Questions about a hand-me-down PC turn into file server for backups

joe_coolish

Junior Member
May 23, 2014
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I was recently given an HP dc7800 with the Core 2 Quad and 8gbs (?) of RAM. At least that is what I was told (I haven't turned it on yet, missing a power cable)

What I want to do is load Server 2012 R2 Core and make it a file server to store all of my other devices' backup data. I have 3 laptops, a Surface, a desktop (All running Windows 8.1), several phones and other tablets, etc. and I want to have a central location on my network to store my backups.

My question is, what is the maximum number of hard drives I can load into it? Is there a limit to the drive types I can load? I would like to install something like WD Red drives. (Suggestions are very welcome!)

Ultimately, I wanted to just buy a NAS system to do all of this, but then someone suggested I build a file server from an old computer (thus I reached out to friends and family and received the HP). Is this tower a good choice? Will I need to upgrade any internal pieces to make this work? I'm guessing a USB 3.0 controller and an upgraded NIC wouldn't hurt :p

Thanks for any help!
 

alzan

Diamond Member
May 21, 2003
3,860
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I was recently given an HP dc7800 with the Core 2 Quad and 8gbs (?) of RAM. At least that is what I was told (I haven't turned it on yet, missing a power cable)

What I want to do is load Server 2012 R2 Core and make it a file server to store all of my other devices' backup data. I have 3 laptops, a Surface, a desktop (All running Windows 8.1), several phones and other tablets, etc. and I want to have a central location on my network to store my backups.

My question is, what is the maximum number of hard drives I can load into it? Is there a limit to the drive types I can load? I would like to install something like WD Red drives. (Suggestions are very welcome!)

Ultimately, I wanted to just buy a NAS system to do all of this, but then someone suggested I build a file server from an old computer (thus I reached out to friends and family and received the HP). Is this tower a good choice? Will I need to upgrade any internal pieces to make this work? I'm guessing a USB 3.0 controller and an upgraded NIC wouldn't hurt :p

Thanks for any help!

http://www.cnet.com/products/hp-com...gb-ram-160gb-hdd-vista-business-series/specs/

According to this spec sheet it's got:

2 free 5.25" internal bays (5.25" to 3.5" adapters will get you two additional hdd's/ssd's)
1 free 3.5" internal bay - the one that's being used by the included 160GB drive could be utilized for a bigger drive.

It comes with a 365W power supply, you may have to swap in a bigger PSU depending on # of added drives.

It comes with a Gb NIC port.

Spec sheet didn't say how many PCI/PCIe slots available, nor how many SATA ports on motherboard. You may want to add a 4-port SATA card for extra drives.
 
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BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,054
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Alzan's advice is in the ballpark and center-field.

Since I'd been "building" file servers out of old desktops since 1998, it became a habit. When the "NAS" boxes or kits began appearing, I didn't want to shell out just for an experiment.

I built my WHS-2011 server out of an old 680i motherboard and what is now a Q6600 C2Q, 4GB DDR2 and some 1TB drives. Then, after the lapse of 2-years running 24/7, I discovered a conflict between the nForce controller drivers and drivers for other hardware which was causing a single core of the processor to load up with delayed procedure calls and interrupts. It was a benign problem -- more or less -- but you could see the server Dashboard slow down a tad.

I solved that problem by merely installing a $75 4-port controller using the Marvell 9230 chip -- without even cabling drives to it. But since the nForce never fully implemented AHCI officially, I wanted to shut it down. So I put two of those hardware controllers in available PCI-E slots. I've been chided for picking such a minimalist approach to the drive controller, but you might of course double the expense and get a hardware unit offering RAID5 or 6. I'm fine with drive-pooling, and an application like StableBit will work fine with Server 2012 R2. It was designed with that OS and others in mind.

You certainly may want to replace the PSU, though. I chose my drives carefully. I don't need 16TB of storage -- 8TB will work just fine, and I currently have only three of the four 2TB Seagate NAS drives I ordered installed. More drives? Bigger PSU requirement at some ultimate limit. Fewer drives? A more modest investment -- or possibly the 365W unit may be sufficient. But I wouldn't bother trying to find out. I'd just get a new PSU.

With emphasis here, I'm not endorsing the Seagate NAS drives -- the WD Reds are fine. With a newer server OS like 2012 R2, you should have no problem using 3 or 4TB drives. Even with 2008 R2 or WHS'11 -- the OS's will accommodate GPT and AF, provided the SP or other patches have been installed.

