Best, Easiest Method For A Personal Cloud / Media Server?

[bmichaels556]

So I recently grabbed up an old i3 small form factor PC for nice and cheap. Case was a bit dinged up, but it did come with 4GB of RAM. By old, I mean an i3 4130. Totally capable for the average person, sure. But I got to thinking: Why not turn this guy into a dedicated "Personal Cloud" / Media Server, things like that? I was even thinking of dabbling in making it a web server temporarily, just for fun.

 

But my question is, what would you guys consider to be the best way to meet my needs with this PC? I was thinking of grabbing up a cheapo 120GB SSD, and maybe pairing it with a nice-sized HDD. I figure an i3-4130 is MORE than enough CPU for this type of usage. Mainly, I think I'd be streaming files to my Xbox One S in my living room. Would the easiest way to do this, simply be to set up a homegroup and host the public folders on this dedicated file server? I guess that seems simple enough, right?

 

But that begs another question: What is a good option for accessing the server remotely? There has been many a time when I've taken tons of pictures and videos on vacation, things like that, and I just can't fit it all on my laptop's relatively small storage. My ghetto-fabulous solution was to maybe use Team Viewer, but I'm not sure if there are any additional hurdles to consider with that type of solution.

 

Another thing I'm thinking about, is the speed of my home network. While I'm currently using Comcast's provided hardware, I'm able to stream Xbox One S to my PC wirelessly with not a ton of latency (so long as I'm on 5Ghz band), and the stream seems to run about 20mbps, with only an occasional hiccup here and there. I know that even despite good performance, wired is going to be king here. I know that ideally, I'd want all devices wired to each other. But if I'm already getting that kind of performance without major issue, is it even necessary? For those of you swapping files on 5ghz wifi with a relatively basic router, what are your transfer speeds like? Were they greatly improved when wired? Also, would it be more beneficial to connect my Xbox One S to wired, or my media server? If I could ONLY pick one, I mean. I would consider powerline though, so long as the performance is there. But I've heard mixed results depending on many factors.. I'd even like to potentially record footage using Radeon ReLive at maybe 25mbps onto this thing, but again, I'm not sure that'd be viable. Like I said, just brainstorming mostly. 

 

Oh, one last thing: What "cheap", high capacity hard drives would you recommend? I was kind of thinking of getting a couple of 4+ TB drives, even if they're really cheap, and maybe setting up some automated mirroring between them. Maybe with SyncToy or something like that? Just an idea. Maybe I could do some refurbished drives, save some money that way, and at least still have some level of redundancy for protection?

 

Thanks so much for your help and suggestions! 

[WereCatf]

4 minutes ago, bmichaels556 said:

What is a good option for accessing the server remotely? There has been many a time when I've taken tons of pictures and videos on vacation, things like that, and I just can't fit it all on my laptop's relatively small storage.

Linux + Nextcloud.

[bmichaels556]

44 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Linux + Nextcloud.

Just checked out Nextcloud. I'm actually pretty impressed with it. But why Linux specifically? Is it better for the more home server type of thing? I only ask because it seems like Nextcloud is multi-platform. 

 

I was also looking at Open Media Vault, which does seem to be able to be accessed using OwnCloud or OpenVPN. Would that be more friendly for a Linux noob like myself?

[WereCatf]

1 hour ago, bmichaels556 said:

But why Linux specifically? Is it better for the more home server type of thing?

Yes, it is. Most of the world's servers run Linux, which should say something. Under Ubuntu, installing Nextcloud is pretty easy: just open terminal, write 'sudo snap install nextcloud' and POOF, it's installed. Then you just proceed to configure it to your liking.