For some odd reason I have this grand desire to be able to save EVERYTHING and never need to delete stuff to make space - I want a file server. I collect alot of movies and just recently burned them all and deleted them from my hard drive. Now I wish like hell I hadnt done that - making copies is twice as quick when you dont have to go look for the original disc. The problem was I only have about 330 GB of space and it was getting tight.

I also recently purchased a 200 GB drive from another PR member and figured I would put it in my main PC. Alas I have yearned for the joys of 1 central location for all my files - I do not yearn for the enjoyment that bestows someone while lurking between 3 machines for that 1 file you just cant seem to find.

I dont have alot of spare hardware laying around here but Im eyeballing this old machine I salvaged from the law center the other day.

HP Vectra VL400 mid tower

700 MHz p3 (not celeron)
256 MB ram

My plan is to toss 1 terabyte storage space in this beast and store ALL my shat on it. In addition to the 1 200 GB drive coming from the PR member (hopefully it shows tomorrow) I also have 2 more on the way - the other drives will have to wait till more money comes my way.

Problems I forsee:

BIOS limitations on hard drive - have Promise Tech IDE controller / problem fixed

Power - will the machine be able to serve up mass amounts of data across the network. Stream a DVD to the media PC, music to the laptop in the garage and receive large file downloads from the main PC all at once - or am I asking too much of the wee machine here. OS will be XP Corp - obviously all the visual cutesy shat will be turned off. I also have Windows 2000 Advance Server available but didnt figure it would be any better than XP Corp/Pro. Dont plan on loading drivers for soundcard and such - only need core functionality. Although that may not make any difference. FAH is also very well behaved and I would have no issue with tossing that on there but.......will it actually complete anything in time??? Any pimps using aged hardware that can give me any idea if it will help.

Also to get 1 terrabyte with 200 GB drives I will need a total of 5.......eventually I will need another IDE controller so if anyone has one laying around keep me in mind, thanx.

Another question I ask is this - does anyone know of a way to make all 5 drives look and work like 1 large drive to all the other PCs on the network.........5 drives is going to make things almost as difficult as having stuff strung out on 4 different PCs. I havent seen such a thing but thought I would ask.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

Oh WOW! Thats gonna be one pimprig! The first and foremost problem that i see is the bios not detecting the full size of the hdd. example 120 gb> comp may read it as a 60 giger. now as for getting the hardware to work on it. It really shouldn't be a problem. See if somehow You can manage to pick up a raid controller or for that matter 2 of them. with the raid you will be able to hookup the drives as long as they are the same make and model and size. BTW each raid card can hold up to 4 hdds, and have 2 channnels

Now as for the software XP Corp? Hmm that might be pushing it, What you guys think, yeha might want to consider an alternative such as a windows server program like winblows 2k or something to that extent

power if all goes as planned yah might want to get a redundant PSU and whip out the dremel and cut yourself a bigger hole for the psu or get a case with the redunant hole already there i'd suggest a 550 watter and lots of fans , BTW with those many hdds running there is bound to be alot of heat!

just remeber that the motherboard that you are using already had the ide cahnnels on it so if yah can't afford any raid cards then the ide channels are as good as it gets!

hope i helped you some with weighing out the pro's and cons!

Quote: Originally Posted by aaronrkelly Another question I ask is this - does anyone know of a way to make all 5 drives look and work like 1 large drive to all the other PCs on the network.........5 drives is going to make things almost as difficult as having stuff strung out on 4 different PCs. I havent seen such a thing but thought I would ask.

Not a problem. You'd need to create a spanned volume across all 5 drives.

(Check out also the "Using spanned volumes" section at the bottom of the page.)

I have a 550mhz K6-2 AT tower I modded with a window that has 6 drives in it, two 10 gigs, and 4 Quantum Bigfoots, to give it that server industrial look. I think the BF's are 6 giggers.

I have the whole fileserver backed up on my 160gb WD so I dont have to take the fileserver to LAN's

As for F@H, I have been running it on a Duron 850 = 5 days for a WU, and a P3 866 = about 2 to 3 days.

It might be worth it to spend some money on a big Raid card. 5 drives at raid 0 will be fast but id actually suggest raid 5 so you get speed and redundancy just not that much storage.(TO actually get a terabyte of storage using Raid 5 you would need 6 200gb Drives) The problem with a big Raid 0 setup is if 1 drives fails then everyting goes.(Big guide to Raid) You could use spanned volumes but that offers no speed increase and im not sure how your data would fare if 1 drive were to fail. I think you would only lose the data on that drive but im not positive. Youd probably be taxing your hardware streaming video but if thats all it was doing i think it could handle it. Youll need a bigger PSU id suggest something with active PFC so the machine is more stable. ALso probably run windows server 2k cause its less of a resource hog and will be alot more stable. Just my 0.02 for what its worth.
Edit: Just a thought why not run Linux it can share file with windows be less taxing on the system, more stable, and cost nothing. Also file servers make great print servers too.