Everything hinges on available features of the HP DC7800 motherboard. I would hope there are enough SATA ports to configure four disks. Alternatively, you only need a free PCI-E slot that is at least x4 capable -- x2 capable for the type of controller I'm using myself. The controller I purchased ($75) allows one SATA port to function as a port-multiplier, meaning that 7 disks can be cabled to it, but you need another piece of port-multiplier hardware -- adding maybe $90 to the cost of the controller itself.

Also, I'm not going to promote my controller choice, although it is working out great. It is a StarTech PEXSAT34RH, and there are at least a few comparable units -- some costing less. You may not need it, though.

Another thing you can do is to convert a controller port which offers "port-multiplier" to eSATA, cable the eSATA to port-multiplier hardware in an appropriate NAS box with its own PSU, and then double your HDD deployments and capacity -- all administered and configured under your Win 2012 R2 (or whatever server OS) you wish to use.

Whatever floats your boat. I just don't like OEM computers, their minimalist power-supplies and limited expansion capability, and sometimes -- proprietary hardware components. But a C2Q system should be capable of giving you more than you need.
 

alzan

Diamond Member
May 21, 2003
3,860
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Dang, I was going for the fences...

Since spinning platters are cheap and some SSD's are very reasonable OP could do an SSD for OS and progs., and maybe a JBOD or RAID 1+0 and external enclosure for backup, depending on his budget.

WD Reds 3.0TB are reasonably priced for the performance you get, would definitely use one in an enclosure for back-ups.

OP could also replace the current optical drive with a BluRay writer for archive purposes.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 28, 2005
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if all u need is a nas... id install freenas, boot of usb from an image of freenas, instead of installing WHS.

http://www.freenas.org/

FreeNAS is a lot more resource friendly unless u want to create complex RAID arrays, in which you should have about 1GB of ram per terabyte of data a redundant RAID-Z configuration.

now if u want a machine to do automatic backups, then WHS might be a better route as you can schedule backups.

However if u just want a centralized storage, then map your drives on each PC in which you want NAS access to, then FreeNAS is a better route IMO.

Also you are limited to sata ports in the amount of drives you can have.
You can use controller cards with PASSTHOUGH, however things get kinda messy unless you have experience in dedicated controller cards to add sata ports.

A lot of us here use FREENAS or a type of free NAS software to get what you want.

I use both Server 2008 R2 and FreeNAS map'd to my server to do my automatic backups...
 
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joe_coolish

Junior Member
May 23, 2014
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Thank you all for all of the replies!

@BonzaiDuck - I really like your idea about going external. I checked the manufacturing date on the computer, and it said some time in Oct '08, so I'm assuming that the PCI Exp ports are going to be 1.0, so I figured that ESATA and USB 3.0 were going to have similar speeds. I have a spare USB 3.0 card sitting around, so I'm going to throw that in and get something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HFR...raid+enclosure

I want to do either RAID 5 or 10 with 3 or 4 bays. Are there any other options that I should look at?

@alzan - The box already has a 250gb hard drive in it. Since I'm only going to use the computer for file sharing, would I get much of a benefit switching from a 7200 RPM spindle to an SSD?

As for FreeNAS, I have an MSDN subscription, so I may as well use some of my Server licenses! Plus, I might turn it into a plex media server if it performs well.

Thank you for all the great advice!

Thanks for all the input!
 

Jeff7181

Lifer
Aug 21, 2002
18,368
11
81
I have a very similar setup to what you seem to be looking for.

I'm running Ubuntu with Samba and Plex Media Server. My media is stored on a 6TB RAID5 volume.

If I could easily do it over again, I'd configure my drives as JBOD instead of RAID 5 and use BTRFS. Unfortunately, I have no backup of my media collection right now. I have most of it on a 3TB drive, but my collection has grown beyond 3TB so I wouldn't be able to recover it all.

Seagate has a 6TB drive out now. I might pick one up when I get my next quarterly bonus from work and use that as a "backup" target.
 

alzan

Diamond Member
May 21, 2003
3,860
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Thank you all for all of the replies!

@BonzaiDuck - I really like your idea about going external. I checked the manufacturing date on the computer, and it said some time in Oct '08, so I'm assuming that the PCI Exp ports are going to be 1.0, so I figured that ESATA and USB 3.0 were going to have similar speeds. I have a spare USB 3.0 card sitting around, so I'm going to throw that in and get something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HFR...raid+enclosure

I want to do either RAID 5 or 10 with 3 or 4 bays. Are there any other options that I should look at?

