New Server

[stevej696]

Hi Guys.

I had a rummage around yesterday and decided that i was gunna build a basic fileserver for the home out of my spare bits. I have evrything except a case so do i get a new case or use my old xbox case?

Money is a thing where if i need to spend i will but prefer not too as it is nothing special.

Here's the spec:

Intel Pentium 4 430 3.0Ghz

Standard Intel fan

512mb ram

Old Foxconn N15235 motherboard (cant find any other model number!)

Radeon x1300

1x 200GB Hitachi 7200 SATA1

1x 500GB WDC Black 7200

So thats the amazing spec

Just a quick question though. What OS should i use?

Ive got Server 2003 64bit or Win7 32??

Also cheap raid card or standard on board sata??

All comments or suggestions welcome.

Pics up soon

 

[thestepster]

if its nothing special mate case wise u can pick up a £20 case online, as for a raid card u wouldnt need that if ur only going to run 2 different hard drives off it and wont be running RAID0 or 1

as for OS i wouldnt go with windows 7 as that recommends 1gb ram min

 

[stevej696]

Ok thanks.

Im using the hard drives ive got for now with a future upgrade to something in the region of 4tb using 4x spinpoint f3 so thats where the raid card was going to come in. (Sorry forgot to mention that! oopps)

I was wondering about the xbox case due to it being spare and reasonably small and a few good projects have been based on them as pc bases. Still undecided whether or not to make it into a fully fleged project while im at it.

On the raid note i was thinking of raid 5 for security but like the sound of mirroring in raid 1. What would you suggest??

Is there any REAL benefit or difference between the two??

Cheers for comments

 

[thestepster]

havent used raid 5 mate only 0 as im for all out speed as i dont lose any data thats worth anything but a 1 would be good for mirroring

not sure how an old raid controller on the mobo would cope with larger drives? do u have a main pc? might aswell throw them in there in raid and share them over the network so saves u having to build a new rig

 

[Aurus_OC]

For using RAID 5 would definetely recommend using a raidcard since there is quite a bit of processing to be done. Basically if you use RAID 5 with 5 1TB drives you will have 3TB of available storage and if anyone (or 2) of your drives would fail you would still be able to restore all your data. You will also get a speed benefit over RAID 1. However RAID 5 is only an option if you use 5 or more drives. With 4 drives as you suggested I would go with RAID 10 which is basically a RAID 0 and a RAID 1 combined, so you get all the security of RAID 1 (mirroring your drives) and RAID 0 (striping them together to get "double" the performance). With 4 1TB drives that would leave you with 2TB of actual usuable storage since everything is copied and backed up. You can loose any one drive and still have all your data.

 

[stevej696]

Ok thanks for advice people.

Raid 1 sounds better i must admit as i have a lot of personal data that i cant get again so redundancy is definatly higher on my list than speed.

Found a raid card that seems decent for what i am thinking about http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152107. Any good??

@stepster i only currently have a laptop which is full along with around 500gb on my external hence the reason im building this server. Also money is an issue so i need to find parts that work that are both entry level as im not a power user and cheap so i dont spend a fortune.

Thanks

 

[stevej696]

Update:

Started the assembly today and during testing I noticed the pentium 4 3.2GHZ is very hot due to using a standard intel cooling fan! So im now looking for a cheap cooler that will be as quiet as possible aswell as cheap.

Was thinking on getting a artic 7 pro but what do you think?

too much for a server??

my budget is around £15 - £20 and would like it to include delivery in the price.

Also would i be better downgrading cpu to a e1200 or very cheap celeron???

All comments welcome

 

[AMDFTW]

have a look at the titan fenrir mate

altho it might be a lil expnesive

failing that yes the AC 7 pro v2 will be ok

 

[thestepster]

yeah the arctic coolers are not too bad wee things i think i have mines from years and years ago still in a drawer

 

[AMDFTW]

the v2 was a nice improvment over the original

it kept my athalon 64 dual at 14c idle ha ha

there is a 2.1 now apparently

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/arctic-cooling-freezer-7-pro-v21-s1366-s1156-s775-am3-am2plus-am2-939-up-to-130-watts!

 

[stevej696]

Ok so sorting out my hardware draw and stumbled across my old asaka ak968 cooler without the fan so may get a couple of 92mm fans and arrange a push pull configuration.

Had a clean out of the case which was dusty and now installing everything.

Pics on as soon as i find me camera.

Now where did i put it???

 

[alienware]

What socket does the P4 use, 478? if so you are limited severely. If it's a 775 I have two coolers for sale (Noctuas) that are almost silent.

Edit. Yes seems it's 775. Have a look in the for sale and wanted forum I have two up for sale.

 

[stevej696]

Im trying to upload some pictures but why are they failing??????

Anyone know????

Help!!!

 

[alienware]

Use Photobucket or one of those.

 

[AMDFTW]

i jst use attachments

 

[hmmblah]

For using RAID 5 would definetely recommend using a raidcard since there is quite a bit of processing to be done. Basically if you use RAID 5 with 5 1TB drives you will have 3TB of available storage and if anyone (or 2) of your drives would fail you would still be able to restore all your data. You will also get a speed benefit over RAID 1. However RAID 5 is only an option if you use 5 or more drives. With 4 drives as you suggested I would go with RAID 10 which is basically a RAID 0 and a RAID 1 combined, so you get all the security of RAID 1 (mirroring your drives) and RAID 0 (striping them together to get "double" the performance). With 4 1TB drives that would leave you with 2TB of actual usuable storage since everything is copied and backed up. You can loose any one drive and still have all your data.

With RAID 5 you lose the capacity of 1 drive. So with 5 1TB drive you will have 4TB of available space, not 3. You can only have 1 drive fail on a RAID 5 array before you get data loss, not 2. Also, you can do RAID 5 with 3 or more drives.

To OP: Have you thought about using some form of Linux for your fileserver, perhaps freeNAS?

 

[stevej696]

Hi guys finally got my photos on photobucket. Here they are:

http://s1110.photobucket.com/albums/h444/stevej696/?action=view&current=21112010060.jpg

http://s1110.photobucket.com/albums/h444/stevej696/?action=view&current=21112010060.jpg

http://s1110.photobucket.com/albums/h444/stevej696/?action=view&current=21112010060.jpg#!oZZ8QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs1110.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fh444%2Fstevej696%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3D21112010054.jpg

or the whole album here:

(might be easier!)

http://s1110.photobucket.com/albums/h444/stevej696/

Never used it before and gotta say sorry about the pics ive lost me camera so had to use the next best thing, my x6

Like i said nowt special but does the job

Ive also decided to run freenas software as it looks a lot better personally and seems easy to learn.

Future updates include

2x 2tb hard drives

raid controller

e1200 dual core

all comments welcome

 

[stevej696]

@ hmmblah

Yes that was in the line as a maybe. I felt like using windows XP as a server as im used to the ins and outs of it but just downloaded a copy of FreeNAS now so that will be installed in the next half hour so looks like ive got somethin else to learn