Newbie seeks help regarding home file servers!

[t3h l337 n3wb]

I have an old 800mhz PIII system built my dad's friend that's really getting kinda useless... I'm on my moms' crappy 2.8 celeron HP laptop now, but I'm going to be building my own Athlon 64 system this summer, which I'm going to have upstairs in my room. However, my printers and the laptop are downstairs, so I decided to put that PIII comp to use. I can hook it up to my network, add a ~250GB IDE hard drive (got a 20GB one in there now) for backing up my other comps, and also do a bit of web hosting for myself and my friends (streaming music/movies on my Xanga), as I can't find a good web hoster that supports direct linking at file sizes 5+ MB. So, I was wondering if these specs could be good enough for what I want:

Pentium III 800Mhz Coppermine core
128MB SDRAM (NOT DDR)
Windows XP Professional
All comps networked via 54mbps 802.11g

Is the wireless transmission speed fast enough to back up my comps without taking TOO much time? Do I need more RAM? I'm definately not going to get a different processor, though -_-; Thanks in advance!

 

[imported_Kensai]

You *really* need add more ram to that system. 128MB of ram will barely do anything.

 

[necine]

More ram... 512 should do you nicely

 

[Umberger]

I think that wireless is too slow for backing up large amounts of data, unless you're willing to take HOURS AND HOURS to do it. I am running a fileserver/webserver/printserver/dns in my apartment. It is a P3 900, with 128 MB of ram, and it is more than adequate. The limiting factor will be the network. That said, I am running Fedora Core with a pretty minimal install, which is considerably leaner than windows XP. I would reccommend switching to some flavor of linux. Fileservers that are only serving a few people at a time do not need to be beefy. I rarely see more than 5% processor load, and the 128MB of ram that i have is more than adequate.

 

[Umberger]

Originally posted by: Kensai
You *really* need add more ram to that system. 128MB of ram will barely do anything.

It depends how much you want it to do. If you install linux without X, and stick it under a table serving files and printing, then 128 is more than you will ever use. (Assuming you're sharing files with just a few PC's in your house, or with only 1 - 5 friends on the internet at once) Anything more is really overkill.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

I'll probably just leave all the comps on overnight while backing up. As long as its not over like 8 hours...

 

[Umberger]

Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb
I'll probably just leave all the comps on overnight while backing up. As long as its not over like 8 hours...

Shouldn't take that long.

About my previous post: Try it w/ what you have before you spend money on anything more. I use Fedora Core 2 for all those serving/backing up tasks, and my P3 w/ 128MB ram chugs along quite happily.

P.S. - i'm also at like 20-ish days uptime, which is a nice perk (would be more, but the power went out)

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

I have pretty much no linux experience whatsoever -_-; Windows XP just makes things a lot easier to do with easy instructions and stuff

 

[Umberger]

what better time to learn?

 

[Raduque]

I run Server 2003 on a Celeron 1.1ghz with 1gb ram (wired, not 802.11) and it's fine for file server( i just share the drives over the network and map everything) and for HTTP i use Apache for win32.

 

[tooltime]

backing up large files over wireless may get you the occasional disconnect and having to start over, would not burn anything over a wireless.

yes, more ram

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

K thanks, so for ram, would 128MB more (256 total) be enough or should I go for 512 total?

 

[ND40oz]

If you're going to be running Server 2003 or XP, I'd say get the 512, 2000 or 2000 Server would be fine with 256 and you're fine with 128 if you're going to run linux.

How do you plan on doing your backups? This is what will determine how long they will take.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Maybe make image files of the drive on my other comps and then transfer them onto the server comp.

 

[Texun]

I've got a wired P3-700 that works great as long as I don't crowd it, likemulti-tasking while moving hundreds of megs of data at once. I started with 256 and it worked okay. I later moved to 512 and it smoothed out real well for a home file box.

 

[bob4432]

go with 512 ram and i would be skeptical of doing backups over wireless, you would need to verify it after it went to the other machine with md5 or something. acronis true image works nicely. also, if you have a copy of win2kpro i would recommend that over xp for your hardware, less overhead.

and please don't call it a thingy...