I need a server to share photos with my friends.

[damexx11]

So just like title says I take a lot of photos of my friends, cars, nature etc. Until now I was using Google Drive for photo storage and server where everyone can downoad photos I took but the problem is that it can have only 17GB of storage for free(I need to delete old and upload new photos every time and all of them are still on my PC as a backup). So I thought to myself "there is definitely a way to set up my own file sharing server. But how? Buying NAS? Somehow using my own PC? Buying some old storage servers? Maybe I can jerry rig Raspberry with hard drive to work as a server?". So my question is: What way should I choose? I need only like 500GB-1TB of storage. Also I don't think that I would use it for anything else.

[kkpatel87]

You could create an owncloud or use a commercial NAS like Synology and their own version of cloud sharing.

[damexx11]

Synology is too expensive for me but I'll check owncloud. Thanks.

[Jarsky]

You can upgrade to 100GB for $2 month? https://one.google.com/about

 

or $96/year for the 2TB if you need that much space

[damexx11]

51 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

You can upgrade to 100GB for $2 month? https://one.google.com/about

 

or $96/year for the 2TB if you need that much space

100 and 200GB don't satisfy me and 2TB is quite expensive for me. I would rather pay once and have server in my house as it would be used by me to unload photos once or twice a week and then it would sit and wait for somebody to download them.

[Windows7ge]

Well, there's a number of factors to consider:

1. How important is the data you're storing?
2. What is your budget?
3. What hardware do you have available?
4. What software are you comfortable with using? (Windows/Linux, GUI/CLI)
5. Does your ISP allow Port Forwarding?
6. What is your Upload bandwidth?

You could make a File Server borderline out of a toaster that your friends could connect to and pull files from but weather or not you want to do that depends on your needs and desires.

[damexx11]

16 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Well, there's a number of factors to consider:

1. How important is the data you're storing?
2. What is your budget?
3. What hardware do you have available?
4. What software are you comfortable with using? (Windows/Linux, GUI/CLI)
5. Does your ISP allow Port Forwarding?
6. What is your Upload bandwidth?

You could make a File Server borderline out of a toaster that your friends could connect to and pull files from but weather or not you want to do that depends on your needs and desires.

1)It is important, but I always have at least one backup if something goes wrong.
2)I would say around 100 Dollars?
3)My daily PC(r5 3600, 16GB ram, 3TB of storage), and i have old one that still works(athlon 2 x4 641, 4GB  ram, no storage)
4)mostly windows but I can adapt as long as it is easy to learn and use 
5)I think that's not gonna be a problem
6)10/2Mbps(up/down) right now but soon I'm gonna upgrade to fiber with 300/30 or 600/60

I just want to go home after photoshoot, edit photos, drop them on that server and tell anyone that needs them "hey here is the link. Go there and download your photos"

[Windows7ge]

If your budget is $100 you'll definitely want to use either an old PC or a raspberry pi. The old Athlon could work.

 

I would recommend GNU/Linux. There are many distributions with user interfaces that are user friendly. FreeNAS is popular, it should work with 4GB but I'd recommend 8GB of RAM.

 

If all you're uploading are pictures (even sizable ones) 10/2 should be fine for now.

 

Well, the thing with a NAS would be people would likely connect using a SFTP client. This would require a username and password for them to login and the pull files. I do believe there are packages similar to dropbox that could make this easier for clients but that's outside my field of knowledge to setup.

[doommood]

Yet another vote for FreeNAS on top of an old hardware/PC.

Have you considered cloud as sharing storage? G Suite and many others ask $6-12 for unlimited storage.

[Pixel5]

if all you need it space for photos you can free unlimited cloud space for it when you have Amazon prime.

[akio123008]

On 6/12/2020 at 10:48 PM, damexx11 said:

100 and 200GB don't satisfy me and 2TB is quite expensive for me. I would rather pay once and have server in my house as it would be used by me to unload photos once or twice a week and then it would sit and wait for somebody to download them.

Cloud services are going to beat you. Running a server (that can be accessed from the web) at home is a pain, and costs money too. 

 

First you need to buy the hardware (after which you've already spent 2 years of google drive 2TB service) and then you need to take into account the power consumption of the server: if it's running 24/7 and uses 50W (not much) that's 438kWh per year, which at 15 cents per kWh comes down to 66 usd a year.

 

so that's say 150 for the server initially, then for 4 years 260 dollars in power bills, meaning 412 dollars in total considering 4 years of use. 

 

for the google drive subscription it'd be 384 dollars for those 4 years, and you'd have better performance, uptime, and redundancy.

 

You could argue that after those 4 years the server is going to be cheaper, but that'd be wrong; the example was a 150 usd server, chances are it's going to suck. You're going to want to upgrade it at one point, meaning you once again spend more than the drive subscription. 

 

What it comes down to is acquiring and then maintaining servers is often not worth it. Why do you think everyone uses cloud services nowadays?

 

Still, I'd personally go with the local server because it's so much more fun!