Turning an old pc into a file server

Tommy Boy

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I have an older pc that I can put together (just need a case for it) and I was thinking that I could install my two ide hard drives into it and use it as a file server so that I can store my music, movies, tv shows...that kind of thing and play them from there since I will be getting a laptop.

But what would be the best way to go about this? What OS? XP? A Linux distro? I will have Vista Home Premium on my new laptop.

Any advice would be appreciated.
 
So the easiest way to do it would be to connect it to the network and share the hard drives on the network?

I'm thinking it is.
 
If you have vista on your laptop, i'd go with XP on your fileserver. Linux would work but youd have to have to patience to setup linux->NTFS sharing. It is very stable though, and ubuntu is cool

For transferring the files are you just looking to setup simple sharing or actually go into FTP/apache and stuff?
 
Tommy Boy - sharing is the easiest way to do it, but in terms of speed, the Windows sharing center is NOT the fastest. I'd go with something like ftp unless you wanna be able to open your files directly on the file server
 
I have an older pc that I can put together (just need a case for it) and I was thinking that I could install my two ide hard drives into it and use it as a file server so that I can store my music, movies, tv shows...that kind of thing and play them from there since I will be getting a laptop.

But what would be the best way to go about this? What OS? XP? A Linux distro? I will have Vista Home Premium on my new laptop.

Any advice would be appreciated.

What kinda speed do you want to get out of it? Linux is quite a bit faster on older hardware than windows, will roughly get 30% more bandwidth. However if you are using a P4 above 2.0, should be easily able to max out the hard drives on that kind of system.
 
I'll be using an Athlon XP 2600 with 512mb of ram, which is my old system. I'd like to be able to run the movies and music right off the fileserver.

I have wireless g in my house so speed shouldn't be a problem should it?

I'd just like to do simple sharing, not get into all the server stuff. It's basically going to be just storage. I have these two hard drives in my current pc (in sig) which I am selling since I'm getting a laptop and I'm going to remove the two ide drives and set them up as storage on the network.
 
Yep, I know how and have done that before, and I do have a home network setup already...:) I'm thinking that is probably what I'm going to do.

FYI I just found out that my ISP doesn't allow the setting up of internet servers like FTP or HTTP. So if you do change your mind and decide to go that route, (might be convenient to have access to the files outside of your network), check your ISP's terms of service.
 
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