Home Media NAS server help please

[suedenim]

Hi,

 

I'm looking for some advice on how best to approach to setting up a home server.

Mainly used for storing and serving up MP3's, Movies (in various formats) and Pictures.

Secondary usages will be Torrenting and running services for serving up my digital goodies over the internet.

I've been looking at Subsonic and Calibre for internet access and probably XBMC with the server running a shared MySQL instance.

 

Hardware will consist of bits from my old rig,

CPU = E6600

MB = Gigabyte P965 + 2GB RAM

PSU = 550W

HDDS = several of varying sizes from 160GB to 500GB

 

In the future I can see me adding TB HDD's but for now I have less than 1TB of data

 

 

I was initially looking at Linux and got sidetracked by ZFS too but I think ZFS might be overkill and unfriendly to my

old HDD collection.

 

So I'm looking for advice and pointers at other options for a home media nas server.

[suedenim]

Is it worth it to buy a small SSD to run the OS and services from or would I be better suited looking at an OS geared towards a NAS like FreeNAS or UnRAID which can run off a usb stick or sd card

[dr_bowtie]

if it was me I'd pop an SSD for the OS and run windows on it... that would be the easiest if you have other Windows based rigs that need to access the server....

 

just build the rig as normal and install the media on the drives you have and then Share those drives as Read ONLY and then map them to the other rigs... very fast and effective

[suedenim]

I had considered that but I was looking at using this as an opportunity to learn another OS which is why I have the interest in Linux over Unraid (and Win).

 

Obviously I don't want to over complicate this too much too soon.

 

Another question related to NAS use but has anyone downloaded their Steam library and had it on their home server for quicker game access. Basically get all your library onto your home server some how and then copy the games back and forth as you play with them?

 

Actually going with a Win install (or even a Win VM) they could be kept up to date too...)

 

So this leads onto another new question, would an E6600 be good eough to run a host OS like Linux and a VM - I suspect 2GB ram might be a little low though

[dr_bowtie]

yes the CPU would be more than enough... but you will need more ram...4gb minimum and 8gb preferred...

 

For what you want to do I;d suggest using the NAS freeware software... it is browser based so its very simple to use.

 

I have backed up my whole steam folder and put it on the server but I've only done it for back up purposes and never tried to actually make steam think it's installed and thats the file path...it may work but I'd bet it would be laggy