"Your Old PC Is Your New Server" Build

[ImWingingItHere]

First time, long time...

 

I'd like to turn my old, slightly upgraded Inspiron 3847 into a NAS/server like Anthony's video. I don't plan to do anything crazy with it, just mainly to backup my new built PCs, Steam Libraries, and photos/music (offload Google Cloud).

 

I currently have 4x 1TB HDDs, 1 of which has my Win OS on it. Can I/should I move my OS to another, smaller drive (via a pcie adapter)? Down the line, I'd like to go Plex and store movies as well.

 

Am I over-thinking the OS situation?

 

Upgrades to Inspiron:

CPU to I5-4690

RAM to 16GB DDR3.

[xHashii]

What I did when I stopped using my old PC was install a headless Linux on it without a GUI, setup the backup stuff and then I just used PuTTY if I needed to do something on the machine (like running a game server or something else) and for the backup i just used FTP or a windows network connection. 

TLDR - I think you are over-thinking it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

If your not using plex now, the current cpu and ram will be fine.

 

Id normally get a nas specific os like truenas or unraid, but windows can work fine here.

[OddOod]

Welcome to the forums!
How old are those 1TB drives?

[OddOod]

17 minutes ago, xHashii said:

just used PuTTY

FYI you can SSH from CMD now

[LIGISTX]

22 minutes ago, ImWingingItHere said:

First time, long time...

 

I'd like to turn my old, slightly upgraded Inspiron 3847 into a NAS/server like Anthony's video. I don't plan to do anything crazy with it, just mainly to backup my new built PCs, Steam Libraries, and photos/music (offload Google Cloud).

 

I currently have 4x 1TB HDDs, 1 of which has my Win OS on it. Can I/should I move my OS to another, smaller drive (via a pcie adapter)? Down the line, I'd like to go Plex and store movies as well.

 

Am I over-thinking the OS situation?

 

Upgrades to Inspiron:

CPU to I5-4690

RAM to 16GB DDR3.

I’d get a small SSD as a boot drive. Like a 128 GB would be fine for a NAS, hell a 64 would be plenty but they don’t make decent SSD’s that small anymore. 
 

As said above, windows will work ok, but truenas or unraid may be more in line with what you think you want. But have to do good research into those to fully understand pluses and minuses. 

[ImWingingItHere]

5 hours ago, OddOod said:

Welcome to the forums!
How old are those 1TB drives?

About 3-4 yrs old. 

[ImWingingItHere]

5 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

I’d get a small SSD as a boot drive. Like a 128 GB would be fine for a NAS, hell a 64 would be plenty but they don’t make decent SSD’s that small anymore. 
 

As said above, windows will work ok, but truenas or unraid may be more in line with what you think you want. But have to do good research into those to fully understand pluses and minuses. 

Eventually I'll probably move to a TrueNAS setup, but looking to get my foot in the door first.

 

What's the best way to move the OS?

 

 

[LIGISTX]

4 hours ago, ImWingingItHere said:

Eventually I'll probably move to a TrueNAS setup, but looking to get my foot in the door first.

 

What's the best way to move the OS?

 

 

The one thing I can’t recommend more is figure out what you want your end game to be, and just start there. It’s difficult to offload data somewhere else in order to use old drives and parts for a new OS. Like if you fill your drive up, but eventually want to switch to truenas….. how would go about that logistically? Buy an external drive, dump all your data, instal truenas on your server, create a vdev out of your drives (which will destroy all the data) and then transfer back from external drive?

 

My point is just, before you do anything, at least have a plan on how you will migrate things later on, or just start with truenas or unraid now. The hard part about truenas specifically ZFS is you can’t easily add space later, you need to build out entire new vdevs or replace all the discs on a vdev with larger ones (one at a time of course letting it rebuild the array with parity data). Unraid makes this easier, but it is not as secure with your data. 
 

As far as move the OS, if it’s just a NAS, just format windows onto the new SSD. Not many things to set up and customize. 

[OddOod]

On 7/29/2022 at 4:09 PM, ImWingingItHere said:

About 3-4 yrs old. 

Oof, that's pretty old. But an acceptable place to start. Just be aware that they are not in an ideal condition.

 

On 7/29/2022 at 4:12 PM, ImWingingItHere said:

What's the best way to move the OS?

I honestly wouldn't. I'd install fresh and new. Assuming it's the original install it's 3-4 years old and 100% has accumulated errors and bloat. If you absolutely want to stay with windows (which I wouldn't recommend) I'd collect the key, deauth the install, install new on a new SSD, and auth with the same key. But I would strongly push you towards just keeping it as a valid key for a different machine and dive into either Ubuntu or some flavor of NAS software like TrueNas or Unraid.
If you *absolutely* need to move the OS, you can get the total used size down below the size of the new drive, defrag and shrink the volume in Windows Partition manager, then use any of the multiple free bit for bit drive copy utilities for live usb  and follow a guide on your phone. But again, don't do this. Bad idea.