Exploring the Idea of Creating a Home Server with My Old PC.

I have my father’s old work PC (one of those Fujitsu Siemens models) from yesteryears. It features:

  • OS: Ubuntu 23.04
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-4770 (I forgot the clock speed in GHz).
  • RAM: 8 GB DDR3 1600MHz (Single Channel).
  • Storage: 128 GB SSD (installed in 2020) & 1 TB HDD (also installed in 2020).
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 620 (or was it GTX?).

I am considering using it as a file server since my laptop only has a 256 GB SSD, and I need more space to store my files on the old PC. But the question is, do I need a home server? When is a home server necessary?

Any sources or information on how to set up a file server with a PC would be greatly appreciated.

Vocabulary and Grammatical Errors were improved and fixed by ChatGPT because English is my 2nd Language

gabriele97,
@gabriele97@lemmy.g97.top avatar

I would send you to !selfhosted

teuto,

I’d say through throw Truenas Scale or Ubuntu server on it and try and come up for uses for it. If it doesn’t seem useful after a month or 2 then shut it down nothing lost. The only real danger is that it’s a gateway drug and before you know it your thinking about upgrading to a 48u rack to put your pile of networking equipment and servers and your basement sounds like a jet engine.

MrOzwaldMan,

problem is, I don’t have a basement. people in the apartment around me are going to ask questions about “Why is there an airplane taking off inside your apartment.”.

is 1 TB, enough for backup? I have notes, books, and university notes. The problem are the games, I guess I should just delete them

teuto,

Well don’t buy old enterprise hardware then, that’s the noisy stuff. 1tb isn’t a lot by modern storage standards, however if you managed to fill it up with notes and books I would be impressed. Games are another matter though. You could fit thousands of emulated games from the 80s and 90s or like 7 from the last few years, it depends.

BCsven,

I have a pi with drive attached, it is low watt consumption. But its fun to set up a server on a machine like you have. If you aren’t comfortable setting something up from scratch then something like OoenMediaVault is great. It also comes with docker and portainer so you can easily add docker containers for other uses. i.e. I have OMV for the samba shares, with daap addin for music, and in the dockers it runs kanboard, homeassistant, trillium notes, airprint cups server and syncthing. syncrhing is a great way to sync pc files to other PCs or to a phone folder, so you never have to worry about manually copying files.

MrOzwaldMan,

I have OMV for the samba shares, with daap addin for music, and in the dockers it runs kanboard, homeassistant, trillium notes, airprint cups server and syncthing. syncrhing is a great way to sync pc files to other PCs or to a phone folder, so you never have to worry about manually copying files. I only need for backup, but phone syncing sounds useful, does that come with OMV or something I have to setup myself

BCsven,

Syncthing is available to download to any pc, phone or via docker container… It doesn’t come witj OMV but you can add it via docker command line or Portainer GUI. you assign which folder you want sync’d , it gives it a unique hash ID, on other devices you enter the ID, or search for synthing host. It then connects and will prompt on host to allow/ disaaloe sync to certain devices. Any new files on either end are replicated. You can see rules on if one is read only, and what you want to do with version changes. i.e. on my PI it acts a master (which is not the correct term) and if changes via other devices populating to the PI then it folderizes old versions of files so that a mistake change that was saved on my phone and replicated to the PI doesn’t remove the original totally. (Good backups periodically could also solve this)

cerement,
@cerement@slrpnk.net avatar

Linus Tech Tips, Your Old PC is Your New Server – Piped link

MrOzwaldMan,

thanks, watching it rn.

sin_free_for_00_days,

I’d just use a low-wattage and inexpensive Raspbery Pi to set up a home network. But, if you have the spare computer and don’t really stress about energy usage, go for it. It’s kind of fun and not too difficult. Install linux. Install Samba. Voilà!

MrOzwaldMan,

What’s Samba? Even searching the internet, the definition is confusing. Maybe, it’s because I am a newbie, and I shouldn’t set up a home file server.

toikpi,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(software)I just searched for the “samba computer” and this was the first link.

See if you can find some introductory videos that are suitable for you on YouVideo or elsewhere that are suitable for you to work out if you are ready to set up your first home server.

