Want dedicated PC for file verification, asking for build strategy

[Dnaiel]

I want to build a PC specifically for periodic verification of my files across several hard drives, and simple file management such as copying, pasting, reading. I prefer a Windows environment.

I have many hard drives (int and ext) with a lot of files. Periodically, I build checksums (using a program called ExactFile) of the many directories to guard against file corruption (very rare, but does happen). I use a file comparison program (ExamDiff Pro) to make sure that the checksum summaries match. I keep three sets of the files so that I can narrow down the uncorrupted versions.

An enormous number of the files are webpages I saved over the years. (I'm an information hoarder.) So most of the files are quite small. I also have two terabytes of games via Steam that I do almost nothing with, countless ripped CDs, my scanned books library, and so on. I think half of the entire set are very tiny files, and the other half are moderate to large.

I would like to stay under a thousand dollars, but I can go up to two. Although I have been drooling over the Threadripper CPUs for the high core count, I don't like the idea of spending that much money for such simple work.

Any ideas about what I should do or be doing?

 

[voyagerfan99]

Sounds like you could just use a dedicated NAS. Then you just create shares with them and then map them as mapped drives on your existing computer.

 

[Dnaiel]

Well, yeah, but I would like to do this with a separate system, one that can get through the work faster than what I'm using in front of me. I'm almost always using my main system, and when I do checksums, all the CPU cores are taken.