Home Server/NAS (?)

Gapehorn · October 24, 2016

So i Have a bunch of Hardware laying around like a Core 2 Quad and 8GB of ram and etc, and i was interested to Make a server/NAS sort of thing to store my Movies and files . Ive tried researching about it online but i cant seem to get an idea on how to set up a server/NAS . I was wondering if anyone could give me a crash course on Servers and NAS and maybe how to set one up and maybe any software or additional hardware i need? Thanks alot !!

SLAYR · October 24, 2016

A server is just like a regular computer component wise. If you want a NAS freeNAS is a good option for the OS.

Simon771 · October 24, 2016

Why not just install windows on it, put all drivers on share mode and you can access to those from anywhere in your home network.

Vitalius · October 24, 2016

52 minutes ago, Gapehorn said:

So i Have a bunch of Hardware laying around like a Core 2 Quad and 8GB of ram and etc, and i was interested to Make a server/NAS sort of thing to store my Movies and files . Ive tried researching about it online but i cant seem to get an idea on how to set up a server/NAS . I was wondering if anyone could give me a crash course on Servers and NAS and maybe how to set one up and maybe any software or additional hardware i need? Thanks alot !!

I recommend amahi. It is a linux distro that is focused on ease of use. Meaning, you don't have to know much about Linux or Servers to use it. https://www.amahi.org/

Assemble your PC. Install the OS. Configure it from a web interface. Install useful plugins (ownCloud, Plex, etc). That's basically it.

For Installing the OS, it's no different than a normal OS install. Just take the image downloaded from their website and burn it to a disc or flash it to a USB drive and plug that into the computer you wish to be your server. Then, boot from that drive and enter the information it asks you.

It will need you to create an account on amahi.org, but this is so that you can access your server when away from home (which is very useful imo).

All a server is, is a computer that exists to give other computers on a network it's resources. To offer them services (thus, server). In this case, your server, being a NAS (Network Attached Storage), exists to share it's storage with other computers on the network.

Depending on your other computers, you will need to use one of three network sharing protocols. For Linux, it's NFS, for Apple, it's AFP, and for Windows, it's CIFS (sometimes called Samba).

Once you install Amahi and are going through the setup process, it will cover creating network shares with one of those three protocols. It's fairly simple to do.

FreeNAS is a bit harder to deal with than Amahi. Think of it as the bridge between automated setup and the "learn all the command lines and linux" setup way. You can use FreeNAS' GUI exclusively, but if you want certain things done, you have to use the command line interface.

I don't recommend it for a beginner at all.