File server question...
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Yes. I have an old Windows 10 box loaded with several drives and using "storage spaces" to provide data duplication. I use it as a file server and backup device for several laptops and the wife's desktop. One advantage storage spaces has over RAID is that the drives don't have to be the same size. I think that Synology have a similar system on their latest 4 drive NAS's.
thanks
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Do any of you have a file server in your home LAN? If so, is it worth it? Opinions, recommendations, etc would be appreciated.
My router got 2 USB3 ports and an SMB server so setting up a file server wasn't an expensive ordeal. I am pretty sure something more dedicated would yield more performance, but that doesn't matter for my use case. That use case being first and foremost backups. Regular, background backup jobs. My second use case is using this heap of backup as a UPnP server (which the router also provides) so my media collection is readily available while the main PC is not running. But backups alone are IMHO worth it.
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Do any of you have a file server in your home LAN? If so, is it worth it? Opinions, recommendations, etc would be appreciated.
Several, all Linux based.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth.
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My router got 2 USB3 ports and an SMB server so setting up a file server wasn't an expensive ordeal. I am pretty sure something more dedicated would yield more performance, but that doesn't matter for my use case. That use case being first and foremost backups. Regular, background backup jobs. My second use case is using this heap of backup as a UPnP server (which the router also provides) so my media collection is readily available while the main PC is not running. But backups alone are IMHO worth it.
Appreciated.
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Yes. I have an old Windows 10 box loaded with several drives and using "storage spaces" to provide data duplication. I use it as a file server and backup device for several laptops and the wife's desktop. One advantage storage spaces has over RAID is that the drives don't have to be the same size. I think that Synology have a similar system on their latest 4 drive NAS's.
Me too - Win10 box with Storage Spaces. Around 3TB total with main folders for "official files" (an "office drive"), music, videos, software, sw dev projects. Been working just fine for years. The server gets backed up to an external drive daily. I do periodic ZIPs of the folders and copy them to DropBox for an offsite backup but I will probably look for a more automated solution soon.
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Do any of you have a file server in your home LAN? If so, is it worth it? Opinions, recommendations, etc would be appreciated.
I had a cheap NAS to store family files, especially photos and videos. But, in the process of getting everybody their own laptops, I neglected to store copies for a while and regularly back it up, the NAS crashed, and we lost about 4 years of photos. So now, I simply keep such things in a backup USB drive and chips. No more NAS for me.
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Do any of you have a file server in your home LAN? If so, is it worth it? Opinions, recommendations, etc would be appreciated.
I have an old headless system with front hot-swappable drive bays, running Windows 7 and a bunch of file shares. I keep referring to it as my home NAS--which is undoubtedly a misnomer, but that's exactly how it's used. Whether it's "worth it" depends on how you use it. I mostly use it to host files that would otherwise be spread across the Downloads and Documents folders of a bunch of individual machines. I try to avoid that and dump everything onto the system with the file share. It's also my installer archive. New machine needs an app or an ISO of a CD/DVD? With proper organization, that I've worked out over decades, I can find just about anything within 10 seconds just browsing the file system. Windows Search is slower than that.
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Do any of you have a file server in your home LAN? If so, is it worth it? Opinions, recommendations, etc would be appreciated.
I have my own server in my home-office. Its a great assist in testing development for client-server or web applications...
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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You rock
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Do any of you have a file server in your home LAN? If so, is it worth it? Opinions, recommendations, etc would be appreciated.
