Not all servers need to be a monstrous affair...

It’s simple enough stuff, but getting together a server is, after all, a PC build, so there’ll always be ways to get to the heart of things and shear off any excess cost to get right down to the bare bones. When we announced that we’d be running a competition for the best comment on the blog over the course of every month (starting and ending around the 14th of every month), we hadn’t realised that we’d be getting full PC builds as comments, but the build that we’re using for this post came from the comments section on our last post.

It seems that one of our readers, the ever aware Nutterguy, wasn’t suitably impressed by our file server, and decided to see how much it’d cost him to put together his own if he kept everything as tightly reigned in as possible. The result is a solid file server that’ll set you back just under €250.

Dual Core E5300 Upgrade Kit:

One of the really simple things you can do to keep costs down, and we did it in our own first build for the file server post, is to opt for an all-in-one upgrade kit, rather than picking up RAM, CPU and motherboard in one block. Aside from keeping costs down, it’s also a solid option for those who aren’t confident about choosing compatible parts, as you can rest assured they’ll all work together happily.

Click through to see our page for the E5300 upgrade kit

The E5300 upgrade kit boasts one Intel Dual Core E5300 2.6Ghz processor, as well you might expect, given the fact that the rest of the upgrade kit is built around it. The motherboard included is an Asus P5KPL-AM SE G31. It may have a name like a license plate, but it’ll get the job done and you should be neatly looked after. Similarly, the RAM included is 2GB of Corsair’s PC 6400 DDR2. While there’ll be a temptation to throw in more RAM, if you’re keeping the whole affair this thin then you very likely won’t need to add more RAM.

Of course, none of the parts are top of the line, cutting edge stuff, but considering the fact that most file servers will be relegated to fairly simple tasks (with the occasional backup being perhaps the most stressful among them) it seems very sensible indeed not to overspend on components.

Anyway, as we said above, it’s cheaper to pick up the whole kit than it is to pick the parts up individually, so if you’re at all interested by the Dual Core E5300 then check it out, at €135 for the guts of a machine, you could do a lot worse.

Case:

After a lengthy discussion about cases in our post about assembling a PC and the simple little mistakes that can cost you a lot of both time and money, it’s nice to see a solid, sensible case make an appearance in this build. Nutterguy has opted to run with what is one of our favourite cases, for a combination of price and spaciousness.

Click through to see our page for the Antec Three Hundred

The Antec Three Hundred is a solid, understated case, ideally suited to life tucked out of the way somewhere, quietly ticking away to itself and taking care of your backup as necessary. The case itself Is a solid black affair, and should have more than enough space to accommodate a relatively simple build like this. The various customer reviews regard it very highly indeed, with four of the five who’ve left comments giving it full marks and glowing praise. Those reviews are named, quite simply, “Super Case,” “Great case for the price,” “Understated…” “Best case ever!!” and “Easy to use.” Taken altogether, they’re a very solid recommendation indeed.

Of course, the really attractive thing about the Antec Three Hundred, as well you may have guessed from the number of comments on price and the fact that it’s made it so cleanly into this build, is its price. You’ll shell out just €48.21, which is not bad at all, considering the case itself.

Power Supply:

For the power supply, Nutterguy went with a 400W Corsair, which is both cheap and incredibly hard to fault. Before we say anything else about it, it’s worth pointing out that Corsair power supplies all carry a 5-year warranty, so if nothing else you have that on your side.

Click through to see our page for Corsair's 400W

It’s also worth noting that Corsair’s CX 400W has won the Editor’s Choice silver award from HardOCP along with a fairly glowing review. Moreover, it’s managed to pick up the golden Hardware Secrets award, for a combination of being an “excellent product for the regular user that is building a PC with just one video card.” The big take home is the last paragraph though, which simply says,

“… it provides an outstanding cost/benefit ratio. If you are building a mainstream PC and are not thinking of installing a very high-end video card you can buy this power supply with your eyes closed.”

So, Corsair’s 400W is a whole lot of power supply for your €46.90.

