Making a file server with OLD hardware?

[Addikt]

Alright, well this might be a stupid question but I have an old 133 kicking around. Usually I use my laptop which has fairly limited hard drive space and I wanted to make a dedicated file server for all the computers on my network.

So, the old piece of junk I'm trying to use is a 133 MHz, I do have it connected to the network and all other computers can see files on it's massive 1.3 GB hard drive. I have 2 other hard drives I want to put in it though, a 200 GB Seagate 7200.9, and a 120 GB 7200.7 Seagate.

I don't really want to rush into this since I have some valuable data on these hard drives which I don't want lost if everything doesn't go to plan. I am not sure if the motherboard supports ATA166, or even 133 for that matter, it's probably ATA100 which I assume wouldn't matter too much. I will update this post with the PSU Rating since it's kinda hard to get at.

Just wanna know if this would work, I have a 533 MHz also and I'm sure that would work if this one doesn't.

 

[DaveSimmons]

p1-133 motherboards will have ATA 33 not ATA 100, and the BIOS will only support drives up to either 8 GB or 32 GB.

Use the 533, even for that you'll probably need a PCI IDE controller like a Promise Ultra 100 or Ultra 133. the 533 will also take PC100 RAM instead of EDO.

 

[Addikt]

But the 533 should support a 200 GB HDD right? The 533 is a Pentium 3, It's not ancient like the 133, so it should use ATA 133.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Addikt
But the 533 should support a 200 GB HDD right? The 533 is a Pentium 3, It's not ancient like the 133, so it should use ATA 133.

The P3 motherboard might be ATA-100 or -133 unless it's really old and only ATA-66.

You may need a BIOS flash to get it to see a 200 GB as 200 instead of 132.

 

[doan]

Install your OS on a small drive and use the big drives on a PCI-IDE controller.

 

[Gerbil333]

My Thinkpad 600e (PII 300MHz, 288MBs RAM, Seagate 40GB 5400rpm hd) can hardly transfer data faster than 10MB/s over my gigabit network because the CPU usage goes to 100%.

 

[JackMDS]

It seems like we are using overlooking "jargon" to an issue that is unrelated.

If you need to stream Music, Video, etc. speed should be a consideration and you need a fast server. Otherwise it really does not matter, for routine work the differences might amount to few seconds. Large backup and transfer can be done automatically at night.

:sun: