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What is your preferred server OS for home use? And Why?

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40hz:
@Eóin - you are quite correct. But I wasn't referring so much to the manufacturing batch numbers as I was to them likely all being on the same engineering revision, equally old, and equally (ab)used in whatever environment they're in.

In my experience, its environmental factors and age that have the most bearing on a drive's useful life expectancy. I haven't run into too many manufacturer's defects when it comes to server drives.

f0dder:
Hm... GBit limited Network speeds. How often are you moving what size file(s)? It's not like browsing the filesystem is going to lag with the traffic of a home LAN (which everybody has these days - Even if they don't know it).-Stoic Joker (January 05, 2011, 07:45 AM)
--- End quote ---
Todays' drives are going to give you ~100MB/s transfer speeds - a typical gbit LAN speed is closer to 30-40MB/s, and with a lot worse latency as well. Quite a difference if you're shuffling large media files around :)

Stoic Joker:
Hm... GBit limited Network speeds. How often are you moving what size file(s)? It's not like browsing the filesystem is going to lag with the traffic of a home LAN (which everybody has these days - Even if they don't know it).-Stoic Joker (January 05, 2011, 07:45 AM)
--- End quote ---
Todays' drives are going to give you ~100MB/s transfer speeds - a typical gbit LAN speed is closer to 30-40MB/s, and with a lot worse latency as well. Quite a difference if you're shuffling large media files around :)
-f0dder (January 05, 2011, 09:35 AM)
--- End quote ---

right, knew that part ... That's why I was pondering his usage/habits. I also used the word browsing for that reason. If moving a music CD the speed difference isn't a big deal. Now if you're moving a 25GB BlueRay .iso, well then yeah...Speed is a factor.

So if everything is scattered about in little data huts that would be a huge (mess) impact. But if you RDP into a server to move media files around locally there ... (hehe) ... Zoom! Which is what I do with the ton of (OS and software) ISOs I have. Granted I don't have to futz with them frequently, but when I do it never takes long.

Anyhow the question is how often does a huge media need to be moved local <-> remote? Both viewing and burning can be done over the wire. So (I am guessing here) really it's just a case of incoming organization and the occasional cleanup of stuff nobody needs/likes anymore.

Dormouse:
I've had a NAS for many years. Set up with hardware based RAID. I've also used backup programs for many years.

Increasingly, though, I have become concerned about how much security they really bring. I've not had a failure with either (yet); at least, that I know about. And it is knowing about it that I really want to do. A backup is always a worry unless you check every time that it has everything and you can read it. I'm now much happier just syncing all my data files, and periodically copying them in their entirety to other drives/places (with copies of various stuff in places on the net). It is very easy to copy TrueCrypt volumes too. It means I can check or use either set of files in normal use; I always sync in one direction only (feeling that gives me a bit of extra protection against something going wrong), so I have to remember to save everything on to one drive only, but that is not a problem. I also image my OS/App drive regularly. I know most of them are OK because I do check from time to time, and I can always rebuild from scratch if necessary anyway.

And my NAS? Well, when I get around to it I will just copy everything off it, reformat it without RAID and use it as separate drives. I just don't see that RAID is bringing me anything I need right now. With the current price and speed of usb3/sata3 drives & SSDs, it seems best to just add them as I need them.

PS I voted for FreeNAS, because that is all I would use a home server for. If I wanted a real server, I'd go Linux. Much more familiar with Linux servers than Windows Servers.

Stoic Joker:
In my experience, its environmental factors and age that have the most bearing on a drive's useful life expectancy.-40hz (January 05, 2011, 08:13 AM)
--- End quote ---

Agreed, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be likely to fail like dominos. Our DC here is about 7 years old, two of the 3 drives in it failed 8 months apart about 2 years ago. Assuming the third should be failing shortly I ordered two drives when the second one failed ... I'm still sitting on the spair as disk three ain't even blinked yet. *Shrug*

We also have an HP Netserver LH3 (Dual PII 400s - WWwweeeeeeeeee) that was purchased back when the company first opened almost 20 years ago (It was originally a Novell box). It still has two of it's original 3 drives in it running Server 2k3 24/7 (and it once went almost 2 years without a reboot). I ordered it's replacement today (Dell PowerEdge 2800) soley because it's just too old for the latest update of the accounting software (which is all it does). I'll probably keep it running in the lab just to see which one of us dies first... :)

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