Filed under: Hardware, Linux, Open Source
How to build an $80 file server in 45 minutes
by Jordan Running Nov 20th 2006 at 1:00PM
Jon Peck wanted a file server for streaming media across his network so he wouldn't need to leave his main PC on 24/7. Rather than buy an expensive preconfigured NAS machine, he did what real men do: He built it himself, in about 45 minutes, for under $80. Built around a cheap refurbished Dell and loaded with Ubuntu Linux, he does all of the machine's administration through web-based interfaces like SWAT and TorrentFlux. Of course, he gives step-by-step instructions on getting the machine set up, which took him less than an hour "from zero to a fully functional system." Very cool.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
RM said 2:52PM on 11-20-2006
Very manly, indeed! Especially those beefy Linux commands! *grunt*
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Ian said 6:51PM on 11-20-2006
I do admire the effort, but I have 3 issues:
1) 10 GB is not a lot of space, especially for streaming media. He doesn't discuss adding another drive either internally, or via USB. And that would push the time/expense factor up both ways.
2) How is leaving this system on 24/7 better than leaving his primary system on. Odds are it's a 300 W power supply, which is significantly more than, say an Infrant at idle/max power of 50/100 W.
3) No redundancy or high availability -- a NAS (even SOHO ones) typically allow for a RAID array, and have backup to external drive features.
That said, I'm still waiting for a cheap preconfigured NAS solution though...
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h0mi said 9:23PM on 11-20-2006
Ian- It's a 110 watt powersupply according to this:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opgx150/en/ug/specs.htm
That's not bad, and that's probably enough juice to drive 2 HDs I think but the case appears to only have room for 1. The chipset is 815E which doesn't have USB 2.0 on board... I don't know what the maximum size HD it can support.
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Lonnie McClure said 10:17PM on 11-20-2006
Keep in mind the power supply wattage does not relate to actual power usage. The system I use for routine tasks has a 350 watt power supply, but peaks at 101 watts actual usuage during boot, and idles at 76 watts with two hard drives spining and all slots filled with cards.
For the record, it is an 815EP based Asus CUSL2-C motherboard with a 1.1GHz Celeron CPU. Power measurement was done with a Kill-a-Watt (http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html).
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Peter said 10:24PM on 11-20-2006
h0mi - "the case appears to only have room for 1"
You're right. We have some similar units at work and they do only have room for 1 drive.
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Bill said 10:55PM on 11-20-2006
I run a Windows XP box for the bulk of stuff, but I also run a FreeNAS box which to be honest, has never had even one issue. And it's a hell of a lot less overhead than Ubuntu.
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AGM130 said 10:28AM on 11-21-2006
I agree FreeNas is the way to go, you can run it from a 128mb usb stick, save the rest of the hd space for storage. Been running a 1tb freenas box for about 8 months now, never any problems. Easy web interface for admin, and supports a few different types of raid.
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jyoseph said 6:44PM on 11-21-2006
I like freeNAS as well but only 1 prob, I'm pretty sure it doesn't serve up .php files. Would be nice to build out .php pages and test them locally.
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Peter said 9:50PM on 11-21-2006
jyoseph - freeNAS isn't a web server it's a storage server. You need a web server or LAMP/WAMP setup to test PHP pages.
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