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Building a home all-purpose Network Server!?

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There is almost no way to create a reliable noiseless/fanless system with 3 or 4 drives. Especially in such a small case. Sorry, it ain't happening.

Personally, for a home server, I'd ditch the raid idea and go with a small system with less drives and a good backup solution. Who cares if your personal email/website is down for a couple of hours while you get a new drive and restore an image and restore data from tape?

At home, I have one of these that I got for $99 from CompUSA on clearance. Maxed out the memroy, loaded 2000 server and jammed another 80GB drive in there. It's quiet (only one fan), offers enough network storage for me, runs FTP and HTTP with PHP and MySQL, and Windows Media Services. It has never crashed (unless I did something that crashed it) and system temps are OK, even when running almost full load in the summer with no AC. I can remote manage it with VNC or Terminal Services. My next projects include upgrading to Server2003 and adding another NIC to set up a VPN server. It had originally come with 2 NICs but I pulled one as I didn't need it and it gave the second HD some breathing room. It's more than enough machine for fiddling around with. I really think what you're trying to do is overkill, but it's your time and money...just take pics if you get something set up, because I wanna see it. 😉
 
That seems like a very cool system. I?m not too impressed with the storage side of it, but that is more in line for what I am looking for. Small, compact, and a max of 90 watts. Not bad. Do you have more info on such systems? Specifically the coppermine CPU?
 
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