Media Server built from used parts.

Sousuke · February 25, 2015

Sousuke's Media Server

I've not got too much spare money with the refit of my current gaming system which you can see the build log here:

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/162387-reasonably-priced-gaming-machine/

So currently my Media Server is a 1999 PowerMac G4:

400MHz PowerPC G4

1.5GB of SDRAM

2 x 80GB Seagate IDE Drives

ATi Radeon 7500 32MB

Mac OS X 10.4.11

So the 2 Drives are currently set to a RAID 0 due to the low capacity but my media files in total come to 300GB and is growing every day as I am currently backing up all of my DVDs as I would like to put them into storage as I am frankly running out of room in my bedroom for all of this stuff :lol:

So here are the Parts List and the Prices I paid for them:

*Sharkoon Case (Free)

Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 2.20GHz (£4.60)

Intel Desktop Board D945GCNL LGA775 (£14.95)

**Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 GT Rev.2 (£8.95)

1TB Toshiba Deskstar 1TB HDD (£19.50)

2GB DDR2 PC2-5300 667MHz Ram (£8.48)

Seasonic SS-350ES ATX 350W PSU (£14.00)

Total: £78.48

*= Was the old case from my Gaming PC however it was £21.78

**= This is the only new part of this build.

So here is the case:

And here is the motherboard in the case:

Plans for the future is to add a RAID Card to this system and having up to 6 HDDs in the Server 1 OS Disk (250GB) 1 Media Disk (4TB) and 4 4TB Drives in RAID 5 Which will give me a total of 16.25TB of Space! However that will have to wait as I will need to save up for the Hard Drives and RAID Card.

Thats it for now all the rest of the parts will be with me shortly.

Sousuke · February 27, 2015

The Parts start rolling in!

So the Power Supply has arrived a SEASONIC SS-350ES which I purchased because of its 5 star reviews everywhere and that it only cost £14 sure expensive for a used Power Supply however its 80Plus Bronze and that I've heard Linus say that Seasonic was a good brand so jumped for it!

Also for the low price of £8.48 the RAM Arrived and its Kingston memory! So once again high quality product for quite cheap.

So here are some pictures

And here it is all fitted in the case, Just waiting on the CPU Cooler and the Hard Drive then I can start getting this server up and running.

I am thinking of using Windows Home Server however if any of you have a better recommendation then I would like to hear it! It needs to be compatible for both Macs, PCs & Consoles.

Sousuke · February 28, 2015

Heatsink has arrived, only a cheap jobby nothing special.

Also added a spare 80GB Laptop Hard Drive for the OS Install.

So shes up and running! Got it running Windows Server 2008 R2 that I had a copy of off an old server that was dead.

This system is far from finished, Phase 1 is to make it into a Media Server which a 1TB Toshiba Hard drive is coming for that!

Phase 2 will be when I add 3 4TB Drives in RAID 5 to allow for 8TB of Total Usage and re-purpose the current 2TB Backup Drive in my Mac Pro to replace the 1TB Media Drive.

Plans for the space is to backup all of my computers and files onto it using Time Machine (So the RAID is going to be Partitioned in 4 Slices)

1st Slice = 3TB: 2008 Mac Pro Time Machine.

2nd Slice = 500GB: 2014 MacBook Air Time Machine.

3rd Slice = 2TB: Movies and Video Backups

4th Slice = 2.5TB: General PC Backups.

So it will have in total 14.08TB of Hard Drives giving a RAID Useable Storage of 10.08TB.