@alzan - The box already has a 250gb hard drive in it. Since I'm only going to use the computer for file sharing, would I get much of a benefit switching from a 7200 RPM spindle to an SSD?

As for FreeNAS, I have an MSDN subscription, so I may as well use some of my Server licenses! Plus, I might turn it into a plex media server if it performs well.

Thank you for all the great advice!

Thanks for all the input!

I would suggest a RAID 10; the performance gain from a RAID 5 is lost if/when a rebuild occurs.

Use the 250GB as you like; I suggested a different and/or larger drive because the spec sheet denoted an included 160GB.

Higher spindle speeds would help a file server; an SSD would be better than high-speed spindles.

I suggested SSD for an OS drive since I've using them in two systems, now I wouldn't use an HDD if I had a choice. My third system is using one of Seagate's SSHD's.
 

Jeff7181

Lifer
Aug 21, 2002
18,368
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I would suggest a RAID 10; the performance gain from a RAID 5 is lost if/when a rebuild occurs.

Use the 250GB as you like; I suggested a different and/or larger drive because the spec sheet denoted an included 160GB.

Higher spindle speeds would help a file server; an SSD would be better than high-speed spindles.

I suggested SSD for an OS drive since I've using them in two systems, now I wouldn't use an HDD if I had a choice. My third system is using one of Seagate's SSHD's.

RAID 10 is a huge waste for home use unless you're working out of your home and not having access to your data, or having slow access to your data costs you money. It's for businesses that cannot tolerate a performance drop when a rebuild occurs.

RAID 5's main focus isn't performance, it's efficiency. If you want the best performance, you use RAID 0. In theory, data loss will not be an issue because RAID is not a backup solution, so your data should be backed up elsewhere.

RAID 5 is a good balance of performance, resilience and efficiency. I doubt any home users would actually suffer from the performance impact of rebuilding onto a new disk from parity in a RAID 5 array. A three disk (7200 RPM consumer grade Toshiba) RAID 5 array with a PERC 6i controller was all it took to saturate my 1 Gbps network at home. I can read from and write to the array at ~120 MBps.

In this case, having the ability to tolerate a drive failure and not have the "server" go down is a convenience thing. But efficiency is key - he's got limited space and connectivity for drives. If this was a business environment and it wasn't a big deal to spend a few more thousand dollars and install 8 drives in RAID 10 or install an external shelf with 12 or 24 2.5" SAS drives, that would be different. But this is a home "server" scenario where cost (I assume) and space are limiting factors. It might be worth the extra $100 to turn a 2 disk RAID 0 array into a 3 disk RAID 5 array just so you don't lose the convenience of having immediate access to your server and data while you obtain a replacement disk and restore a backup. But to literally double your disk cost to avoid a performance impact during a rebuild? Not an effective spend for home use.

Also, IMHO, there's absolutely zero reason to use an SSD as a boot drive for a home server. Mine gets rebooted every 2 or 3 months to install updates when I think of it. So what if it takes 45 seconds to fully boot rather than 10 or 15? For the other 7,775,955 seconds it's up and running. Serving files doesn't require much and you'd be better served spending extra money to add additional RAM to the box rather than an SSD boot drive.
 
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joe_coolish

Junior Member
May 23, 2014
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RAID 10 is a huge waste for home use unless you're working out of your home and not having access to your data, or having slow access to your data costs you money. It's for businesses that cannot tolerate a performance drop when a rebuild occurs.

RAID 5's main focus isn't performance, it's efficiency. If you want the best performance, you use RAID 0. In theory, data loss will not be an issue because RAID is not a backup solution, so your data should be backed up elsewhere.

RAID 5 is a good balance of performance, resilience and efficiency. I doubt any home users would actually suffer from the performance impact of rebuilding onto a new disk from parity in a RAID 5 array. A three disk (7200 RPM consumer grade Toshiba) RAID 5 array with a PERC 6i controller was all it took to saturate my 1 Gbps network at home. I can read from and write to the array at ~120 MBps.

