That's a great idea! Although can see myself running a few bench tests just to kick off a disco effect as well

almost none use retro for this? i hoped to see a few sub ghz machines...

I just run a Synology DS214se. Does everything I need, use it for storing data and serving pictures and videos to my TV via Wifi. Running mirrored RAID also have backed up on a local drive in my main and an off-site data storage service.

mrau wrote on 2020-05-06, 18:19:

almost none use retro for this? i hoped to see a few sub ghz machines...

Performance (throughput) concerns relating to PCI bus bandwidth would be issues with that unless older server grade hardware with PCI-X was used . Either way, using old, now unreliable, small capacity disks from that era would not be very practical or safe . Using newer disks would require running SATA or SAS controllers in older hardware, or using IDE to SATA adapters and facing potential BIOS limitations . Also, when something fails, where do you get parts ?

EDIT : In other words, it's doable but why bother when cheap, reliable, high bandwidth, older (but not that old) commodity hardware is available for almost nothing and does a better job ? Then again, if somebody wants to use pre-2000 hardware for a NAS setup, good for him, but I personally think the inconveniences outweigh any coolness factor .

mrau wrote on 2020-05-06, 18:19:

almost none use retro for this? i hoped to see a few sub ghz machines...

For the amount of storage required for modern file sizes, a retro computer would be slow, unreliable, loud, and draw far more power to keep running 24/7. A single 8TB NAS today can draw less than 25 watts from the wall. A 1GHz retro machine with 8TB would easily be over 250w for the amount of old SCSI drives needed.

Maybe have a separate topic for retro servers.

wiretap wrote on 2020-05-07, 00:21:

mrau wrote on 2020-05-06, 18:19:

almost none use retro for this? i hoped to see a few sub ghz machines...

For the amount of storage required for modern file sizes, a retro computer would be slow, unreliable, loud, and draw far more power to keep running 24/7. A single 8TB NAS today can draw less than 25 watts from the wall. A 1GHz retro machine with 8TB would easily be over 250w for the amount of old SCSI drives needed.

Maybe have a separate topic for retro servers.

Even newer datacenter grade hardware will be loud and power hungry, but if you're going to endure that, might as well get the newer faster and more reliable hardware . If noise and power usage are any kind of a concern, either a consumer NAS running a lower power ARM CPU or a home-built relatively low power machine (an Athlon 200GE CPU like what I'm using draws 35W max at full load, much less otherwise) is a must .

EDIT: A topic for anybody still using retro hardware (15-20 years or older) in an actual server role might be fun indeed . I have a a Dell R710 (12 cores 192GB of RAM) that would be too to qualify anyway and gets used as a test environment anyway .

You can probably get away with just connecting a USB drive to your router (mine has a port for one).

mrau wrote on 2020-05-06, 18:19:

almost none use retro for this? i hoped to see a few sub ghz machines...

No, but it's used for retro purposes as well. My NAS is set in a way, that all my Win9x and WinXP machines can access my NAS without issues. And it's super comfortable to get everything from network instead of USB/CD/floppy/whatever.