Looking to set up old PC to home server

[ljeo332]

As the title suggests, I have an old PC that I want to repurpose, since its only getting wasted because my MBP 2018 15" outperforms it and it has become my daily driver for both college and gaming use.

Currently, at home, we have an iMac doing the server duty but I feel it has become unreliable due to the ethernet cable not working correctly and the wifi has to be reset too often for my needs so I want a better solution.

 

What I want the server to do:

• plex server
• network caching
• NAS
• time machine backup

The system I have:

• i7 4790k
• asus sabertooth mark s mobo
• 16gb ram
• wifi+blutooth card
• 700W PSU
• 1tb SATA SSD
• 4tb HDD
• 2tb HDD
• asus Blu ray drive

What I want to know is what is the best OS to get, an easy to read instructions and like a precaution list of what to do beforehand and during the transition of migrating all iMac server stuff to old PC so I don't fuck up anything, thank you for your time.

[Aprilfooldude]

FreeNAS, you should have lots of settings and I believe there are many good tutorials for setting the system up, although this isn't my cup of tea so I can't say which is the best.

[KingCollins]

I would agree with @Aprilfooldude

I used to run FreeNAS and it's super simple to set up and best of all it's free. I switched to Windows Server 2016 because of compatibility with Sonarr and Radarr, and general stability when trans coding with Plex (used to crash every now and then on FreeBSD). But if your just starting off, FreeNAS is a great option.

[TheCamba]

My server at home is pretty much the exact same specs.  I just installed Windows 10 on it with the Plex server app and what not.  I looked into FreeNAS for a bit, but I just wanted to get up and going with it before learning a completely new system to me.  I also didn't know if FreeNAS would allow me to rip bluerays and what not.  

[Salv8 (sam)]

i'm not sure if FreeNAS can do time machine backup, if it can't maybe a virtual machine running OSX with access to the folder that will be storing the backups would work best

i think OSX can run on 1 core with 1 GB of RAM but i don't know...

[mtz_federico]

21 hours ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

i'm not sure if FreeNAS can do time machine backup, if it can't maybe a virtual machine running OSX with access to the folder that will be storing the backups would work best

i think OSX can run on 1 core with 1 GB of RAM but i don't know...

You can do backups to an SMB share