only a semi-noob. i know enough about computers to get by and could probably build one successfully if i had the money. but i was wondering what the purpose of a home server is? what does it do differently from a normal computer? whats different inside it? and why would you need one at home?
nothing different inside, it is a normal PC that you can access to watch video, listen to music, back up files, it is basically a big storage center. I have one at home for a file back up and also as a FTP server.
mine runs backups, downloads torrents, stores all my music/movies/tv shows/pictures, stores virtual machine images, runs as an ssh/sftp server so i can access all my stuff when i'm away, runs as a print server, and probably does some extra stuff that i'm forgetting. most importantly, no matter how badly i break my main rig, i can be sure that it's not going to screw up any data, because it's on a separate machine. it's really nice to be able to wipe my disk and reinstall an OS, and not even have to think about my data.
Mine runs headless and stores all my media which I then play from whichever computer I happen to be sitting at at the moment. The reasons for it are several, one is to protect the data if my desktop gets hosed, and also so that I don't have to have a copy of 120 GB of porn data on every computer in the house.
My box also does pretty much the same as everyone else's, just acts as an external network attached disk to stick junk/data so you can access it from any machine in the house.
Ah right cheers guys, so its just like 1 massive memory stick lol. so u can have it storing everything and keep another computer free to run fast and smooth. might invest in 1, ive filled my laptops 100gb hdd with films lol
Mine is basically just one of my old PC's minus keyboard, mouse, and monitor. It's also under-clocked to make it silent. I use it for backup's, storing media that can be played back on any other PC, and as a download (torrent etc) box. Win XP
Mines just a fileserver, so I use winXP on it, there's simply no reason not to. All it does is serve files and physically hold all the junk associated with a large RAID array.
it would be quite usefull, i do a lot of downloading and have a lot of stuff on my computer and im running out of space
Well, cost of the OS is the main reason for me using Linux... And the fact that I know my way a bit better around samba then around Windows attempt to filesharing.
I'd recommend linux for a server. Solid as a monk's first erection, I ran like 5 different things on mine all at the same time, CPU usage was a constant 100% for two weeks. Never crashed and didn't even go slow.
My God man, I thought that add-on was only for 3.11! You musta done some good ol' fashioned hackerage
I know of a backup server (Celeron 466MHZ) that is running at a load of 5-6 for 2 years on end now, without even blinking