Optical Drive:

Since just about every machine will, at some point, end up needing an optical drive at some stage in its life, it seems only wise to consider throwing one in, and considering the fact that you can get an optical drive for just under €20 now, the only question really is, “which one?”

Click through to see our page for the Samsung DVD burner

For this build, everything being as absolutely cheap as it could be, the Samsung SH-S223C fits the bill very nicely indeed. It’s a DVD± burner, connects via SATA, as well you’d expect, and should see you through installing an OS and any other bits and pieces you need it for nicely. The one customer review we have of it so far points out that it’s “Excellent value for money,” which is always nice.

Samsung’s SH-S223C DVD burner will set you back the fairly paltry sum of €17.82.

Storage:

The one thing that it’s going to be tempting to skimp on a bit when you’re building your own file server is the storage itself. It might even seem relatively sensible to skimp on storage at first, given the fact that it’s quite a simple thing to just add more and more storage over time.

Click through to see our page for the SpinPoint F1 1TB

Of course, building a file server without enough space kind of neuters the whole project, when you think about it any further. If you’re to sit down, order and then, on delivery, assemble yourself a new machine, then the very least you might want to do is set it to backing up a machine or two that sit on your home network. If you don’t have the storage about, you’ll fast realise that there’s relatively little to do with your new toy…

In that respect, we’d recommend loading up on some disk space. When it comes to 1TB drives, we generally recommend Samsung’s SpinPoint F3. It’s a solid drive, and one that’s quiet enough to be able to recommend throwing it into a file server without turning it into the kind of machine that’d keep you up at night. It’s also a reliable piece of kit, which is important if you’re going to be keeping a backup (or indeed, multiple backups) on it.

Samsung’s 1TB SpinPoint F3 will set you back €77.50, which brings the build price up to the still entirely respectable total of €327.50.

If you’re looking to reach a little further, and don’t mind paying that bit extra for it, then you can aways push up towards the 2GB version of the SpinPoint F3, which will set you back around the €132.95 mark.

Closing:

And there you have it, a bare-bones server that should do just about everything you’d reasonably expect it to. In fairness to Ryan, we asked how someone had managed to pip him and undercut his own cheap file server build by nearly €100 and he was fast to make one very solid point.

What Ryan said, and I’m paraphrasing a little because he said it too quickly for me to type, was that, “No file server is ever just a file server for its entire life There’s always going to be a rainy day when you need to send a machine away, sell one or just nurse it back to health after it’s broken down on you. In the meantime, it’s always nice to know that the machine you built to do your backups can take you just throwing in a graphics card and making it your primary machine for a week or two.”

It’s a solid point, but for those who aren’t into gaming and just want their file server to… well, be a file server rather than anything else, Nutterguy’s build is a very solid offer indeed.

You'd be surprised how often a little mistake can utterly knacker things...

Still, when it comes to building your own PC, there are a few issues that tend not to come up in many “Build Your Own” articles, but that we do see and hear people talking about a lot. This post is basically just a run down of some really common issues that we encounter that could very well set you back a fairly substantial amount of money if you’re not careful. Some won’t cost a thing no matter how badly they do, but the others… well, let’s just say it’s no walk in the park.

Given that we’ve got our Build Your Own PC classes coming up, we thought it’d be worth a look at some of the little things that can go wrong…

Bent Pins:

Something that we tend to see a lot of just after Christmas is on the socket of 775, 1156, and 1336 motherboards. For those not in the know, these boards have physical pins in the CPU socket on the motherboard itself. These should line up and simply fit into place when you slot the processor onto the board (y’know, before you pop the hatch back down on the whole affair).

On slightly closer inspection, you can actually see the damage fairly clearly...

The problem stems from a couple of different points. The first is that, when it comes to putting together a machine, people tend to be as gentle as possible, ramping up force as necessary. This means that when someone is telling you how to fit RAM or a GPU, they’ll often say something along the lines of,

“Now it won’t just fit in, you’ll need to force it a bit.”

To which the general response is, “… oh, okay. How much should I force it?” Invariably, you’ll hear something along the lines of,

“Oh, if you just keep applying pressure until it’s a little more than you’re comfortable with then you should feel it all click into place.”

