FSKN

I just moved abroad for half a year and had to leave my old and trusty home network behind. In my new place I only have a WiFi connection that requires a sign-in, and allows only one device at a time. Consequently I am constantly switching that connection between my desktop, laptop and phone depending on the time of day. Even worse: I can use neither my Chromecast nor my plex server. My idea was to get an additional Pi and sign it in to my WiFi connection. The Pi could then provide a wired internet connection to my desktop and the plex server, and a WiFi connection (via a USB dongle) for all other devices. Is this going to work, or am I overlooking something? If it is, any recommendations for an operating system (Raspbian/Ubuntu, OpenWrt, ...) or an USB WiFi dongle that works without driver problems?

Trying to cut down on the price of the processor I found a board with an N3150 for 80€. http://geizhals.eu/asrock-n3150-itx-90-mxgz10-a0uayz-a1273690.html I could use that with 4GB of old notebook RAM and safe quite a bit of money. Did anybody try to use Plex on that thing?

First of all, I would not use RAID for my main storage in my rig, personally. I feel like you're better off with just one drive - do you really need 8TB of storage if you're only using 1TB now? For the backup that's another matter. The simplest option would certainly be to get a hard drive that is bigger than your main storage drive, mount it in your case and use any software to do incremental backups. Depending on your budget have a look at NAS solutions. Seperating your backup from your main system protects you from damaged components also damaging your backups, allows backups from more than one computer, and can even add more functionality like Plex servers etc.

Raid 1 (in this case, but any raid really) is not backup!! If you delete the file, that deletion will be synced to the other disk and the file is gone. Also, how much space do you think you are going to need? It's probably not the best plan to buy more new storage than you can back up later.

That moment when people build NAS servers that are more powerful than your main rig... :( And my rating of the Atoms was worded badly. Of course they are way less powerful than a Xeon. However, I think that that CPU should still be more than enough for the described task, especially in the 8 core version.

Possibly have a look at the Avoton generation Atoms like the C2550 or the C2750. They have 4 or 8 cores respectively, are power efficient and a bit less powerful than a Xeon E3.

I use a Seagate Barracuda. Works perfectly fine and is cheap: https://pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st1000dm003

Happens when trying to access any user profile as well.

Well the question is how you define "constantly" I guess? I would write one incremental backup per computer per day, and (hopefully) never read it again. For the media server part of things, it's also a write-once type of thing. I put the movie file, stream it once or twice, and forget about it/delete it again. Can you provide some performance numbers, i.e. how low does the write speed drop? Edit: As far as the power supplies are concerned, the fractal one is gold rated as well. I guess I'll just ghetto mount a small fan then, thanks. Expanding the array is certainly planned - are there any constraints on doing that in unRAID? I believe I can even mix and match different disk sizes? Isn't this a server motherboard? And how does i3 performance and power usage compare to the C2250? And: the NAS is the backup

Thanks for the hints. The Silverstone PSUs are almost twice as expensive (at least over here). Is the high price worth it? Also, I discovered Seagate's 8TB Archive drive for only 220€. Does anybody have experience with that drive? I am aware of the technical differences; the question is whether there is a notable difference in real life performance in my (low-load) use case.

Hi guys, I'm looking to get a small home server for the living room. It should act as a NAS (mostly used for backups + a few small shares), Plex server, and should be able to run a webserver as well as owncloud. I have not yet decided between FreeNAS and unRAID --- are there any differences in my use case? Also there seems to be a lot of contradictory information on how much processing power you really need. Recommendations go from an old Celeron, the Avoton Atoms up to 8core Xeons. Unfortunately I have no experience with NAS builds and need your opions. I would like to stay under 1000€ including the initial ~10TB of HDDs. The current part list is as follows (all German prices): ASRock C2550D4I quad core Avoton --- 290,99€ / 316$ Western Digital WD Red 3TB x 3 --- 110€ / 120$ each Crucial DIMM 8GB ECC x 2 --- 56€ / 61$ each Fractal Design Node 304 --- 77€ / 83$ Fractal Design Edison M 450W --- 60€ / 65$ --- Total: 870€ Is this good value for the money? Am I spending way too much on useless stuff? Am right in assuming that this will last for a couple of years and could be easily extended with another 9TB of HDDs? I hope you can give me some hints and tips.

I love the keyboard, clean black looks amazing! Please let me haaaave it