In this case, having the ability to tolerate a drive failure and not have the "server" go down is a convenience thing. But efficiency is key - he's got limited space and connectivity for drives. If this was a business environment and it wasn't a big deal to spend a few more thousand dollars and install 8 drives in RAID 10 or install an external shelf with 12 or 24 2.5" SAS drives, that would be different. But this is a home "server" scenario where cost (I assume) and space are limiting factors. It might be worth the extra $100 to turn a 2 disk RAID 0 array into a 3 disk RAID 5 array just so you don't lose the convenience of having immediate access to your server and data while you obtain a replacement disk and restore a backup. But to literally double your disk cost to avoid a performance impact during a rebuild? Not an effective spend for home use.

Also, IMHO, there's absolutely zero reason to use an SSD as a boot drive for a home server. Mine gets rebooted every 2 or 3 months to install updates when I think of it. So what if it takes 45 seconds to fully boot rather than 10 or 15? For the other 7,775,955 seconds it's up and running. Serving files doesn't require much and you'd be better served spending extra money to add additional RAM to the box rather than an SSD boot drive.

Totally hit the nail on the head. Space is a big concern. Money is always a concern, but since I had originally budgeted north of $1,000 for the NAS, and since I can get the HDDs for under $500, I have some room to play with as far as the external enclosure and other accessories go. My system has the max RAM it can do (8gb) and the onboard NIC matches my max LAN speed, so I really don't know where else would make sense to upgrade.

I don't need speed, but I would love to have at least 1080p movie streamability (that's ~60mbps right?). Reliability and physical size are my 2 biggest concerns. As for storage size, I think 6TB will be plenty! (I say that now) so going for 4x2TB HDDs in a RAID 5 external enclosure connected via USB 3.0 is probably going to be my setup.

As for the SSD, if I make my primary boot drive a 128 GB SSD, can I use the rest of the drive as a RAID cache?

I'll post back some speeds once I get everything up and running.
 
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Jeff7181

Lifer
Aug 21, 2002
18,368
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81
Totally hit the nail on the head. Space is a big concern. Money is always a concern, but since I had originally budgeted north of $1,000 for the NAS, and since I can get the HDDs for under $500, I have some room to play with as far as the external enclosure and other accessories go. My system has the max RAM it can do (8gb) and the onboard NIC matches my max LAN speed, so I really don't know where else would make sense to upgrade.

I don't need speed, but I would love to have at least 1080p movie streamability (that's ~60mbps right?). Reliability and physical size are my 2 biggest concerns. As for storage size, I think 6TB will be plenty! (I say that now) so going for 4x2TB HDDs in a RAID 5 external enclosure connected via USB 3.0 is probably going to be my setup.

As for the SSD, if I make my primary boot drive a 128 GB SSD, can I use the rest of the drive as a RAID cache?

I'll post back some speeds once I get everything up and running.

Almost every hard drive made today can handle streaming 1080p. You don't need RAID to do that. Even 5400 RPM hard drives are more than capable of that.

Whether or not you can partition the SSD and use part of it as a cache for your array will depend on your controller. My PERC6i doesn't allow that, I don't believe.

Being limited to 8 GB of RAM is one reason not to use Windows. Ubuntu Server will use much less on its own and leave more of that free for caching files coming in and going out of the box.
 

nk215

Senior member
Dec 4, 2008
403
2
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If your budget is that large, why not just get a a good NAS (qnap for example). Repurpose the PC is nice but it will use much more energy than a good NAS. I have no doubt that your computer will use at least 120watts idle vs 20+ watts for the NAS.

The computer does have one clear advantage: You can remote login (RDP) the computer and watch movies on it, play game on it etc with a pretty slow client computer. Look into RemoteFX setup for RDP.

In my setup, I can play game, edit video, edit picture (photoshop w/o openGL) and do just about everything else via a remote connection. That way, I can use a pretty old laptop and still have all the computing power needed. In order to get cuda to work via RDP - for editing video - I had to use Quadro and Tesla cards (which is ridiculously expensive).
 

Jeff7181

Lifer
Aug 21, 2002
18,368
11
81
If your budget is that large, why not just get a a good NAS (qnap for example). Repurpose the PC is nice but it will use much more energy than a good NAS. I have no doubt that your computer will use at least 120watts idle vs 20+ watts for the NAS.

The computer does have one clear advantage: You can remote login (RDP) the computer and watch movies on it, play game on it etc with a pretty slow client computer. Look into RemoteFX setup for RDP.

In my setup, I can play game, edit video, edit picture (photoshop w/o openGL) and do just about everything else via a remote connection. That way, I can use a pretty old laptop and still have all the computing power needed. In order to get cuda to work via RDP - for editing video - I had to use Quadro and Tesla cards (which is ridiculously expensive).