While this is solid advice in some situations, the fact of the matter is that there’s an impression created that, when in doubt, the person putting things together should just apply a touch more force, increasing until things ‘snap into place…’ at which point, you’re equally likely to have broken something as to have installed something.

It’s simple enough, but the general rule is, when you’re installing a CPU you should sit down and seat it fairly carefully; once those pins are bent, you’re in for a world of hurt… While one pin might reasonably be bent back into place, even that’s not a sure-fire solution, and who knows what issues it might cause down the line.

Since we do sometimes see motherboards come back through our RMA department with bent pins, it’s something that people should probably be aware of. The fact is that, because of the way they’re manufactured, it’s unspeakably rare for a motherboard to arrive with bent pins, which makes returning a board with bent pins a little difficult…

Go for a Quality Power Supply:

When people go shopping for a power supply, one of the things that we see all too often is that they’ll start to lovingly assemble a nice, high-end rig and before you know it you’re into the kind of territory where you’re going to need a very serious piece of kit indeed to work as your power supply.

Nothing like a nice five year guarantee

A lot of the time, this leads to a little time spent soul-searching while people figure out how to mitigate their new power concerns with their various budgetary obstacles… nobody wants to drop their fancy graphics card in favour of a nice power supply, but the fact is that it’s not an entirely unreasonable thing to do.

If you’re looking at a machine that’s going to need a fair whack of power, you’ll do very well indeed to spend a little time making sure you’re happy with the quality of your power supply. In this respect, we’ve always found Corsair to be entirely admirable, offering as it does a five-year warranty on just about every PSU it sells. It’s also reflected very nicely by the sheer number of solid, 5/5 reviews that Corsair power supplies tend to receive, to say nothing of the raft of awards…

Beware of your Case Sizing:

This one is related to the point above, and both come from roughly the same sources. The fact is that there are a few bits and pieces that tend to be either last or very far down the list when you’re starting to put together a new PC. Among these is the case itself.

Often, there's a reason you'd budgeted as closely as you did for the case...

All this means is that, by the time you get down to the case, you’ve likely whittled away at your budget with any number of interesting justifications for spending “just a little” more on that GPU or CPU. So, your choices are to either go back up your list and start haemorrhaging parts that were nice enough to justify initially, or to just take the hit and buy yourself a cheap case.

Unfortunately, and you’d be surprised how often this happens, when you cheap out on a case, or even if you just pick up a case without checking a little first, you can end up not being able to fit your ludicrous GPU into the case… Now, if you’re an industrious sort, not one to shy away from taking a hacksaw to the less essential parts of your case, then by all means, feel free to jump at whichever case takes your fancy.

Of course, you do tend to hear less about these cases, because, when you get right down to it, it’s just a touch embarrassing to by the guy saying, “What? Oh… no, I was building a PC but the graphics card doesn’t physically fit into the case.”

Keep it Tidy:

You’d be surprised how often people tend to opt for the quick and dirty solutions over something that’ll take five minutes work when a machine is being assembled. Naturally, we’re all human, and there’s a tendency to say, “I’ll get to it later,” even when, deep down, we all know that ‘later’ is very unlikely to arrive.

Honestly, this really isn't doing anyone any good in the long run

To that extent, Shelton reminds us, persistently, that dust collecting inside a machine creates a few different issues. The first is plain and simple overheating, caused by the gradual accumulation of an insulator inside the machine itself… fairly simple stuff there, overheating is bad for reasons we can all get our heads around.

The second, as Ryan point out at great, and just a little disturbing, length whenever given an opportunity, is that dust, by virtue of being composed predominantly of human skin, is also an electrical conductor. Sure, a little probably won’t do you too much harm, but if you’ve got a machine that’s literally sitting around gathering dust, you’re not doing it too much good.

Similarly, when it comes to cabling, you’re far better off keeping everything tied up as neat and out of the way as possible from the moment you put a machine together. The fact is that cables have a way of making a dreadful headache of themselves if you’re not resolved to keep it neat and tidy from the beginning, which makes things

Closing

There are a few other hints and tips that could well go into another post like this, but for the moment we just wanted to have the main points covered so that any of you attending our upcoming build your own PC classes could have a read over and get a feel for the kinds of things we’ll be talking about.

