Turning an old tower into a home server

[Sharpy1]

Have set the majority of it all up now thanks for all the help joe some of it helped having some problems with the smb shares for kodi not recognising the server sometimes it does but it's running pretty fine also having a problem with windows defender it shows up as not working and unable to check for database

I have decided use avast

So once I've fixed these last few things it will be fully operational
Any other ideas what I could do with it eg backing up computers to it

---------- Post added at 10:57 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:55 AM ----------

Looks very 95

 

[Sharpy1]

Just two more questions for you

1) what else could I do with this tower now it's set up could I run a gaming server or would it need better specs or backing up computers

2) when copying something from or too the sever via a client computer what computers resources are used the most the servers or the clients or equal strain on both

thanks everyone especially joe

 

[cb600fshornet]

No problem at all.


I wouldn't try and use it as a gaming server if I'm honest, the specs are too low, as a fileserver it's okay as just the hard drive is mainly used. On a gaming server you'll need a substantially more powerful CPU, more RAM etc, I'd imagine that Vista takes up a lot of the 2GB of RAM you have installed, so there won't be much spare for hosting games!


I'd say it's equal strain, if you're copying something to the server, then you're reading from your client, and writing to the server. If you're copying something from the server to the client, then you're reading from the server and writing to the client.
It also puts a strain on the network in general, so works everything just as hard!


If you have multiple clients connecting to the server, then more strain is proportionately given to the server, as it's processing two tasks (or more) at once, whereas each client is only doing one thing at a time.

 

[Sharpy1]

Yes that was pretty much my understanding of it so backing computers up to the server could take quite a while because of the slower processor and write speeds

Vista is using approx 700mb RAM just under half

 

[Draygoes]

I have used our old XP machine for everything ranging from being a simple file server to being a test subject. I must give it credit, as it survived a lot of the tests that I did not expect it to.
Ah the old days, when computers where built to last.

 

[cb600fshornet]

Yes that was pretty much my understanding of it so backing computers up to the server could take quite a while because of the slower processor and write speeds

Vista is using approx 700mb RAM just under half

Backing computers up is a fairly easy task, not much more than the HDD is going to be strained. Running a gaming server is a totally different ball game, as you're not simply backing up files.

 

[Sharpy1]

Thanks for all the help joe