pc for back up and streaming

docp

Senior member
Jul 4, 2007
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0
76
hello all,
I have an old desktop with fairly good config.

AMD AM3 athlon II X4 635 quadcore with gigabyte motherboard with couple of terrabytes of hard disk having all my ripped DVD and music.

I want to build machine which can serve as time machine back up for my macbook pro and stream content for my iPad and apple tv.

how can i accomplish this?
 

docp

Senior member
Jul 4, 2007
206
0
76
which NAS box you recommend?

i wanted to repurpose this old pc actually.
 
Dec 10, 2005
28,885
14,144
136
which NAS box you recommend?

i wanted to repurpose this old pc actually.
I've only used a Synology DS413 - a 4 bay NAS. It's set up as 2 RAID 1 arrays and is only serving as our lab's backup server for 8+ computers. But they're simple devices to set up and maintain and will consume less power than a full-fledged computer. And from what I can tell, they have a fair amount of streaming options and likely are compatible with streaming to devices like an AppleTV and shouldn't be too difficult to set up.

Perhaps a 2-bay Synology one would be a good option for a home system for backup and streaming purposes.

But you may be able to get the same functionality out of a re-purposed old machine if you find some appropriate streaming software, and likely could be cheaper if you already have all you need. But on that front, I don't really have any recommendations for software - maybe for streaming, Kodi could be of some use.
 

Spungo

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2012
3,217
2
81
how can i accomplish this?
StableBit DrivePool - $30 (or $55 if you want to bundle with Scanner and CloudDrive)

There are 30 day trial versions of DrivePool and Scanner, so you can see if they're the kind of solution you want. My file server has 9 hard drives, and they show up as a single storage space. All balancing and redundancy of specified folders across multiple drives is done automatically. Just set the thing and walk away. Scanner even has a feature to send out email and text message notifications. You can get a text message on your phone if one of the drives starts showing signs of failure, and DrivePool will automatically move all files off that drive if it is possible to do so.

I really wish I paid the extra money to have Scanner and DrivePool from the beginning instead of just having DrivePool. One of my 3TB drives failed (Seagate, obviously), so I lost quite a bit of data. That could have been avoided if I had earlier notification of failure.