If you just need some storage you could just get a “cheap” USB storage spinning rust external hard drive and move the data that you don’t need day to day onto the drive. At a later date you get a Raspberry Pi or second hand small PC and use the PC as a server with the same drive attached.

Lucky,

Don’t let lack of knowledge ever be the reason to stop trying something in homelabs! Honestly for a beginner resource ChatGPT is where I’d go for these kinds of questions. It does a great job explaining what all the terms mean and you can drill down into topics as needed such as permissions and different terminal commands you’ll need

Anyways, this link has a decent description of samba:

ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-and-configure-samba#…

A Samba file server enables file sharing across different operating systems over a network. It lets you access your desktop files from a laptop and share files with Windows and macOS users.

So as long as a computer is on the network it could access files stored on this hard drive. It is super useful as a first homelab project

emr,
@emr@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

It’s what I use for my home server and it’s great. You can even use VLC to stream music and stuff via samba.

qaatloz, (edited )

Take also power consumption in consideration. I myself have run a homeserver based on an older amd processor and recently updated to a low power device. The old server had a standby powerusage of about 60-70 watt. The new one has a standby usage closer to 2,5 - 5 watts while having a lot more performance. Depending where you are on the world and the powercosts the powersavings you have offset the costs of new hardware within 1,5-2 years if the server runs 24/7.

When and if you need a homeserver realy depends on your specific needs. For me: I do not want to use cloud services as primary storage for my personal and family photos. I want to run homeautomation based on homeassistant and a password manager on my own server.
For you it might be different. Consider that network storage from a fileserver has typically a lower performance so using it for games and gamefiles might not work.

Also the type of fileserver to deploy (windows shares/samba vs nfs) depends on what os you run on your laptop. Typically i would assume you use windows and would a linux server running samba be most logical choice. Or a more preconfigured os like openmediavault which helps a lot with a more intuitive gui.

However if file sharing is the only usecase maybe a nas like a synology, qnap or asustor might be a easier system to setup. This also tackles the powerconsumption issue.

MrOzwaldMan,

I am running Ubuntu 23.04 (and up in the future), and where I live, there is no electricity bills, so we gucci on that. The only reason I need a file server is because of video games, and I can’t remove the bottom cover of my laptop (Lenovo IdeaPad 3 14ALC6) to add storage space as it would void the warranty. Lastly, are file servers wireless, wired or both?

SpaceCadet,

deleted_by_author

    •
    qaatloz,

    I have replaced my amd phenom II X6, 12GB ram and 4 disk raid 10 and a crappy psu desktop, with a topton amd ryzen 5825U with 64 GB ram and 2 TB SSD.
    I run proxmox with powertop optimized excluding the ethernet adapters.
    This was really a big step forward in performance and because my workloads (nextcloud,homeassistant and vaultwarden) are mostly idle a lot of the time the processor cores can spend in sleep mode conserving power. To be honest i have not used an power measuring device, so my estimation is based on the powertop reported powerconsumption times 2. However in homeassistant the lowest power consumed in the night for my home dropped from 147 watts to about 85 watts.

    MrOzwaldMan,

    wow, you are running a lot of things, but in my case, I just need a backup (without cloud) or extra storage because 256 gigs ain’t enough if you have videogames. Also, I run Ubuntu 23.04, forgot to mention in the post.

    Grouchy,

    Add some memory and hard drives and slap TrueNas or Unraid on it.

    MrOzwaldMan,

    8 gigs is not enough? I’ll try, may you provide some links on TrueNas and Unraid?

    BeigeAgenda, (edited )
    @BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca avatar

    A home server is great, my rig is built with focus on power consumption, and it still uses 50-100w depending on how many cooling fans is on.

    Edit: I can add that the CPU board is coming to 10 years, so you can easily go lower than that.

    MrOzwaldMan,

    Sounds awesome, can you reply with your rig, I want it as a future reference.

    BeigeAgenda,
    @BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca avatar

    I checked it’s from 2013

    • Celeron G465 chosen because it’s TDP is 35w
    • ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP chosen because it has 8 SATA connectors
    • 4gb RAM
    • 530w Thermaltake PSU
    • 8 x 12cm fans connected to a USB relay for cooling

    And then some big disks in pairs using btrfs

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