Old PC as Beckup server

[lazar.d]

Is it possible to use my old PC as NAS to make daily backup from 4 of my office computers
I have
ASUS P5KC
Intel® Core™2 Duo E8200
OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800
Thermaltake TR2-500 NP
I will use 2xWD Red 1TB drives in raid 1?

 

 

[ShadyHost]

5 minutes ago, lazar.d said:

Is it possible to use my old PC as NAS to make daily backup from 4 of my office computers
I have
ASUS P5KC
Intel® Core™2 Duo E8200
OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800
Thermaltake TR2-500 NP
I will use 2xWD Red 1TB drives in raid 1?

 

 

On the local network or an offsite backup?

[Lurick]

Are you backing up just select sets of files or doing full system backups?

If you're just doing select folders or files you could use something like MirrorFolder to do this although it might get expensive on 4 computers but there are plenty of alternatives out there as well.

You just need to share the folders in Windows on the network to allow the other computers to access it or setup a SAMBA share if you go with a linux distro.

[lazar.d]

8 minutes ago, ShadyHost said:

On the local network or an offsite backup?

on local network

[lazar.d]

8 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Are you backing up just select sets of files or doing full system backups?

If you're just doing select folders or files you could use something like MirrorFolder to do this although it might get expensive on 4 computers but there are plenty of alternatives out there as well.

You just need to share the folders in Windows on the network to allow the other computers to access it or setup a SAMBA share if you go with a linux distro.

for one pc full system backups, (i use on that pc about 200GB), and for other 3 just few folders

[Lurick]

6 minutes ago, lazar.d said:

for one pc full system backups, (i use on that pc about 200GB), and for other 3 just few folders

I might look for some bigger drives then but beyond that it should do well spec wise.

For doing the actual backups, you could use a combination of Windows Backup and Restore, File History, and even CrashPlan to do the backups.

[lazar.d]

can and should i use freenas on this system or not?

[Lurick]

Freenas looks like a good solution and comes with all the features you'll need right out of the box.

[lazar.d]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Freenas looks like a good solution and comes with all the features you'll need right out of the box.

I saw on website that minimum is 8GB RAM, i have only 2GB

[Lurick]

Just now, lazar.d said:

I saw on website that minimum is 8GB RAM, i have only 2GB

Ah, I missed that. You could always do something like a Ubuntu Server install and do it all via the CLI. Pretty easy to setup and configure SAMBA that way.

[Ben Potter]

I would suggest NAS4Free because it has a 512MB ram requirement (for embedded version 2GB for normal). So, your server old PC work greatly with NAS4Free. No command line configuration is needed, and its specialized for NAS servers. 

 

This tutorial explains how to install NAS4Free on an old PC specifically. You could also use this one.

[lazar.d]

Do I need graphics card on this system, or only for installation?

[Lurick]

25 minutes ago, lazar.d said:

Do I need graphics card on this system, or only for installation?

Just during installation. After you can manage via browser for NAS4Free.

[Captain_WD]

20 hours ago, lazar.d said:

~snip~

Hello

 

You can easily use the computer as long as you find an appropriate OS with the needed applications/features for backups. If you map the drives of the computer on the other computers you may even be able to use a regular backup software to back everything to the laptop without needing to reconfigure everything.

 

another option would be to replace the computer with a simple NAS such as the WD My Cloud and use it for basic backup. 

 

Captain_WD.