Using Old Windows Home Servers Again???

[Jamrr]

Wondering of anyone has any experience in repurposing old Windows Home Servers.
I have in my posession an

1. HP Media Smart Server
   https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01752100#c52100bhttps://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01752100#c52100b
2. HP Proliant Micro Server
   https://www.cnet.com/products/hp-pr...rion-ii-neo-n54l-2-2-ghz-monitor-none-series/

I am pretty sure are the two model specs.
I would like to get them going again as a NAS with something like Free NAS or something similar.
I would use them for movie file backups and possible as a Plex server without decoding.
I realize that these older servers do not have the necessary RAM needed for FreeNAS so I guess my question is;
Should I recycle these old servers or try to spend the time to use them again?

 

[Arkaign]

I have one of the HPs with the VGA mod Sadly, their practical use is pretty nil. Still worth a few bucks on the secondhand market. Speaking as someone who has recently messed with them, yeah it's pretty much a waste of time.

 

[Jamrr]

That is what I am getting from a lot of people. Shame as they are well built and are pretty skimpy on electricity.

 

[mxnerd]

Memory upgrade
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mediasmart-ex475-hack,2171-3.html

 

[Arkaign]

Memory upgrade
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mediasmart-ex475-hack,2171-3.html

I truly applaud the consideration taken in making a reply, engagement in these discussions is what makes AT forums valuable.

However, the article you linked is from ten+ years ago, and even for that time these things performed pretty poorly overall. Best use was for general document storage and low speed backups.

I have had both the AMD and Intel based 47x models, with the VGA mod, with dual core upgrades, with 2 and 4GB ram upgrades. I even considered possibilities towards hacking in a PCIe hardware NIC in some ways. I ran stock OS, I ran Linux based nas configs.

What I learned was as much as I wished it wasn't so, they're just kind of cool looking but wildly impractical and obsolete. A bevy of used NAS options abound for relative peanuts which will roundly outperform and outfeature these by generationally huge margins, read/write speeds, capacity, raid types, power consumption, and of course processor performance and potential to run Plex etc.

I wasted time with these things in the last 1-2 years trying to find a niche use case, and it's just outside of the math now. It's reached the 'not worth it for free' stage, IMHO.

 

[mxnerd]

Yeah, I do know these old NAS servers are really very low end and obsolete. Just trying to give some ideas. It's all up to the OP whether it worth the time to make it work again.

OP probably can consider DietPi for PC, which can run on very low end hardware. I tested it in VMware VM and think OP can give it a try. It comes with a lot of plugins, including Plex and SAMBA server.

 

[Jamrr]

Thanks guys. I appreciate the responses.