WHy clean up Hard Drives when you can have a terabyte file server for under $500?
Cleaning up that hard drive is not a bad idea, but if frequent transfers of files are a problem, you might want to take a page out of computer guru Fred Langa’s playbook and use TigerDirect to make a Tereabyte file server for under $500.
Having that much disk space means all your mp3s, videos, pictures, documents, etc can safely reside on the server and be accessible to ALL your computers to boot. No more looking for files or transfering them because you bought a new laptop or computer.
Since the server won’t do anything but fetch files, you don’t need a fancy video card, or a super fast processor.
Langa’s article is about 6 months old, so some of the items and prices he used are out of date. My suggestion for the project:
I’m not listing a key board and mouse and monitor because you don’t need them on this unit after initial set up. Remember, this isn’t a workstation, it’s your fileserver.
Final price for our massive file server? If we go with Linux, it’s just under $489.95 after rebate. Windows users will pay $689.95, but will probably be easier to set up for most users.
Fred has step by step instructions, and I think I’m going to do this myself. You don’t have to be TOO techincal to follow, but be aware a project like this takes some familiarity with putting together units, and you have to be able to assemble and troubleshoot it yourself.
Great point. I had one of my first great “Vista” experiences today in connecting a file server (aka my Old PC) to the network today. After connecting it, I was just checking out a few things before disconnecting the monitor and up popped a notification:
Whoa! How cool! Vista automatically recognized the Media Extender software on my ‘file server’ and requested access. Not Media Center, just Media Player itself.
Yet another COOL Vista Feature…
I am opting for the cheaper way currently. I needed to do that gastly once a year or two chore of reformating my Windows based PC. But with all my music downloads on Itunes and my digital photos. It would take many days to do backups. And since hard drives have come way down in price. I decided to replace my hard drive and reload windows(picked up a 300GB for
$59).I will use my 80GB as a slave. Then I can copy my music and photos over to the new drive at my leisure. And leave a copy on my old drive as a backup.
Is Vista worth loading on the new drive?
Why buy a lowend new computer to use as a file server on your home network? Why not instead when your ready to replace the one you’ve got use that money towards an even better system and just use your old one as the file server?
I have been doing that since lantastic 4.0 worked on dos 5.0 and it’s the cheapest way for mass storage.
Here’s my current file server configuration:
PII 233 processor running windows 2000 pro
256 ram
a 2 port KVM switch (belkin like $25 here at tiger) so no monitor,keyboard or mouse
The most expensive componants are the PCI EIDE controler card (because the motherboard’s bios would support anything over a 120 gig harddrive)
then the 300 gig seagate harddrives I got here at tiger for something like 90$ bucks a piece.
Then I opted for the intel pro 1000 nic so as to speed up my file access.
works great and gave me an extra 500$ after rebates to put into my new powerhouse computer :) (Which I got here at Tiger also)
‘Mitch
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