I assume you've gone over the arguments for why you might even need a server. There are many ways to add storage and to share storage over the network that don't involve a dedicated server. I'd like to toss in that having a dedicated server in some sort of RAID configuration that can recover from the catastrophic failure of a single drive does NOT mean you don't need to do backups. You can lose all the data on any kind of server either from some sort of physical catastrophe (fire, flood, earthquake) or from external attack (ransom ware). The only way to recover from those things is to have offline, preferably offsite, backups. I had a WDC MyCloud EX2 for many years. Two 4GB HDDs, mirrored, for 4GB of usable storage. It was adequate for holding bulk data that was not used a lot (videos, etc.), data that I wanted to share on the network independent of any of the computers, and daily online backups of all my computers. It was slow and only had room for two hard drives. But it was inexpensive. I ultimately out-grew that device and recently upgraded to a Synology DS920+ with four 4GB drives in a RAID 5 configuration for 12GB of usable storage. The Synology is much faster and more capable (lots more optional and add-on features). But it was expensive and had a steeper learning curve for taking full advantage of it. You can get a MyCloud for under $400 with disks included. If you want something more capable with slots for more disks, I'd recommend one of the Synology servers. In that case, you're looking at somewhere around $1200 and up. If you feel so inclined and think it's within your abilities, building your own server from an older computer you have lying around is probably the cheapest way to go. You don't need a lot of processing power or memory for a server. But pulling all the components together to make it work is time consuming.
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Do any of you have a file server in your home LAN? If so, is it worth it? Opinions, recommendations, etc would be appreciated.
Yes, and it's worth it for frequently used files and quick access backups that you and/or your family may want to keep around and share, but don't want to send into "the Cloud". Though in my case I then run backups/archives of those file server files that I do want to keep around into the Cloud! For example, licensed software and keys, the iDevice media directories (just point iTunes to the mapped drive share and Bob's your uncle), photos and videos, the file share for the home theatre PC, and so on. For years I've been pursuing a hand-me-down approach: generally my old PC lends its parts (motherboard, CPU, memory, every so often case and power supply) to upgrade the file server. The "unchangeables" in the FS are the hardware RAID controller with its disks in RAID10 configuration and a venerable USB stick that hold VMware ESX. So the actual server is a virtual machine. That way I can update the host machine without having to worry about having to reinstall! Older hardware gets a second lease on life instead of landfill! The only time I ran into an issue was when the RAID adapter itself died and its a pretty old model. Bought a cheap knock-off of the Adaptec 5805-Z from China - and didn't even have to reconfigure! Just re-attach the disks and all was well again. Also, the odd dying hard disk, but that's exactly why you run RAID. Now, should you have the privilege of gigabit Internet with no quota, then the whole equation may change: if you can get to files on the Internet as fast as most file servers, then that advantage disappears. Unless you then invest into a faster LAN. Good luck!
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I have an old headless system with front hot-swappable drive bays, running Windows 7 and a bunch of file shares. I keep referring to it as my home NAS--which is undoubtedly a misnomer, but that's exactly how it's used. Whether it's "worth it" depends on how you use it. I mostly use it to host files that would otherwise be spread across the Downloads and Documents folders of a bunch of individual machines. I try to avoid that and dump everything onto the system with the file share. It's also my installer archive. New machine needs an app or an ISO of a CD/DVD? With proper organization, that I've worked out over decades, I can find just about anything within 10 seconds just browsing the file system. Windows Search is slower than that.
been there, done that
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I assume you've gone over the arguments for why you might even need a server. There are many ways to add storage and to share storage over the network that don't involve a dedicated server. I'd like to toss in that having a dedicated server in some sort of RAID configuration that can recover from the catastrophic failure of a single drive does NOT mean you don't need to do backups. You can lose all the data on any kind of server either from some sort of physical catastrophe (fire, flood, earthquake) or from external attack (ransom ware). The only way to recover from those things is to have offline, preferably offsite, backups. I had a WDC MyCloud EX2 for many years. Two 4GB HDDs, mirrored, for 4GB of usable storage. It was adequate for holding bulk data that was not used a lot (videos, etc.), data that I wanted to share on the network independent of any of the computers, and daily online backups of all my computers. It was slow and only had room for two hard drives. But it was inexpensive. I ultimately out-grew that device and recently upgraded to a Synology DS920+ with four 4GB drives in a RAID 5 configuration for 12GB of usable storage. The Synology is much faster and more capable (lots more optional and add-on features). But it was expensive and had a steeper learning curve for taking full advantage of it. You can get a MyCloud for under $400 with disks included. If you want something more capable with slots for more disks, I'd recommend one of the Synology servers. In that case, you're looking at somewhere around $1200 and up. If you feel so inclined and think it's within your abilities, building your own server from an older computer you have lying around is probably the cheapest way to go. You don't need a lot of processing power or memory for a server. But pulling all the components together to make it work is time consuming.
Details much appreciated
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Yes, and it's worth it for frequently used files and quick access backups that you and/or your family may want to keep around and share, but don't want to send into "the Cloud". Though in my case I then run backups/archives of those file server files that I do want to keep around into the Cloud! For example, licensed software and keys, the iDevice media directories (just point iTunes to the mapped drive share and Bob's your uncle), photos and videos, the file share for the home theatre PC, and so on. For years I've been pursuing a hand-me-down approach: generally my old PC lends its parts (motherboard, CPU, memory, every so often case and power supply) to upgrade the file server. The "unchangeables" in the FS are the hardware RAID controller with its disks in RAID10 configuration and a venerable USB stick that hold VMware ESX. So the actual server is a virtual machine. That way I can update the host machine without having to worry about having to reinstall! Older hardware gets a second lease on life instead of landfill! The only time I ran into an issue was when the RAID adapter itself died and its a pretty old model. Bought a cheap knock-off of the Adaptec 5805-Z from China - and didn't even have to reconfigure! Just re-attach the disks and all was well again. Also, the odd dying hard disk, but that's exactly why you run RAID. Now, should you have the privilege of gigabit Internet with no quota, then the whole equation may change: if you can get to files on the Internet as fast as most file servers, then that advantage disappears. Unless you then invest into a faster LAN. Good luck!
good points, thanks
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Do any of you have a file server in your home LAN? If so, is it worth it? Opinions, recommendations, etc would be appreciated.
_TL;DR_ — the answer to your two questions is: 1. Aye! 2. For me, most definitely. Your mileage may vary. It all depends on what you _need_ to do with your files, and what you _expect_ from a NAS (compared to other alternatives). Now for the (very) long and exhaustive reply... It seems to me that I've 'always' had a file server in my home LAN. It started to be an old box just running Linux. Then, for many many years (well beyond its expected lifetime!), I had an Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive (see [Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive Review - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrQPe4GZzY8)). It used just one single, pretty ordinary HDD, so after 5-6 years, when it started to fail, I could easily swap it by a new one and reinstall the Linux embedded system it had. Ironically, the hardest thing to replace was the mini-fan (I still have a spare or two lying around) which kept the whole thing cool... Besides backups — mostly using Time Machine — I naturally used it as a home media server. It did its job well — especially for music — and already supported a few useful remote utilities (some of which required third-party VPN software, from a company that has long since ceased operations). But once you hacked it to get SSH access, you could pretty much do whatever you wished with the underlying Linux system. Alas, there wasn't really a _lot_ you could do, since it didn't ship a compiler, and it wasn't that trivial to cross-compile things for the device (basically because of some proprietary libraries that had to be linked with). But there were still _some_ things you could do. And, of course, there was always the choice of installing something like [OpenWRT](https://openwrt.org)... At some point, I managed to get it to store backups from my 'personal' server(s) running on data centres providing VPS and/or bare metal leased hardware, and vice-versa. It was a cheap way of getting reasonable backups from those server(s), and at least I would always have those backups stored where I could get at them easily. Imagine the worst-case scenario: the company hosting your remote server goes bankrupt or has a major fire that destroys their data centre, thus forcing them to abruptly cease operations, disconnecting all servers overnight, as well as wherever they used to back up them — and you're stuck. This didn't ever happen to me, of course, but knowing that I was prepared for such an eventuality let me sleep well at night (the reverse was also true: if _our_ home got destroyed by an earthquake or a domes