Use Case Old Laptop : Home NAS

[ankitrana85]

Hi y'all amazing people.

 

Prelude:

Today i present to you a dilemma i am dealing with since few weeks. Let me explain (skip to TLDR for shorter version  )

I moved from Windows platform to Apple few years back simply because it is more user friendly, i still use a windows computer for office use but personally i have moved on. Since my Windows laptop was getting slower every day and eventually started to give problems i thought to get a new one altogether and bought a Macbook Air.

 

My personal usage at the time was in line with hardware Macbook Air has so it was doing the job....  Until i ran out of space, on the very small SSD (128GB).

So i decided to hook up my Seagate External Hard drive to create backups and move my music and videos files over.

 

Since it was bulky to carry around i got a wifi router with USB to plug it in and now i can access the files without any hassle. 

Eventually i ran out of space and bought a couple of more external drives as there was a sale.

 

TLDR: i have a TP LINK Archer C20 AC750 wifi router (with usb support), with Seagate 2 TB external HDD (NTFS format) plugged into it. With few other external HDDs (both NTFS and Journaled HFS+ format)

 

Problem statement:

So here i am with couple of external hdd drives with One USB (2.0) port on the wifi router and i need to keep swapping HDD back and forth. On top of it, the router does not support my HFS+ format HDD.

 

Solution: Create a home NAS using my existing old windows 7 based laptop. But i do not know how i will connect the external drives.

 

Details of the hardware

1. ACER ASPIRE 5740 G laptop: (external link)
   1. Intel Core i5-430M 2.26 GHz @ 2.53 GHz
   2. 4 GB Ram DDR3 (i think 533MHZ)
2. TP LINK Archer C20 AC750 wifi router (will be used to plug in NAS on lan port)
   1. also a spare router running DDWRT, if it helps
3. 2 x USB 2.0 External HDD (2 TB each)
4. 3 x USB 3.0 External HDD (two with HFS+ format) 4TB EACH

 

I am thinking of taking out the hardware out of the laptop case into some thing more breathable so that it can run 24x7

 

Questions:

Which OS should i run, should it FreeNAS or NAS4Free, do they support media server or streaming within home network. 

I like idea of having windows so that i can take remote of the PC (team viewer) etc and see whats going on, also i can set it to download files off the remote servers without me being in the house

 

I understand the chipset has only USB2.0 support, how do i get my USB 3.0 hard drive to work without loosing on speed.

In Future should i buy normal 3.5" HDD as they are cheaper.?? will it be more sensible ?

 

Biggest problem: i have no budget, like nothing at all !! 0$

 

Any and all help is appreciated and sorry for bad english, it is not my first language. 

 

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PS: I do not need raid config, no backup is needed as i also have remote site backup of important files. this is purely for home use, streaming media and file transfer only.

 

[ankitrana85]

is bumping allowed on this forum.

 

is there no one to help and guide here... where are the moderators tho ?

[ThomasC]

Hi, 

 

I currently have a (very old) laptop at home (Asus Z92J) that i'm using as a "multi-function" server. Mainly, I'm doing hourly backups of multiple servers I have, and archiving some datas. I don't have that much disk space, but it's sufficient for me. I'll respond to your questions and try to give feedback about this idea of using an old laptop as a 24/7 NAS server, based on my experience with mine.

 

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Which OS should i run, should it FreeNAS or NAS4Free, do they support media server or streaming within home network. 

Never used one of them, but I guess you may be able to do some streaming within your home network using a plugin.

Just saw that you may also install Plex alongside of FreeNAS for this (source https://www.tecmint.com/home-media-streaming-server-using-plex-with-freenas/).

 

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I like idea of having windows so that i can take remote of the PC (team viewer) etc and see whats going on, also i can set it to download files off the remote servers without me being in the house

It's not a bad idea, but it really depends on your needs. You may have some difficulties if you want to do some media streaming.

On my side, I prefer to use a linux distribution (currently Debian), so I can install all the things I need by myself. As I stated before, I'm running on the same server some monitoring tools (Smokeping, Observium), backups, web server, NAS using Samba, etc etc.

The point is that, even with Linux, you may be able to have a remote control (using SSH for example) on your server. 

 

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I understand the chipset has only USB2.0 support, how do i get my USB 3.0 hard drive to work without loosing on speed.