In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions as any other bits and pieces that people tend not to think of when they’re building a PC, we’d be more than happy to hear them. Given the fact that these are all things that are relatively simple to run into if you’re building a machine for the first time (and we were all beginners once upon a time).

We like to call it Google Dave

Still, it seems that the vast majority of users who have criticised Google Wave for a total lack of activity have done so after first checking their Wave account (often for the first time after a period of protracted absence) and realised that there was nothing there to demand their attention; it’s very much the same thing as checking an email account you haven’t used in months and expecting it to contain messages for you…

Still, there are those who seem to have found a use for Google Wave outside of the norm, and for those of us who’ve been using it, it’s become a fairly invaluable tool.

Take Notes:

Among the most impressive things I encountered during a recent class on web-based technologies by Mulley Communications[http://mulley.ie/] was a use to which Google Wave was being put by two other attendees sitting in front of me. Indeed, so compelling was this use of Google Wave that it became difficult to focus on much else.

Wave is being seen as increasingly useful for conferences

Essentially, all that was going on was note-taking inside Google Wave, nothing so very shocking about that; it’s a relatively simple arrangement, and one that might even be better handled in Google Docs, given the different formatting options that Google Docs offers. Still, there were some enormous benefits to having multiple editors to a single document in real time, especially when someone is speaking and giving off-the-cuff advice.

It allows for multiple users to be crawling through a document at once, taking minutes on a meeting or adding actions to a to-do list or calendar in real time, with any user present editing those notes as necessary, as the whole document is being written. In the case of events like these, it means that users can also pose questions within a Wave and have them answered there, meaning there’s less interruption to the general flow of a talk, lecture or meeting.

It also means that everyone is equally responsible for curating the notes, ensuring that, by the time everyone leaves, there is an up to date, web-based document available that can contain just about everything that was discussed in a particular context. Moreover, since it’s relatively easy to do so, users can later convene and question elements of those notes within the same Wave, leading to a more active engagement with a topic…

After a little looking around, it seems that I wasn’t the only one so impressed by Wave’s collaborative editing in this kind of a setting, and it seems that Ecomm Conference is doing something very similar indeed.

It might seem simple to some, or a little far fetched organisationally to others, but it was interesting stuff to see at work. One can only wonder how well a similar operation might be run by more users at once… Certainly it seems there’s an upward limit (Wave itself really chugs with more than 100 users in one Wave), but it’s a curious use nonetheless.

KISS:

There are a few very simple internet acronyms that haven’t quite found their way into day-to-day use but we feel should. The first is PICNIC (problem in chair, not in computer) and will likely be a welcome addition to anyone who’s become a family-tech-support figure’s vocabulary.

Shopping lists and similar benefit surprisingly well from collaboration

The second is KISS (“keep it simple, stupid” for the uninitiated). The fact is that the best uses for Google Wave are probably the ones that aren’t the vastly complex projects like the ever-impressive and increasingly referenced projects for people playing role playing games through it, while those projects are impressive in their own right.

Instead, the simple, real-time core of Google Wave lends itself very well to behaving as a kind of persistent chat client. It’s the single most common use to which I’ve seen Google Wave put, and the one from which I’ve seen most use myself; invite any geographically distant family members and just have a general chatter, a conversation that just flows with the people who happen to be present for it at a given time, but which stores everything for back-reading by anyone not present.

In the same vein, it makes a fairly solid case for itself as a very simple around-the-house tool for things like to-do lists and shopping lists. Again, it’s as easy as inviting everyone in the house and just getting into the habit of keeping an eye on the Wave to see what’s needed.

Gaming:

While we might be a little dubious given the sheer complexity involved, the fact is that, for those who are into RPGs, Wave is a fairly powerful tool indeed. While we’ve seen a fair few pieces written on the idea of using Google Wave to play RPGs, fairly few get into the nitty gritty.

