building a home server

[aezakmi]

So, today while looting searching boxes I found a working mobo, a CPU, memory, hard drives and power supply, I need a case but I'll get a simple cheap one anyway so that's not really important

I have some questions though, let's say my sister and I want to access stuff that would be in that server, how? should I create a homegroup using windows? (server would use Windows 7 home and our computers Windows 10 home)

I'm talking about a LAN server, connected to the same router as the other computers, with nothing shared via internet.

It would have at least 4 hard drives, but all of them have different size and brand so I think RAID is not an option, correct me if I'm wrong there.

 

About the hardware, I'll be using a low power CPU, a 1800MHz Sempron, it would be possible to use a passive heatsink on it? I have a Thermaltake Tower 112, but guess, it has no fans, so I was wondering about passive, I'd also like to avoid fan noise during the night, mobo has only S1 power state so that means the psu and cpu fans keep spinning even if the pc is on sleep mode

http://www.thermaltake.co.nz/product/Cooler/Combo/cl-p0024/cl-p0024.html

[GDRRiley]

I would use a lightweight linix distro and then do some software work to get raid setup. brand doesn't mater only size. flexraid is an option to combine diffrent HDD sizes 

[NelizMastr]

You can sort of RAID them, as in combining them into one big volume (concatenate/JBOD). Another application could be to use them separately and assign different tasks to each drive as in different types of files (video drive, ISO drive, document drive etc.)

 

Sharing in Windows is super straight forward. Share, assign permissions (without a domain, just assign "everyone" with full access, in a home environment this is okay) and Bob's your uncle.

 

If you're somewhat Linux savvy, you could try Ubuntu Server and setup Samba there. Runs great on any potato. 

 

Important thing to note, though, if your board doesn't have a gigabit ethernet connection, get a cheap PCI gigabit NIC, or else your network transfers will be limited to 10MB/s at best.

[aezakmi]

14 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

You can sort of RAID them, as in combining them into one big volume (concatenate/JBOD). Another application could be to use them separately and assign different tasks to each drive as in different types of files (video drive, ISO drive, document drive etc.)

 

Sharing in Windows is super straight forward. Share, assign permissions (without a domain, just assign "everyone" with full access, in a home environment this is okay) and Bob's your uncle.

 

If you're somewhat Linux savvy, you could try Ubuntu Server and setup Samba there. Runs great on any potato. 

 

Important thing to note, though, if your board doesn't have a gigabit ethernet connection, get a cheap PCI gigabit NIC, or else your network transfers will be limited to 10MB/s at best.

afaik the board has 10/100 LAN but anyway I'm still trying to install the OS, I have no working DVD drives so I guess I'll just use linux, not sure about Ubuntu though as is very CPU demanding from what I've seen, still searching for a distro for this build

[NelizMastr]

On 27-1-2018 at 12:10 AM, aezakmi said:

afaik the board has 10/100 LAN but anyway I'm still trying to install the OS, I have no working DVD drives so I guess I'll just use linux, not sure about Ubuntu though as is very CPU demanding from what I've seen, still searching for a distro for this build

Debian might be a good solution, with the MATE desktop environment. Runs great on old PowerPC iBooks so an old Sempron should be okay too.

[aezakmi]

6 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

Debian might be a good solution, with the MATE desktop environment. Runs great on old PowerPC iBooks so an old Sempron should be okay too.

I found an old XFX passive 6200, my old FX stock cooler, did a bit of overclock and somehow windows 10 works with it like a charm sharing drives over my LAN, next step would be to get a gigabit router and a low profile network card so I can have better transfer speed

[Salacious B Crum]

install a free trial (30 days) of unRAID and give it a go its user friendly sets up quickly allows different drive sizes and the basic license is cheap the support forum is excellent