mineblaster

I didn't realize how much those disk shelves use as much as it dose.  also its crazy how cheap drives are getting now aswell. i think picking up some up when i have cash again will be the plan.

Interesting, thus an adapter like this could make more sense?

This is Mini PCI, not m.2.
 
Does look like mini pci ethernet cards exist though.

Question: are you willing to buy used?
 
I'm asking because I think that a budget of 500 freedom money is more effective in getting you something off the used marked of pre-build office PCs (plenty of those in the UK on eBay) and upgrade some components (RAM and storage mainly), rather that something brand new.

just.. no.
 
both a WAP and a switch are a very purpose-made product and it makes no sense what so ever to mimic their behavior with computer hardware. it costs more, and the result is objectively worse.

I found a dell optiplex with an i5 2400 for a reasonable price anyway.

Those types of errors make me think there would easily be a issue with the cables or controller, not the drive itself, esp if it happens after a drive replacement. I'd check cables.

CraftComputing did a video 7 months ago for an add-on card to add IPMI to your computer. The title of the video is: "Never Pay For IPMI Again - BliKVM Review" It seemed pretty interesting. Maybe you can look into something like that.

"Someone on  our team, and I'm not saying it was Colton..." Man, looks like Colton is getting fired again 😞 

Why are you using the isp's router then?  You'd be double NATting.
 
Try: ISP modem to firewalled port on the pfsense nic, then the lan port to your switch/devices/ap (or however you are connecting your lan devices)

no , trying to combine a high wattage connector into a tiny data connection port instead of adding data lines to the hundreds of other connectors that already exist is a stupid thing. assuming everything should be usb is a stupid thing.

I do not consider trying to combine every single port into a single port that does everything a smart idea.

Can't wait for them to add a tiny hollow tube into usb c so it can carry water and i can use it as a terrible garden hose instead of the "ProPRitAry gArdEn hOSe" connector. Watering my plants will take longer but at least my tiny brain won't mix up two different things anymore

https://www.servethehome.com/mikrotik-crs504-4xq-in-a-4x-100gbe-switch-at-under-45w/
 
https://mikrotik.com/product/crs504_4xq_in
 
personally would like to have one to mess around and go fast but is too expensive for me. might be useful for people who actually need it
 

Yes.
 
Yes, generally. The motherboard manual will have the specifics about how the lanes are arranged.

Are these current patches rj45? What standard?
 
There are fibre to copper adapters outthere.
 
Normally Id just use a managed switch here. Why can't you use vlans? 

The problem is my nvme drive isn't appearing in the boot list whatsoever, I can not change the priority or add the drive to this list as it is not recognised as a boot drive, even though it has my operating system on it.
However the latter part was correct, I have resolved the issue as of yesterday, and the problem seemed to lie in the other drives having system partitions in them even though they were only storage devices. Once I removed their partitions it worked fine 

First thing you need to know before you even open such business, is if there's a good demand on them.
On my country, 3 of 5 internet cafes closed permanently simply because there's no demand here since mobile gaming is a thing. 
 
Of what I said below is of what I think. I never opened a business like so, but I certainly, at least, know how it works.
 
You'll need a pick of 'internet cafe software' / 'PC billing software' (Google it), for the customer to get vouchers per-time needed. Unfortunately, I can't give you a recommendation on which one simply because on every country the software availability would be different on each other.
 
For the PCs, I recommend you to use diskless PC. So each PC got it's main components; CPU, RAM, motherboard, decent cooling, and GPU, but no need any storage device like HDD or SSD on there, all of that came from a diskless server. It simplify a lot of things as you only need one server PC to store all of that game data, and cost-effectively reducing unnecessary unused disk space. You'll need a 24 or even 48 port gigabit (has to be a gigabit, not less) switch, get the decent one, probably something with VLAN capability because you'll use wi-fi either, and we definitely need to isolate between wifi to cafe PC clients. Cat 6 cable would be nice for the sake of reliability, and, of course of all that, all of the client PCs need gigabit LAN.
 
Make sure the server have a decent spec, otherwise the client will suffer of bottleneck. I recommend you to use SATA (or even NVME) SSDs to store the game data. 2 TB worth of game drive ought to be enough. Try to get RAID0 (assuming you'd go for 2 TB total, so two 1 TB SATA SSD drive) on it as so to increase performance and reducing the possibility of bottleneck.
 
The main disadvantage of this, of course, if the local network's down or the server's down, all of your client's down. So make sure to put all the good effort to make sure the server are always on working order.
 
But of so far of my past years ago playin' on internet cafes (and all of them using diskless approach, and yes, I actually 'spied' on how they works lol), CCBoot is the one good pick for diskless PC environment, lots of cafes here use that too. https://www.ccboot.com
That company offers a billing software either, which is https://www.icafecloud.com. Never used it tho, so can't tell of how good it is.
 