With over 1,000 members, the RPG-centric gaming Wave is going very well indeed

The best place for anyone with an interest to start would be on the public Wave for people looking to play a game. As the folks at Mashable point out there’s a wave out there that was created to list all the RPGs…

There are, at the time of writing, around 1,050 people sitting in that Wave, so you can get some impression of the popularity it’s managed to gain for itself. It’s a relatively simple affair to get yourself involved in a game, but once you’re there things start to get a little more complicated.

First, you’ll be expected to join two Waves for most games; the first is a simple “in-game” Wave, while the second is an informal “table chatter” one, where players can keep up with each other outside that context. There’s also the suggestion that individual players start new Waves as and when appropriate for new conversations or settings where other players might not be aware of their doings.

Clearly, gaming is something that could very quickly start to eat up some serious space in your Wave inbox, but given the fact that tabletop RPG fans seem to be spread very thin indeed (in Ireland especially) it seems like the use of Wave for gaming could go down very well.

If you’d like to investigate the way RPGs work in Google Wave with a view to giving it a go yourself then you’d do very well to check out this blog post, which outlines all of the various different Wave Robots and Gadgets you’ll need to add to get everything going as neatly as possible and without too much fuss.

Closing:

So, is Google Wave the game-changer that Google persuaded so many it would be in its original presentations early last year? Not yet, but it’s certainly a very interesting piece of kit, and one whose uses will only multiply as it gains more features. We’re particularly curious to see what impact automatic translation has on Wave’s userbase.

Hopefully Google Wave won't be like this forever...

It’s interesting stuff, and the fact is that Wave has managed to make itself useful for a few bits and pieces at which email simple doesn’t excel. For many, the real question will be, “Would you rather just ‘make do’ with email or grab hold of Wave and give it a solid go?”

So far, we’re enjoying it… it’s just a matter of getting enough invitations to make sure everyone you want on a particular project has an account, but once you’ve done that, it’s not so bad a thing at all.

Can you teach novices how to build their own PC? If so, we wanna hear from you.

The workshops will take place during weekends, with a possibility for evening work during the week. Also, candidates will be expected to demonstrate a high theoretical knowledge of and practical abilities in handling computer components prior to employment.

If you think you’d be interested in imparting your PC wisdom you can apply via jobs.ie now.

Not all servers need to look quite this scary.

That said, we got a lot of feedback from people asking if we’d put together an article on what hardware we’d use to build a file server as cheaply as practically possible without compromising the machine itself. That’s all this article is going to be, a quick and dirty list of things we’d recommend for anyone building a file server for in their own home.

It’s important to remember when you see these spec that a file server, set up as we’d recommended before, running FreeNAS, shouldn’t necessarily need to be anything particularly powerful. All it needs to be is stable, reliable and (hopefully) cheap enough that you can add some networked storage to your house without breaking the bank.

Hard Drive: Samsung SpinPoint F2EG

The first thing we’ll be talking about is drives. The fact is, your drive needs will vary with the kind of use you intend to put your machine to. If you’re just looking to keep a small stack of docments on some network attached storage, you could do a lot worse than the Samsung SpinPoint F2EG, at €48 for 500Gb. We’ve recommended it because it’s nice and cheap, but still quiet, which is always a bonus.

You can grab the Samsung SpinPoint F2 500GB here.

If you’re looking to add more storage (and realistically, we expect that a lot of people will) then you can jump up to the Samsung SpinPoint F1 for the still quite low cost of €79 for a 1TB drive. It’s worth the early investment if you think you might end up splashing out on more storage later on, given that it’s twice the space for not-quite twice the price.

You can find the SpinPoint F1 1TB here.

It’s worth pointing out as well that if you intend to set up your drives in a RAID array, as we recommended to lessen the odds of a drive failure wiping out all of your data, you’ll need to double up on storage. It does sound like a very big deal to say, “Buy twice as much space as you’ll be able to use,” but given the fact that a HDD failure could be catastrophic if you keep your backups on it, it’s worth at least considering the idea of a RAID array, especially since FreeNAS makes it so easy to set one up.

Case: Antec NSK4480B

When it comes to cases we recommend the Antek NSK. It boasts an excellent combination of price (€80.34) and an inconspicuous design that lends itself fantastically to use as a machine you’ll want to interact with physically as little as practically possible.

