File Server

dragon2309

dragon2309

P.I Dragon
Hi, due to my family and myself having copious amounts of data, someone came up with the idea that we have a dedicated file server running RAID. Of course we already have a home network and eerything and I have an old PC.

After looking at hard drive costs and the then doubling it for a RAID setup i decided that RAID was a bit too much. Perhaps one HDD, say 250Gb, each member of the family can have 50Gb (more or less, probably work out to be something like 45Gb but hey).

There are a couple of things that i need sorted out, first off, 48bit LBA, I'm running Windows 98, which of course doesnt suppport drives over 137Gb, is there a patch for this or is it called Windows XP...? If i have to install XP then thats fine. Also, is an old 500Mhz system, the mobo doesnt support 48 bit LBa either, will an IDE PCI add-in card provide this for me even thoughthe mobo doesnt support it?

Another thing, the specs of this comp are 500Mhz AMD K6 - 96Mb RAM, thats it really. Is it worth grabbing up 512Mb stick of RAM for it or not?

Any tips, pointers, hints, answers are grateful, thanks


dragon2309
 
As for the OS there is something called NasLite, from www.serverelements.com , which boots from a floppy disc (unless you pay for it) and basically requires minimum specifications but can support upto 4 IDE HDD's of any capacity, which sounds like it would be ideal in your situation, and it allows you to access the files via HTTP or FTP, although i have never been able to get it to work and it is very picky over which network cards it works with, but if you are going to use XP, then i would say that keeping it at the current amount of RAM is fine, i have got a PC running xp with just 64m of ram, it does need a lot of patience but works. Alternatively i would reccomend using linux, as it is free and shouldn't require any more ram with some software called camba, which will allow you to just access the computer like you would with any through the windows network thing, if you don't know much (or anything) about linux then meppis is probably the best option, as this offers 100% point-and-click installation and comes supplied with Samba.
 
oooh, thanks guys, they look interesting. Ill take a look at them all tomorrow. So if i do install one of those programs then i shouldnt have to worry about my motherboard not supporting the 48 bit LBA, surely that has control over everything??


dragon2309
 
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