seeing files, however. Strangely enough, Linux has no problem with this.

    The second solution is Netgear's $100 or so NAS. It's small but holds two drives. It uses crazy software and it's not fast, but strangely enough it has worked. The router solution is probably better.

    Years ago, I figured I would just set up a Linux box as a file server and fill it with hard drives since Linux supports software RAID configurations and make it so all computers on my LAN could access it. This proved to be much more difficult than I thought. As I play with Feisty Fawn, I think I might have a better chance at making something like that work now. With my two kludge solutions, however, I don't really need it anymore.
  • cosmicenemacosmicenema
    Nvm,found something, any improvements would be welcome.
    That looks pretty decent actually. Then you just turn on the media box when you actually need to see something on TV. For us American's it's at Newegg for $240.
  • cosmicenemacosmicenema
    Nvm,found something, any improvements would be welcome.
    That looks pretty decent actually. Then you just turn on the media box when you actually need to see something on TV. For us American's it's atNeweggfor $240.
    It looks like you have one internal drive plus up to three external drives plugged in via USB ports plus one e-SATA! This looks like a nice little number. There's no mention of Vista compatibility or bittorrent on Newegg. They have newer model called the Pro with more processing power for multitasking. Lots of good products! Thanks for pointing me to that Omnutia!
  • AprecheApreche
    FreeNAS. Just install it on a computer with a bunch of hard drives on it and a network connection, and see what happens. I've never used it myself, but I'm pretty sure it will work just fine.
  • OmnutiaOmnutia
    Just to let you know the thing I found was the 101 version whereas the newest one is the 109.
    Yet another thing to add to my wishlist.
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