Moreover, it’s been recommended by the ever observant Denis from RMA because of the fact that it also contains a PSU, which makes the €80.34 asking price even more reasonable. It’s not just that it saves you money on picking up a PSU, it means less ordering and less mucking around, elbows deep in case, when it really counts.

You can pick up the Antec NSK4480B here.

CPU: Intel Celeron E1400 – 2GHz

As we’ve pointed out repeatedly over the course of this article, the machine you build from these parts won’t be doing any heavy lifting, so you don’t need to worry too much about sorting it out with a horrifying array of gear. The nice thing about this processor is that it’ll get the job done for less than €50… it’ll get it done for €47, if you want to be exact.

You can grab the Intel Celeron E1400, here.

Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L

When it comes to motherboards there’s plenty of leeway depending on taste. This Gigabyte board is cheap and reliable. It’s only €59, so (hopefully like the rest of the build so far) it’s not going to strain the wallet too much, we’re aware that times are hard, of course.

What’s particularly nice about the GA-G41M is that it boasts its own VGA port, which is pleasant at such a low price. While you might well question the need for a VGA port on your file server (which likely will be managed largely if not totally from other machines), you are going to be far better off with your installation of FreeNAS if you can, y’know… see your installation of FreeNAS. Certainly there are people who could run through an install blind, but it’s not something we’d recommend.

You can pick up the Gigabyte GA-G41M here.

RAM: Kinston ValueR

The RAM is the last part of this build and, as with everything else, we undertand that there’s no reason to overpower it. You can grab this Kinston ValueR DDR2 for €14 per 1GB stick. You can always pick up more if you think you’ll have been of it, but given how efficient FreeNAS is it’s unlikely you’ll need it.

You can pick up the Kingston ValueR, in 1GB stick for €14 a piece, here.

Closing

Well, that’s about all there is to add to this for the moment. We hope it complements the other article on setting up a file server, which you can find here.

Hopefully you guys will find it useful.

Oh, and if anyone is curious, the total cost comes to €248.43 (though that’ll depend on hard drive choices a bit). If you manage to get an order in before Friday you’ll get free delivery to our pickup point too

Not all file servers look like this... household ones are a lot less monstrous

Some NAS devices do offer pretty attractive extra features, like this AC Ryan PlayOn, which boasts both 1TB of internal storage and the ability to play media directly from the box to an attached display (in HDMI) without needing the intervention of a TV. The fact is that some of our more capable readers would be far better served by simply opting to recommission an older desktop to act as a file server, and it’s a lot easier than you might think.

The only problem is, as with any regime change, you will need to get your hands a bit dirty, but don’t worry, we can help you through the awkward heart-in-mouth bits. Your first step, obviously enough, will be adding as much storage space as possible to the box itself. The second will be installing FreeNAS. Don’t worry, as the name implies, it’s nice and free. It was recently nominated for an award simply titled, “Most Likely To Change The Way You Do Everything” which kind of sums up the thrust of why we think it’s worth checking out.

You can grab FreeNAS here.

Installing FreeNAS:

FreeNAS is basically the operating system that’s going to let the whole network side of things work. It’s tight and elegant and not nearly as fancy looking as it might otherwise have been, but it does have a plethora of features that’ll keep serving you in the manner to which you will (no doubt) become accustomed.

It’s worth noting that FreeNAS also only takes up about 32MB of space, so you don’t need to worry about your OS eating up your capacity, though given that we live in an age where a 1TB HDD will set you back to the tune of €69 it’s not inordinately expensive to throw in a few terabytes of storage and make sure you needn’t think about adding capacity to your network for a year or two.

Admittedly, the install isn't pretty... not at all.

Once you’ve grabbed FreeNAS, it’s a simple matter of burning it to a disc and running through the install, which is relatively well signposted so you shouldn’t end up getting too lost. Moreover, just in case you do encounter anything unexpected, there’s an excellent step-by-step guide to the installation of FreeNAS, including all the tiny details you might encounter, here. We had intended to write up a “How to” section for installing FreeNAS, but if we had it’d have been less useful than the linked one, which is really excellent.

