HI all
I have 3 machines at home, one of which contains music and ghost images..
What I would like to do is add a 4th box strictly for storing the above.
This box will
Always stay on so that the files are always accessible.
What would the minimum requirements be for this 4th box:
Power supply:
Depends on what's in the box. Other than the CPU & video card you
choose, it doesn't need a high-capacity power supply at all, but a
good quality name-brand power supply is always recommended over an
unknown generic. If you insist on using a P4 and several hard drives
(keeping expansion, ability to add more HDD in mind) then you'll want
a power supply with adequate 12V rail, minimum 13A)
Processor: ive got a spare 2.4/800
A wastefull overkill. The needed speed for the box is mostly
determined by the LAN speed. A 100Mbit LAN only needs around 200MHz
CPU (seriously, no perforamance benefit to faster boxes because the
LAN is by FAR the biggest bottleneck). A 1Gbit LAN might benefit from
a P2 400MHz box, but there is no consumer lan that needs a P4 CPU for
a file-server box. The benefit to a semi-modern box is the
motherboard being able to support the HDD capacity desired, but if
you're using a PCI IDE RAID controller (perhaps the optimal
arrangement) then [HDD size support by motherboard] isn't an issue.
M/b: will an 875 chipset be overkill?
Yes, the entire box will be overkill and waste electricity and create
excess noise and accumulate dust for no good reason. If you really
want a semi-modern box made of newer components then consider a Via
Eden type platform.
Depends on the OS. Windows should be NT/2K, not XP and especially not
9x, and since it's a single tasking situation with limited number of
clients the amount of memory generally doesn't matter for home uses,
unlike a large business environment. 128MB should work but if running
Linux you might get by with as little as 6-10MB... depends on the
functionality of the box. Considering the price/size tradeoff of
modern memory, 256 or 512MB seems a good tradeoff for a newer
platform, but within a given budget it would be best to spend the $ on
RAID mirroring and multiple drives.
Space: 120G partitioned 3 times - music/images/documents
UPS: for sure
OS: xp pro (all machines)
Since this machine will always be on for 24/7 access, I am concerned about
cooling
and harddrive failure. Is this even an issue to worry about?
If the data is valuable you need make backups. If data is accumulated
enough that you would have significant loss if it failed in-between
backups then use RAID 1. As mentioned above you're creating a box
that needlessly creates excess heat so are to a certain extent
increasing the liklihood of problems, but in general there isn't any
special need for cooling, ALL systems you own should have adequate
cooling to run 24/7 at full-load already, any box that isn't up to
this standard should be considered defective and will likely die
prematurely due to long-term heat stress. All systems should have
adequate cooling for the hard drives, especially this file-storage box
or any others that hold valuable data.
Factor in that I would like to use a small form factor unit. The shuttle
series looks nice,
but ventilation doesn't look good.
Again you are creating a problem. A storage box doesn't need be large
but there's no point in trying to minimize the size of it when it
doesn't need be accessible for use, can be stuck "anywhere" out of
sight so long as it has adequate ventilation. You should avoid those
systems using small-form-factor power supplies because they're not
nearly as hardy as a decent full PS/2 (standard ATX) sized power
supply, with a quality dual ball-bearing fan in it.
Dave
