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Home File Server

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Going off recent events with my current solution I am looking into building a home file server ... trying to create as little heat as possible and keep the power consumption down.

This is what I am thinking right now .... the actual hard drives are already bought, I have 4x3TB. I possibly need a hardware raid card though ... thoughts on that one? Hopefully a cheaper one?


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ASUS 24X DVD Burner - Bulk Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS
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$19.99


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Mushkin Enhanced Essentials 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model 996586
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$36.99
$26.99


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SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6450 100322L Video Card
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$39.99


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GIGABYTE GA-AM1M-S2H Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
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$34.99


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Antec Basiq power BP350 350W Power Supply
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AMD Sempron 3850 1.3GHz Socket AM1 SD3850JAHMBOX Desktop Processor
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$30.99


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Western Digital Blue WD2500AAKX 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
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Ditch the vid card and double your ram. Consider buying a good hw raid card or going with linux raid. Or no raid at all...depends on what you really want from it. You could even do windows raid if you felt so inclined.

What OS do you plan to run? How about virtualized environments?

I'd this just file storage? You want raid 1,5,6? Or could each drive store something different?
 

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No need for an optical drive either. Here's what I would build:

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Intel Celeron G1840 2.8GHz LGA 1150 BX80646G1840 Desktop Processor
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G.SKILL NS Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C11D-8GNS
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ASRock H97M Pro4 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
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SeaSonic SS-400ET Bronze 400W Power Supply
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Patriot Blast PBT120GS25SSDBK 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
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$47.99


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Thanks for the help guys! I will do some more research on a better build ...

for now though ... I was thinking of going with Amahi as an OS https://www.amahi.org/ ... It seems to be at the top of everyones list of reviews that I have read.

Any other thoughts on OS? Keep in mind I am only middle of the road when it comes to these things and would like something free, not a windows server OS or something like that.
 
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Use the server in my "System Specs" with a RocketRAID 2720SGL card. Its not the fastest card around, but you get raid 6 and the performance limiter is anyway going to be the network for speed (gigabit streams at 125 MB/s) and the hard drives for access times.
 
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There are rare boards like Asrock p67 Extreme6 that come with 10 SATA ports, very useful for servers. :)
 

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Thanks for the help guys! I will do some more research on a better build ...

for now though ... I was thinking of going with Amahi as an OS https://www.amahi.org/ ... It seems to be at the top of everyones list of reviews that I have read.

Any other thoughts on OS? Keep in mind I am only middle of the road when it comes to these things and would like something free, not a windows server OS or something like that.

Just use a Standard Windows desktop OS. Windows 7/8/10 Professional. You can re-use a license you already have. No need for an expensive Server OS. Just make sure it is the Professional version. If you don't have a copy of Windows Professional, it is only $140 for a copy. The desktop version of Windows should do everything you need, it is what I run on my home server.

As for other software you need, for local sharing you can just use the native Windows file sharing. For accessing files over the internet just install Filezilla Server, its free. That will give you an FTP server, then use Filezilla Client to access any files you need when away from home.

There are rare boards like Asrock p67 Extreme6 that come with 10 SATA ports, very useful for servers. :)

True, but he is trying to keep the size small. So I'm guessing he isn't likely going to exceed 4 hard drive. So I'd be better to just get a motherboard with all the SATA ports connected directly to the Intel chipset. That way he can use the Intel RAID to setup the RAID on the hard drive.
 
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Just use a Standard Windows desktop OS. Windows 7/8/10 Professional. You can re-use a license you already have. No need for an expensive Server OS. Just make sure it is the Professional version. If you don't have a copy of Windows Professional, it is only $140 for a copy. The desktop version of Windows should do everything you need, it is what I run on my home server.

As for other software you need, for local sharing you can just use the native Windows file sharing. For accessing files over the internet just install Filezilla Server, its free. That will give you an FTP server, then use Filezilla Client to access any files you need when away from home.

OK, I was talking with my network buddy and he said win7 pro so I would still get windows media center on there as well. That is good news on the file server as well so I can get in from anywhere still. What about backup software and things like that? Any other cool software that I should also look into?

Also, there will be windows machines and Macs on this network. If that matters in the cool software question ...


True, but he is trying to keep the size small. So I'm guessing he isn't likely going to exceed 4 hard drive. So I'd be better to just get a motherboard with all the SATA ports connected directly to the Intel chipset. That way he can use the Intel RAID to setup the RAID on the hard drive.

yes for the foreseeable future it will be 4 drives since I have 4x3TB in Raid 6
 
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newtekie1

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What about backup software and things like that? Any other cool software that I should also look into?

Whatever backup software you want to use. I use FBackup to backup my computers to the file server. If you want to back up your machine from outside your local network, you can use Backup4All(not free, but cheap) to backup using the FTP server you'll already have setup.

yes for the foreseeable future it will be 4 drives since I have 4x3TB in Raid 6

The down side is that I don't think Intel's chipset supports RAID6, but honestly you don't really need RAID6 with 4x3TB drives, RAID5 is fine.
 
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ok thanks NT!

I have been reading up on the backing up of MACs on windows server ... seems they finally have a solution for it that seems to work. So that is good news.

Do I need any antivirus or special software along those lines ...
 
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The down side is that I don't think Intel's chipset supports RAID6, but honestly you don't really need RAID6 with 4x3TB drives, RAID5 is fine.

It does not its limited to 0/1/5/10 but if he really needs a fault tolerance of 2 drives, RAID 10 can be an option.

+1 for Intel Home Server

The lack of RAID support on AM1 is ...
 
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I actually just picked up this guy ...
Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 5U Tower Server, Intel Xeon E3, 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD
 
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I actually just picked up this guy ...
Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 5U Tower Server, Intel Xeon E3, 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD
Great buy for $285 it's a steal. The CPU alone is worth ~$215.

You might have to hack the case since it only allows 4x3.5" drives.
 
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Great buy for $285 it's a steal. The CPU alone is worth ~$215.

You might have to hack the case since it only allows 4x3.5" drives.

Ya I am not sure what the plan is for the case ... I may even toss it all in my TJ07 that is not in use anymore and make it super fancy haha

Plus, I sold my buddy the netgear ready nas for $75 so it made this one even cheaper.
 

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It does not its limited to 0/1/5/10 but if he really needs a fault tolerance of 2 drives, RAID 10 can be an option.

+1 for Intel Home Server

The lack of RAID support on AM1 is ...
Or you can use software raid, as long as you have the OS on another drive (witch you should anyway)
 
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Or you can use software raid, as long as you have the OS on another drive (witch you should anyway)

Windows 8 only supports software RAID 0/1/5 while Windows 7 supports 0/1. No 6 nor 10. So you don't get a fault tolerance of 2 drives unless you pick RAID 1 and sacrifice 3/4 of storage space or you do 2xRAID 1 but you end up with 2 volumes instead of 1.
 
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