Home Server

So I have this old EMachines lying around, probably from about 2007. Nothing fancy but I was thinking about drooping a few cheap 1tb HDDs in it and creating a server. Something to have access to my photos at home and on the go. I currently have a 2x2tb raided in my main tower and a 500gb that I backup all my RAWs on an external (I dont have enough photos to be concerned with the space yet)

I know how to do it, I was just wondering if anyone else has turned an old tower into a server and how its worked out. Ive only ever worked with commercial servers before. Its been forever since I fired it up but I believe it has 2.2ghz dual 1gb ddr2 RAM (I have been offered another gb RAM, it only accepts 2gb ddr2 667mhz) onboard Nvidia 6100 and a 160gb hdd running Vista (I may upgrade to a small SSD for OS and HDD for the storage)

take a look at this.
http://aniruddhacustom​nas.blogspot.com …-margin-bottom-0.html?m=1
hope this help

gmm213 wrote in post #17875112
. Something to have access to my photos at home and on the go.

Hey neighbor. If you use Lightroom 5 for processing, Smart Previews will allow you access to all your offline images for editing and exporting low res images. I just completed making smart previews for my old photos and will soon be making smart collections.

https://helpx.adobe.co​m …troom-smart-previews.html

I would consider Drobo instead. Complete data backup and lets you know about imminent drive failure. Scale as large or small as you want!

http://www.drobo.com/s​torage-products/

hidroela wrote in post #17875306
take a look at this.
http://aniruddhacustom​nas.blogspot.com …-margin-bottom-0.html?m=1
hope this help

Interesting maybe I'll commandeer my old computer from the wife and put up with her stealing mine for Sims. That meets 'll those specs. I was just hoping to.Make use of this old emachines

Larry Johnson wrote in post #17875356
Hey neighbor. If you use Lightroom 5 for processing, Smart Previews will allow you access to all your offline images for editing and exporting low res images. I just completed making smart previews for my old photos and will soon be making smart collections.

https://helpx.adobe.co​m …troom-smart-previews.html

So it's sort of like a cloud for lightroom? Not bad but I was hoping to access all files, not just lightroom catalog but definitely worth investigating more into.

Shaymus wrote in post #17875405
I would consider Drobo instead. Complete data backup and lets you know about imminent drive failure. Scale as large or small as you want!

http://www.drobo.com/s​torage-products/

Way to expensive $300 for a smart external drive bay. I can build a home server with HDDs for that not using parts I own. I have heard good things about them but I just can justify it when I can raid out a cheap system that already own

gmm213 wrote in post #17875749
So it's sort of like a cloud for lightroom? Not bad but I was hoping to access all files, not just lightroom catalog but definitely worth investigating more into.

No, not a cloud. The smaller files that it creates get stored on your hard drive so you have access to your lightroom files for editing and such. Once you connect to the external drive, the RAW files are updated. It only allows access to Lightroom files.


From Adobe:
Smart Previews are much smaller than the original photos. You can free up disk space on devices with smaller storage capacities (for example, SSD drives) by choosing to keep original files on a high-capacity external device (for example, NAS devices or external discs). For example, 500 raw images from a high-end DSLR camera may occupy 14 GB of disk space. The Smart Preview files for the same images amounted to 400 MB of disk space.

gmm213 wrote in post #17875112
So I have this old EMachines lying around, probably from about 2007. Nothing fancy but I was thinking about drooping a few cheap 1tb HDDs in it and creating a server. Something to have access to my photos at home and on the go. I currently have a 2x2tb raided in my main tower and a 500gb that I backup all my RAWs on an external (I dont have enough photos to be concerned with the space yet)

I know how to do it, I was just wondering if anyone else has turned an old tower into a server and how its worked out. Ive only ever worked with commercial servers before. Its been forever since I fired it up but I believe it has 2.2ghz dual 1gb ddr2 RAM (I have been offered another gb RAM, it only accepts 2gb ddr2 667mhz) onboard Nvidia 6100 and a 160gb hdd running Vista (I may upgrade to a small SSD for OS and HDD for the storage)

Heya,

I've converted many old boxes with various hardware, super old is fine, to servers.

Basically just ran a tiny Linux distro, or FreeNAS, from USB or a tiny HDD if one was available, and just put a good quality NIC in the box and whatever hard drives you have laying around. I would not use RAID. Did it for years and it's just a pain. I prefer to not need a RAID controller, be it software or hardware, so that there's zero configuration or drivers or anything fancy needed. If I wanted to mirror, I just copied to two separate destinations. A good fast NIC is the essential piece of hardware if you want to sustain moving data back and forth. You could use the motherboard's built in one, if it has one, or something. But I've always added a good intel NIC for a server.

Connect to a wifi router and you're set.

From there, having it on a UPS is important to avoid problems if you have a brown out or something during an important copy (imagine that happening while you're out and about and accessing via FTP).

That said, I would rather use a Dropbox account for remote use. And just sync that dropbox to your server from a system at your house. That way you don't have to fool with your server being remote accessible which opens up all kinds of issues and further maintenance.

Very best,

gmm213 wrote in post #17875749
Way to expensive $300 for a smart external drive bay. I can build a home server with HDDs for that not using parts I own. I have heard good things about them but I just can justify it when I can raid out a cheap system that already own

FWIW, a lot of the value in a pre-built NAS solution is in the software/firmware. No reason you can't do it yourself with FreeNAS or other options, but for someone that just wants to get up and running with Plex or other streaming methods, a built NAS can be easier.

the other way to go is buy an older server, businesses often let these go at very reasonable prices once they're out of warranty. I've got a ML350 G5 happily running, and have more recently got a DL185 G5 complete with 8x 1TB drives in it (I only run it up to back up the other server, then power it down again)

The DL185 cost me $100...