The Gun Counter

My home computer is an old tower running Windows XP (IIRC it's a Pentium 4 box) which is getting a little long in the tooth. In the next week or so I plan to get a laptop to use as my primary workstation (an i7 laptop). My wife also has an iPad, we each have a Kindle (mine first gen, her's newer, but the plain e-reader version, not the Fire), and we each have smartphones (droids, due to be replaced soon).

So I'll now have a tower without a purpose. It's plugged into the router and from there to the cable modem, but I expect most of my internet connection in the future will be thru the wi-fi on the router, either via iPad or the laptop. So I'm wondering if it's feasible to make it into a sort-of server, put in a big honkin' hard drive and use it to back-up everything on the laptop and other devices.

Is this feasible? Should I put Linux or some other Unix OS up on it instead of the current Windows XP? Is it worth the effort?

What you're talking about is NAS (Network Attached Storage) and is doable. Others will be along to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe all you need will be your old computer, a big HDD and the proper OS and perhaps a ethernet cable or a pci wi-fi card. There are several Linux based NAS OS's available through Distrowatch, although I haven't had any experience with them.

I'm toying with the same idea for implemention in 2014-15.

Let us know how it goes.

MarkD wrote:My home computer is an old tower running Windows XP (IIRC it's a Pentium 4 box) which is getting a little long in the tooth. In the next week or so I plan to get a laptop to use as my primary workstation (an i7 laptop). My wife also has an iPad, we each have a Kindle (mine first gen, her's newer, but the plain e-reader version, not the Fire), and we each have smartphones (droids, due to be replaced soon).

So I'll now have a tower without a purpose. It's plugged into the router and from there to the cable modem, but I expect most of my internet connection in the future will be thru the wi-fi on the router, either via iPad or the laptop. So I'm wondering if it's feasible to make it into a sort-of server, put in a big honkin' hard drive and use it to back-up everything on the laptop and other devices.

Is this feasible? Should I put Linux or some other Unix OS up on it instead of the current Windows XP? Is it worth the effort?

Sure it's feasible. My most-recently-replace desktop always winds up being put into service as a general server- centralized place for files/data, an always-on system to run services for you, very useful.

Linux makes a fine server but the learning curve might be a bit rough for you. Running Windows as a server is also a different world from what a desktop user expects, so there's likely to be a learning curve there too. I prefer Linux.

Worth the effort? That's a personal decision. I think so, and I've been running servers on my home network since the 90's, but it might not be for you.

Greg wrote:

MarkD wrote:My home computer is an old tower running Windows XP (IIRC it's a Pentium 4 box) which is getting a little long in the tooth. In the next week or so I plan to get a laptop to use as my primary workstation (an i7 laptop). My wife also has an iPad, we each have a Kindle (mine first gen, her's newer, but the plain e-reader version, not the Fire), and we each have smartphones (droids, due to be replaced soon).

So I'll now have a tower without a purpose. It's plugged into the router and from there to the cable modem, but I expect most of my internet connection in the future will be thru the wi-fi on the router, either via iPad or the laptop. So I'm wondering if it's feasible to make it into a sort-of server, put in a big honkin' hard drive and use it to back-up everything on the laptop and other devices.

Is this feasible? Should I put Linux or some other Unix OS up on it instead of the current Windows XP? Is it worth the effort?

Sure it's feasible. My most-recently-replace desktop always winds up being put into service as a general server- centralized place for files/data, an always-on system to run services for you, very useful.

Linux makes a fine server but the learning curve might be a bit rough for you. Running Windows as a server is also a different world from what a desktop user expects, so there's likely to be a learning curve there too. I prefer Linux.

Worth the effort? That's a personal decision. I think so, and I've been running servers on my home network since the 90's, but it might not be for you.

The learning curve doesn't bother me, I've forgotten more OS's than most people have worked with, going all the way back to keypunch cards. From what I've heard Linux runs better on an older box, but the last time I worked with any Unix system directly was Amdhal Unix on a mainframe when I was in college.

MarkD wrote: The learning curve doesn't bother me, I've forgotten more OS's than most people have worked with, going all the way back to keypunch cards. From what I've heard Linux runs better on an older box, but the last time I worked with any Unix system directly was Amdhal Unix on a mainframe when I was in college.

Then go for it. I predict you'll be very pleasantly surprised.

Greg wrote:Sure it's feasible. My most-recently-replace desktop always winds up being put into service as a general server- centralized place for files/data, an always-on system to run services for you, very useful.

What services does it run for you?

Weetabix wrote:

Greg wrote:Sure it's feasible. My most-recently-replace desktop always winds up being put into service as a general server- centralized place for files/data, an always-on system to run services for you, very useful.

What services does it run for you?

Web server, server-side RSS aggregator, media streamer, (those go together nicely), print server, I have a semi-smart UPS that communicates by allowing one system to connect directly over USB- my server connects to it, controls it, and serves up UPS status info to other systems over the network, I used to run an NNTP server (never bothered to re-establish it after the last server rebuild), centralized email management (very handy if you read email on a large number of client systems), it's the serial console server for a couple of devices (my headless Sun box, my router), local DNS server (authoritative for my home network, caching for everything else)...

I don't know what most of that means. The media streamer sounds interesting.

Weetabix wrote:I don't know what most of that means. The media streamer sounds interesting.

You never used Usenet? (NNTP is the protocol Usenet is built on, so an NNTP server is your own local Usenet node.)

Pretty much anytime you have a resource that you want multiple clients to be able to access and use, you want that resource to be on/attached to a server. So you can share data, share devices you're only going to have one of (printer, scanner)... And it's all always there, always available no matter what tinkering you've been doing with your client systems.