The problem with a NAS device is that very few are capable running Plex Media Server, and the ones that do are typically a light weight version of it without all the same features and functionality as the actual Plex Media Server application. They're basically designed to be able to stream to the Plex client, which by itself isn't that impressive since the main attraction (for me anyway) of the server is that it stores your watched/unwatched history on the server side and allows you to resume playback of any video from any device connected to it. If not for the server portion, I'd just have a file share with my movies and TV shows in it and use VLC to play them over the network.
 

joe_coolish

Junior Member
May 23, 2014
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The problem with a NAS device is that very few are capable running Plex Media Server, and the ones that do are typically a light weight version of it without all the same features and functionality as the actual Plex Media Server application. They're basically designed to be able to stream to the Plex client, which by itself isn't that impressive since the main attraction (for me anyway) of the server is that it stores your watched/unwatched history on the server side and allows you to resume playback of any video from any device connected to it. If not for the server portion, I'd just have a file share with my movies and TV shows in it and use VLC to play them over the network.

Exactly. I wanted to go with a NAS originally, then I got to thinking about all of the other things that would be nice to have a dedicated server do.

As for the power, I'm not too concerned about it because I had to remove some old stuff in my closet that were always on in order to make room for the server. The power savings/cost will be minimal, but there is an offset. Plus where I'm at, power is super cheap. It will cost me about $6-7 a month at 200w 24x7. I'll just skip a Big Mac once a month and call it good :)
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,054
1,682
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Exactly. I wanted to go with a NAS originally, then I got to thinking about all of the other things that would be nice to have a dedicated server do.

As for the power, I'm not too concerned about it because I had to remove some old stuff in my closet that were always on in order to make room for the server. The power savings/cost will be minimal, but there is an offset. Plus where I'm at, power is super cheap. It will cost me about $6-7 a month at 200w 24x7. I'll just skip a Big Mac once a month and call it good :)

I looked at TigerDirect's description for that model. What I'd do with it also depends on the junk resources I have at my disposal here. What you're inclined to do with it would depend on the trouble, availability of cyber-junk, or your pocketbook.

My current server is also a C2Q (Q6600) with 8GB. I think this is more RAM than it needs. Since it was a 680i motherboard, it had some six ports for internal drives with the nForce controller and an eSATA controller. nForce is not AHCI compliant, so I disabled the onboard controller and added two $75 Startech PEXSAT34RH controllers with the 9230 Marvell chip. These only do RAID0, RAID1, RAID 10 or 1+0. But they also only need the native Microsoft AHCI 1.0 driver to run four separate AHCI SATA drives -- each controller. I decided I didn't want RAID5 -- or any RAID for that matter, this time around. So instead, with WHS-2011 and the small price of StableBit Drive-Pool, I'm using the drive-pooling approach.

The value of the drive-pool (and at least that particular software) is that you can select individual folders and subfolders for file duplication, but you don't need to RAID1 an entire drive for redundancy. As for speed, you get what you pay for and what you might choose to pay for may be overkill. The throughput speed on the drive-pool with an SATA-III controller which is PCI-E v.2 in a PCI-E v.1 slot shows just over 300MB/s. With reliable storage, I don't need "super-fast," and it seems to be fast enough.

You should want to be inclined to the hands-on administration of your server, but that's not a great deal of work, once you have it working the way you want it. It's probably going to consume more power than a simple NAS device, but not by that much as a decision-breaker.

I'd find a surplus or scrap tower-case with the essential specs: ATX motherboard mounts and standoffs; plenty of 3.5" and 5.25" drive bays. But at least get a reliable PSU that is ample for the number of drives you want to put in it. If you use an external box with eSATA and port-multiplier, you don't need to worry about power because the external box should have a PSU.

All I can say is this. The WHS-2011 server has been backing up system-boot drives of every machine in the house, every night for the last few years. I made a stupid mistake with the boot-disk of my "flagship workstation," thought I lost the whole enchilada, and was left with the option of making a bare-metal restoration from the server. The server saved my a**!! I mean, what a relief!

Unless you can find an available surplus WHS-2011 disk, though, your OS choices are either more expensive or "less" more expensive. Check out an online article by Maximum PC discussing use of Windows 8 as a home-server OS. Some or many of the WHS add-in programs are designed to work with Win 7 and Win 8, as well as server 2012, "essentials," and earlier server OS's.