Low Cost Media Storage

[BinaryBean]

So I've come into a few old computers (P3,P4s) and hard drives. I had heard that to make a media server at home I wouldn't need a very fast motherboard? does anyone know if I could do it with these? and how I could do it....cheep...?
Thanks!

 

[WyomingKnott]

Yes, but you may need fast drives.

Search the forums for the word "FreeNAS" and you will see posts on how to set up a network server with media streaming functions. Good luck.

 

[BinaryBean]

Thanks! will do.

 

[hang-the-9]

I would not trust old hard-drives with data storage, unless you also have back-ups of it elsewhere. For a media server, any drive from the P3 and P4 era will probably be too small also.

 

[BinaryBean]

Thanks for the heads up!

Unfortunatly these are all I have on hand and I don't exactly have a buget for this project, so I've decided to give it a try for the learning process.

I guess I will just have to make sure that I don't keep important data on them untill I can upgrade the drives. It will be a good system for me to make mistakes on.
....but do you think using the P4 should be fast enough?
.....what limits my number of drives?

 

[hang-the-9]

Thanks for the heads up!

Unfortunatly these are all I have on hand and I don't exactly have a buget for this project, so I've decided to give it a try for the learning process.

I guess I will just have to make sure that I don't keep important data on them untill I can upgrade the drives. It will be a good system for me to make mistakes on.
....but do you think using the P4 should be fast enough?
.....what limits my number of drives?

P4 will have pleny of speed, but you want a good amount of RAM, 4gig would be good.

Drives are limited by the case and motherboard connections. Most basic motherboards, if you don't use the optical drive, will limit you to 4 ATA plus whatever SATA ports you have.

 

[BinaryBean]

Well looks like I might run into a RAM problem then....it takes RDRAM and it seems a little more sparse than any other option, and again with no buget I may need to rethink this project....I guess there's the P3? RAM might be cheeper and easier to find.
Think it would work?
Thanks For the Help

 

[hang-the-9]

P3 may be too slow to run any type of media files except maybe MP3s. 4 gig is good to have, but should run OK with 2. Just may get slow with more than one or 2 people accessing files.

 

[BinaryBean]

Thanks for you Help!
I guess I'll just have to keep my eyes peeled for some RDRAM.

 

[hang-the-9]

Thanks for you Help!
I guess I'll just have to keep my eyes peeled for some RDRAM.

Good luck with that, I think it was on the market for maybe a year. And not very popular when it was available.

I did manage to sell the sticks I had on ebay and got a new Athelon 64 CPU when they were new, so it's not a totally useless tech.

Check ebay.

 

[BinaryBean]

So the next hurdle I've encountered is:
-After installing freenas to usb, I realized computer doesn't have the option to boot from usb. Can this be changed/updated?

 

[WyomingKnott]

So the next hurdle I've encountered is:
-After installing freenas to usb, I realized computer doesn't have the option to boot from usb. Can this be changed/updated?

Install it to a hard drive?

 

[BinaryBean]

I was hoping not to use up a drive just for that. The documentation also stated that if you do it that way you don't have access to the remaining portion of the drive, so suggested USB boot is recommended. But if that's the way I have to do it then that's the way i'll try.
Thanks for the help