Using my old PC as a web/file server?

Using my old PC as a web/file server?

I have an old desktop computer that I've been trying to sell for AGES. I guess nobody is looking for computers because it was advertised at a dirt cheap price on craigslist, local papers, etc. Anyways, I was wondering if it would be worth it to set it up as a home file server, a web dev server (I have a web host for actual production use), and maybe host a few server applications (ex: ventrillo). The computer is actually an old Dell that I cannibalized after the motherboard being destroyed by lightning, so it has fairly new parts in it.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 231

Total answers/comments: 4

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Guest [Entry]

I'd get a simple soho UPS, and maybe add some RAM, so I can start VMs up on that machine, that way you can run windows and linux on it at the same time

Guest [Entry]

"If you are primarily wanting a file server, I'd check into FreeNAS, OpenFiler and Windows Home Server (WHS). Each has distinct advantages, but all should work for you. IMHO WHS and FreeNAS are a bit nicer in terms of disk management. WHS has the advantage of being able to run other windows service based software (such as TVersity). OpenFiler is linux based and can run pretty much anything out there. You could use it as a media hub with a UPnP software, in addition to file serving chores and a network torrent client. FreeNAS is BSD based, and will run a lot of open-source utils as well, but slightly fewer than OpenFiler will.

My suggestion if you plan on running it as a file server (and not using WHS) would be to install your server OS to a thumb drive, on an internally mounted USB adapter. You should be able to run 4 hard drives on your PSU without issue, but wouldn't suggest going with more than that without upgrading the PSU. It should be perfect for file serving, though may be a bit light for UPnP streaming (at least if you need live/on-the-fly re-encoding)."

Guest [Entry]

I would also stick a big HDD in there & turn it into a media center & dvr.

Guest [Entry]

Throw Windows XP on the machine and there's no reason you shouldn't be able to use this machine for both a web server and file server. I've done this with less without any issues...