Which OS would suit my needs??

[Copenhagen69]

so this is the plan ...

I am going to run a computer for storing my media like movies and pics as a backup in raid5. I want to run Plex or Emby server as well on here and link all my tv/roku to it to stream.

Would windows 7 work? Or would I need something more powerful like Linux or win server OS?

Also want to keep it safe since I'll have family pics and stuff on it.

Thoughts?

 

[Ketchup]

You could honestly do all this with Windows 7/8.1. I personally wouldn't recommend 10, due to it being more designed around sharing data and apps that communicate outside the home.

I run server 2008, but a server OS isn't for everyone.

Also, for a server, you want a backup outside of the server for everything important. If price become an issue, I would sacrifice RAID for external storage. Remember that RAID is great for minimizing downtime, but is useless for catastrophic failures, of if more than one drive dies at once.

Personally, I think RAID is great in a corporate environment, not so much home. I use my server as a weekly backup for important folders on on the desktop (I just use Windows backup, fully automated). Every couple months, I plug in my external backup and update the changes. Every other time, the backup drives sit in a good environment, not running, and therefore very little wear.

 

[JEDIYoda]

You might consider going all the way back to win 95...just a thought....

 

[ControlD]

I built an unRAID box to do pretty much exactly what you are looking for. It not only stores all of my files but is also runs a Plex server that I use to serve content to various clients. Works great and has some data protection as well.

 

[Red Squirrel]

For that I'd go Linux. Personally as far as flavour goes I like CentOS. Use mdadm for raid, and samba for the shares.

 

[Puffnstuff]

If I were investing money into an os right now I'd get 10 for the longevity. Why buy something that you know is going to be unsupported soon when you can maximize your investment?

 

[Copenhagen69]

Unraid does have a cool feature of using an SSD as a cache drive to improve performance. Is this a common thing from all the other OS?

I would be brand new to Linux so I don't want to screw something up or forget a step and leave my system wide open to the world or something like that. Is locking Linux down to make it as safe as a locked down win OS easy to do?