Got the same problem here, I'm using a USB3.0 500GB external disk-drive plugged-in a USB2.0 port. It's not a big deal for me tho.

Without upgrading your motherboard, you won't be able to get USB3.0 support. 

 

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In Future should i buy normal 3.5" HDD as they are cheaper.?? will it be more sensible ?

If you're able to plug them in directly via a SATA port, yeah indeed. On the contrary, if the disk is inside the server, it's safer than having a dangling disk ! 

But here, as you have a laptop, I don't think you will have enough SATA ports on your motherboard. You may be able to plug an additional disk on the optical drive bay by removing it (usually, it's just two screws to unscrew) and replace it with a optical bay converter (amazon/google is your friend here!). 

 

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I am thinking of taking out the hardware out of the laptop case into some thing more breathable so that it can run 24x7

If you have the opportunity to do this, go ahead. On my side I removed to screen to use it as a monitoring screen on my desk, and keeping the "base" to run 24/7 as a headless server. The problem is that, indeed, it heat a lot. Mine stays at 64 degrees all the time (I thing the thermal paste is dead at this point).

You may want to take a look at this DIY Perks video : 

 

To conclude, if you're friendly with the linux environnement or want to learn, it's a way to go.

Even without being that much friendly, you may want to take a look at FreeNAS, it's pretty straight-forward.

I thing using Windows is not a good choice given the usage, but why not.

 

On the hardware side, you may be able to replace your optical disk by one of your disk (2.5" form-factor only tho), and plug your 4 disks on the usb ports. Personally, I won't consider using an USB hub, for performance.

 

my two cents,

Thomas

 

PS : This was my first post on LTT forum, and I hope my english wasn't that bad :-)

 

[ankitrana85]

Hi Thomas, Thanks so much for sharing this information. I agree with Linux with being better option, but i have never worked on Linux till date. but i guess one can always learn, why not !

 

I think i got a pretty understanding of how the software side will look and what to use. But hardware seems to be my bottleneck. 

 

10 hours ago, ThomasC said:

Got the same problem here, I'm using a USB3.0 500GB external disk-drive plugged-in a USB2.0 port. It's not a big deal for me tho.

Without upgrading your motherboard, you won't be able to get USB3.0 support. 

 

I dont really agree with that, the thing is this laptop has 1 gbps lan on board, so instead of using usb 2 why not use sata 2 on board which has better speed. 

now i can either use sata port multiplier

https://www.newegg.com/global/in/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124072&cm_re=sata_port_multiplier-_-16-124-072-_-Product

 

or something like this for usb 3:

https://www.newegg.com/global/in/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124177

 

only thing is i am not sure if either of these will work on my laptop or not ! 

[ProjectBox153]

You can use a laptop as a home server, but they aren't really designed for the 24/7 operation as much, especially when it comes to the cooling systems. I'd recommend getting something like an old Dell OptiPlex to use as a home server. They're really reliable. 

[ankitrana85]

5 hours ago, Jamiec1130 said:

You can use a laptop as a home server, but they aren't really designed for the 24/7 operation as much, especially when it comes to the cooling systems. I'd recommend getting something like an old Dell OptiPlex to use as a home server. They're really reliable. 

 

I know that is generally true, but if you run the hardware in well ventilated unit and run it under voltage it will not give any prob. I know this as few of my friends are doing it already.

 

My concern as mentioned above is how to run usb 3 hdd(s). can they be run off the odd sata port using port multiplier... this is something that is bugging me 

[ProjectBox153]

1 hour ago, ankitrana85 said:

 

I know that is generally true, but if you run the hardware in well ventilated unit and run it under voltage it will not give any prob. I know this as few of my friends are doing it already.

 

My concern as mentioned above is how to run usb 3 hdd(s). can they be run off the odd sata port using port multiplier... this is something that is bugging me 

Use a USB hub?

[ankitrana85]

On 03/10/2017 at 12:31 AM, Jamiec1130 said:

Use a USB hub?

 

no read this:

 

On 28/09/2017 at 5:47 PM, ankitrana85 said:

I understand the chipset has only USB2.0 support, how do i get my USB 3.0 hard drive to work without loosing on speed.

 

[ProjectBox153]

15 hours ago, ankitrana85 said:

 

no read this:

 

 

Oh, didn’t see that. I guess USB is not an option then. You could get a different one with USB 3 for cheap.