For this, put some decent AP (like, commercial grade like Ubiquiti's, not those puny 2 antenna home-grade APs) since you definitely will get a lot of wireless clients there. Isolate the connection between clients (all of them) as to prevent someone snooping on someone else data while they're got connected. Use the voucher method either for the clients, and probably limit the speed for each client if your bandwidth from the ISP can't cope them all.
 
On the more details of how the networking works, unfortunately, I can't tell you much than to get professional help to set it up. But the point of what I can get:
 
 

Yes, No-IP is safe. I've used them for years. IIRC you can simply specify a port number just the same as you would for a normal IP address when you're typing the DDNS address, but don't quote me on that. I haven't needed to use specific ports with it in a few years. 

get closer to the router, 5ghz cover less area than 2.4ghz.

No problem!
 
If you want more details then this is what is happening and why.
 
 
You navigated to your routers web GUI using HTTP at first. HTTP is considered unsafe because it is not encrypted, and it does not protect against a wide range of attacks. In general, this is fine for home use since the attacker has to be on the same network, but still, it's not really ideal.
So Asus recommends you navigate to the web GUI using HTTPS (this is what you saw in the first screenshot). That link that says "Click her to continue" most likely takes you to the HTTPS version.
 
 
HTTPS is encrypted, and considered safe. The "problem" is that HTTPS relies on certificates, and certificates generally rely on some other services to work properly (most of which costs money). For example when you browse to LinusTechTips.Com the website presents its certificate to your browser. Your browser then validates that the certificate is accurate.
 
The problem is that your router most likely does not have all the requirements to get a "proper" certificate. Not only would it most likely cost Asus a lot of money to get that set up, but it's not even sure it would work because of outside factors. So what Asus does is create their own certificate and put on the router, which the router then presents to you. Your browser does not recognize this certificate (since it's not a cert issued by one of the big cert issuers, called CA) and as a result you get the "CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID" warning. 
 
The reason why Chrome considers this "not secure" is because Chrome has no way of knowing if the router you are logging into is actually the real router. Since it has never seen the certificate the router presents itself with, Chrome has no way of knowing if that certificate is real and accurate.
 
Think of it like this. Some random person walks up to you and hands you their ID card. But the "ID card" is one they had made themselves. The person says "my name is Bob Smith" and the ID card says "Name: Bob Smith".
 
You would have no way of knowing if the person standing in front of you was actually Bob Smith, because anyone could have made that ID card. It's not a valid ID card issued by the government.
Now, imagine if the government charged 200 dollars a year for an ID card. If they did that then it would make sense for people to have "home made ID cards", or possibly no ID card at all. Same deal here.
 
 
 
 
Hope that explained it a little bit better.

Have you considered a wireless PTP link between the two buildings? 
I would imagine a PTP link would be cheaper than burying anything, you would need line of sight though. Lots of options depending on what throughput you need to push and whats connected on the other end. 
You could probably get 2+ Gbps of capacity on a Airfiber 60 with good line of site, the links take a beating from the rain though (There is a 5Ghz backup for when that happens but capacity will drop). If you dont need that much capacity you might do well with a LiteBeam AC or PowerBeam AC. All three options would need their power turned down though
 
I can also understand how a physical connection would be preferrable, just wanted to throw out some options. https://ui.com/uisp/ptp-bridging
Ive been using this cable at work for the last year or two and everyone really likes it. Easy to work with compared to some other outdoor rated offerings - https://www.primuscable.com/products/cat-5e-ethernet-cable-direct-burial-outdoor-shielded-waterblock-tape 

Yes, but you won't know what that IP is to log into it, and technically to be an "access point" it doesn't need an IP on your network.  You only need the IP to login to adjust it's config.
 
I would leave it in router mode, configure the WIFI, disable DHCP and set the IP to be .2 (compared to whatever your router is .1).. and do the lan port...  That should work.
 
Also note if your C60 router is 192.168.1.1, you must also use 192.168.1.x for your wr845n..  otherwise you won't be able to connect to it.  Both need to have the first 3 Octets the same.. X.X.X.

The basic setup is as follows:
 
Leave the C60 as is - DHCP enabled, router mode.
 
WR845N - disable DHCP, enable Acess Point mode and connect the ethernet cable LAN to LAN. So from a LAN port of the C60 to a LAN port on the WR854N.
Don't use the WAN port.

An repair no, but depending what happens when you plug it in and how far you get you could sometimes recover the data a few files at a time.
 
My go-to trick though is running turning on the harddrive upside-down or vertically.  I find that about 50% of a time it lets me at least keep the harddrive alive enough to backup the more "important" files.  [People at my work really need to learn not to store things on the local drive].  This is by all things considered a long shot when it's not worth paying for it to be recovered but you still want the data.
 
With that said, unfortunate you opened up the drive, which can be a very very bad thing to do in terms of hoping for a recovery.  Even a tiny amount of dust can mean disaster.

Well, now it's pretty well beyond repair. NEVER open a drive.
 
Seek out professional recovery ($$$) if there is anything you need, otherwise bin it.

Just restore from your backup