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New Computer or Individual Devices?

N

nman729

Junior Member
I have been putting this off for to long, and my home network is suffering from my neglect. Here is what I need to happen.

One printer connected to the network that people can print from. Regardless of the OS. And that will sit in one spot in the house(i have hard wired Ethernet to every room, so that's not a problem).

Centralized storage(NAS, or a computer with a fat raid, or hard drive.) And backup. If built on a computer, reliable backup software.


I am leaning towards a low cost, low power computer to do this. But, I'm also open to putting individual devices (NAS and Networked print server boxes) in. My network is D-Link based, and I would like to keep it that way. I know how to build computers and know about parts, but i have been out of it for a while, and need to know what are the lowest cost, and lowest power consuming parts that can do these jobs. Also, I need reliable software to perform these tasks. It has to work, and it has to work all the time.

I'm accepting any and all ideas.
 
this isnt a networking problem so much as a hardware problem thats going to be related to your budget and the amount of work the file/print server

may be doing at a given time (and would then belong in General Hardware). really the only network consideration would be if your gear is 10/100 or 802.11a/b/g and you want to go on and move to gigabit or wireless N, but you didnt give *any* details about your current gear, current uses, future wishes, network capabilities, or budget.

without some more information, youre just going to get very general advice. atom builds as a print/file/backup server if there isnt much demand. something more powerful and expensive if you want to move a lot of files or stream media over the network that may or may not handle the data.

 
Why would you need more than a network capable printer to satisfy your printing requirement? What would a print server add?
 
i am sorry for the lack of infornmation.

i have 3 vista PCs on my home network (two hardwired, and one laptop wireless) and one xp computer on the network. i have tried numerous times to get the printer (attached to the vista machine) shared with the rest and the xp machine but it never works. i would like a network printer, but i also want the functionality of a separate pc so i can use it as a print server and as a automatic backup machine that can pull data from all the other pcs and back them up automatically. so my question is; would it be easier to buy a print server and a nas box( i dont know if nas boxes have automatic backups or not) or build a low cost-low power machine?
 
my only concern is this: once i shell out the $300 for this pc, will it do the things i want it to all the time? thats my main concern, if im going to do this, it has to be compatible with windows XP, all versions of Vista, and possibly 7.
 
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