From there you’ll be able to login from your browser, simply by dropping the server’s IP address into the address bar as you would if you were looking to change router settings. If you followed the linked step-by-step with fastidious care then your server’s IP address will be 192.168.1.100, otherwise it’ll be whatever you’ve assigned it. The default username and password are “admin” and “freenas” respectively.

It's actually pretty easy to work with FreeNAS once it's set up.

The rest of that walkthrough will ensure you know how to mount disks and access them from across the network as well as help you use FreeNAS to set up a RAID array across multiple disks, if you’d like to keep yourself safe from failures. That leads us relatively neatly into our next category… just what do you intend to do with all that storage?

What do you do with all that space anyway?

It’s a pretty obvious question, but you’d be surprised by the sheer amount of space people in Ireland seem to buy. Some of our best sellers are low cost external drives, particularly now that external 1TB setups are below the €100 mark. As we mentioned above, you can grab a couple of Hitachi 1TB drives here for €69 each. It’s easy to go overboard on space, but remember that if you intend to set up a RAID1 affair you’ll need to buy twice as much storage to make sure you’re safe from drive failures.

Well, there's no reason not to...

The idea here is that now you can have a really scary amount of space. Enough to be safe the knowledge that in the foreseeable future you won’t have to ask yourself, “What do I need to delete?” without compromising your current setup in any way. With all of your media stuck on a network drive, you never need to think about the clutter and awkwardness of the external situation, or the potentially warranty voiding exercise of adding more space to a machine you’ve already got sitting at home.

Moreover, if you have multiple machines on your home network that are used by different people, then you’ll neatly avoid passing hard drives around if anyone needs something. Ideally, you’ll find yourself storing less and less on an internal drive and begin to make a move towards a kind of in-house cloud computing. It’s a lot easier for all concerned and the relatively easy option to set up RAID1 in FreeNAS means you can maintain all of this with a relatively slim chance of failure.

Set up an automatic backup:

One of the best uses for a practically failure-proof piece of large scale storage you’re always attached to (network-wise, not physically) is the ability to back up no matter where you are without too much difficulty.

This is a godsend for the laptop-bound among us; it’ll allow you to set up an automated backup of your machine without you needing to do anything more complicated than leave your laptop on when you go to sleep, which isn’t a bad deal by any stretch of the imagination. Automatic backups are fantastic if only because, in day-to-day use, so very few of us every do a backup. They’re something to put off constantly and then, eventually, tear your hear out in frustration when it’s too late.

If you don't have a backup and this happens, you may want to kill yourself.

Moreover, once you’ve got your backup all set to be handled automatically then you’re pretty much good to go with whatever you feel like doing without having to worry about it.

Much as Denis from RMA says that the easiest way to do a backup is “old school” by which we can only assume he means, “by hand and only when I can’t avoid it,” it’s generally a lot better to set up a backup to run while you’re asleep. Sadly, that seems to be the only way for most people to get their backing up done reliably. The easiest way to do it is to shell out the few euro it’ll cost you to pick up a copy of something like Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage and run with that. It’ll do the heavy lifting for you. Both offer free trials too, so there’s always the try-before-you-buy option.

Closing

Whatever you end up using your new array of convenient storage for, you’ll most likely find that having a vast, amorphous cloud of capacity you don’t really ever have to worry about changes how you do things around the house. It’s one thing to keep a vast (assuredly legal) assemblage of media on an external drive in your house. It’s entirely another to make that collection part of your home network and not have to worry about plugging in to anything.

For when your drive gives up the proverbial...

More importantly, that sickening crunch when your a drive falls over and you know there’s no way on earth to fix it is a lot less horror inducing when you know you can just pick up a new hard drive, slot it into your laptop and restore from a day old backup.

Of course there’s a bit of setting up to get done, but once you’re there you should realise there’s a reason FreeNAS has been nominated “Most Likely To Change The Way You Do Everything.” It’s not quite as sweeping as all that, but it does add a sense of security that’s otherwise hard to get without paying more for it.