I've turned my old computer into a massive file server and I was wondering if anyone else has any out there.

What type of setup do you have? Storage capacity? OS?

Between my PC, Server and Linux Xbox's I have alot of storage capacity. I was just wondering if anyone could give some suggestions on setup/hardware or if they knew of any networks to join.

A good drive that I've seen lately is on Newegg. they have the 250gb SATA 300mbps drives with 16mb cache for under $90, with over 350+ reviews and holding 5 stars. I got a couple to replace 4 - 160gb maxtor drives that failed and I'm extremely impressed (impressive for WD).

I have a mini file server

Dual P3 1ghz
768MB ECC PC133
420GB HD space
Gigabit ethernet card

Running Slackware 10.2, vsftpd, samba, and tightvnc server mainly.

I kind of just threw random HDs into it, so this summer I'm going to get rid of the really low capacity ones (there are two 80gb and one 40gb)... Those 250gb drives on newegg are a pretty good deal though. I've been thinking about getting three of the UATA100 ones. At $80 apiece it'd be $240 for 750gb, and then I'd only be 50gigs shy of a 1tb.

My PC has 520gigs of space, so I'm torn on if I really need more storage right now. It would be nice, video files are getting bigger and bigger these days.

I've been having a problem with transfer rates on my SATA drive on Ubuntu. It's got a 250 GB drive on it, a Silicon Image 3112 chip on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe board (one of the earlier revisions, 1.04 or 1.06) and when I write files to it (either through FTP or SMB) my effective transfer rate is slightly better than dial up. This is bad because the two machines actually have Gb NICs and are connected to a Gb switch.

Did you guys have to do anything special to get your SATA stuff to work right in Linux?

Right now I'm running XP Pro on the server... mainly because it's the legit copy from when I built it and I wasn't sure what operating system to switch to until I could find out more information.

Right now here's what I've got going in HD's:

2 - 250gb Sata 300mbps WD
2 - 250gb Sata 150mbps Seagates
2 - 250gb ATA150 Seagates
2 - 75gb 10k Rapters
1 - 400gb ATA150 Seagate
1 - 120gb ATA150 Maxtor
1 - 100gb ATA100 WD
Dozens - 8-10gb Seagate/Maxtors

**Broken**
4 - 160gb Maxtor

1500, 150, 400, 120, 100 = 2270gb working, 640gb broken

Kind-of excessive isn't it? Kind of what I was thinking... so that's why I'm getting this together and looking for other file servers out there;) Of course this is all on Gigabit ethernet. I wish there was a UMR DC++ hub out there so that I can access my files elsewhere, you know but there isn't one that I can find.

Anyways, if you guys know any neat ways of connecting, running, accessing and maintaining computers like this I'd apprecite it. Right now I'm not getting anything out of these to speak of and I figure I need to 'use-em' or 'lose-em' so to speak.

lol... this is so stupid

.

I'll take some of those if you have extra. All I have is a 200GB Seagate.

First off, wow thats alot of hard drives.

Secondly for my servers I usually run windows XP corp, windows 2000 or sometimes ubuntu (though I've never tried it with sata). For accessing them I use tightvnc because its easy to setup on all three operating systems. Also you can use Samurize on windows computers to view current operations of several computers all on one computer. Thats pretty much all I know.

zkissane, what kernel are you using?

And Worsley, if you aren't happy with Windows XP on your server you should try a server distro of linux. Slackware, Debian, and Gentoo have all worked pretty well for me, and there are TONS of options for accessing your files. Samba is super easy to set up, you just have to mount your hds somewhere and change a configuration file to allow access to those drives. Accessing files remotely is also really easy, as long as you have the correct permissions set you can login through sftp (assuming you have ssh installed). It's fast, secure, and most importantly it works.

If you want to stick with Windows you might want to try installing Hamachi. I haven't played with it much, but I've heard nothing but good things from a few of my friends who use it. If you just want to administer your computers remotely install TightVNC... it's pretty neat.

2.6.12-10-k7

do you have dma enabled?

I wish they made a mini-itx cube case with 3x5-1/4" bays. That way you can get a 4 or 5 drive SATA enclosure and a mid-range mini-itx board and have a very small storage box.

I don't think SATA drives have DMA as an option. In any event, hdparm won't let me enable it (it's is mostly written for IDE drives). I don't know of a program like hdparm for SATA.

Are you using libata (the driver inside the SCSI subsystem), or the deprecated blk_dev_ide driver? You should probably make another thread in computers and post your dmesg. Linuxquestions.org would also be another good resource to post this kind of question.

i have 2 Maxtor 300 gb sata drives and 1 250 WD, running on an amd 3000 64, xp pro. mostly because of cheapness and easibility

no but I do have a small penis

I have 2 Hatachi 160s, 2 WD 250s, 1 WD 120, 1 Maxtor 120.