Need help building a home server

jhooga

jhooga

New Member
So I am looking at putting together a home server and was hoping to put together a cheap server together. It is mainly just going to be used as a centralized file storage, used for backups, and to use it for media streaming movies and music. Nothing fancy. I was wondering if Home server would be sufficient or if i should go to server 2008? also any recommedations on what type of build you recommend i use? I was hoping to keep it as cheap as possible.
 
I'd go with an older desktop machine, at least P4, and run something like ClearOS, which is a free Linux-based operating system designed to act as a firewall and server or perhaps you could look here and see which server OS fits your needs best.
 
if your looking for just storage I use openfiler. It's an open source OS that acts like a san. But really you could just install Linux on an old desktop and throw a few big hard drives in there and set up Samba shares.

Either way you really don't have to buy a real server or Windows sever OS.
 
yea im looking for storage and for media, most use out of it would be to run movies and music off of, ill check out openfiler, or i was thinking too i could just set up windows 7 and create a homegroup and share off of that too
 
And what about when your server hard drive crashes? Where is the backup?
I recommend putting out $100 and going to ebay to buy a server. I have a $130 Hp Proliant DL360 G4 with raid backup, 2 hard drives, 2 power supplies, and 2 cpu's. I bought it from savemyserver. Then once you have this or the server hardware, i recommend download the server 2008 trial. The trial lasts for 6 months then you re-arm it for another 6 months. Then after that you can re-arm it one more time.

If your good with linux then install ubuntu server. Then you have a server that's worth $1,500 new, $500 used (Both prices from amazon), for $100-$200. If a hard drive fails, the computer never stops, if a psu fails ,the computer never stops.
 
And where is your backup???
I cannot say this enough times, raid is no backup. It only protects you from drive failure. It doesn't protect you from everything else like power surges, data corruption, accidental deletion and so on. If you want a backup, at least store the data on another hard disk. Preferably not in the same system.
 
Vipernitrox said:
And where is your backup???
I cannot say this enough times, raid is no backup. It only protects you from drive failure. It doesn't protect you from everything else like power surges, data corruption, accidental deletion and so on. If you want a backup, at least store the data on another hard disk. Preferably not in the same system.
Click to expand...

I agree with VIPER. Raid 1 is over rated for the most part except maybe for a drive hardware crash but will keep you up and running if thats the only problem.
When you have sofware issues well Ya Know......

Ok this is weird and I might be the only one that does this but what I do is keep a spare mirrored drive disconnected. :confused: what tha
Every so often I will back up my whole system, os and all.
I Install the spare drive and reboot into bios. I set raid on save and reboot.
My system will come up with 2 crital arrays as the spare drive has already been mirrored before and has raid drivers from last rebuild.
The computer thinks there are two arrays with a missing second drive each.
I delete the array on the channel that the spare is on. (os wont let me screw up and delete C drive fortunately because if there is a way to screw up something I'm an expert.)
Delete the mbr on the spare and make it a free disk then I reboot which will rebuild. Afterwards I'll disconnect it and put it on the shelf that way if my installed drive crashes all I have to do is install the spare and I have a drive that will boot and run everything that was installed prior to the last rebuild.
Oh yea go back in bios and turn raid back off and the system boots normal.
I'll do this as I feel it's needed. It's nice to have a external drive dock.
Of course this isn't perfect as nothing is. I still have a backup drive for my data in the mean time.

sorry about getting off the subject of backup servers :rolleyes: this shouldn't even be in this thread

ZZ
 
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