The eternal treadmill....

[tyggerjai]

I have an old desktop that has been in storage for a while. It's been replaced as a desktop with the one I bought in China, but I'd like to turn it into a file server.

Except, of course, it doesn't do SATA. No problem, I can buy a SATA card. Except, of course, they're all PCI-Express, and this motherboard is slightly too old for that. Lots of PCI slots, and AGP, but no PCI-E.

It's got a shitload of USB ports, though. So I guess I either grab some USB->SATA adaptors and some SATA drives, or I get a whole new computer. Still, I think it does DVI out, so maybe it will be repurposed for watching movies on.

Comments

[thorfinn]

Sadly, I am willing to bet it will be cheaper and easier to just buy yourself a new computer.

And if you want USB -> NAS, there's like, a billion non-computer devices out there, ranging from the Airport Extreme at the expensive end of things down to much much cheaper things from other people.

[tyggerjai]

Yeah, given that I have a spare case, and the big expense is the drives anyway, I think so. I reckon I can pick up a cheap bundle for about $150 (MB/CPU + 4gig RAM), so it's not that bad. Add $150 for 4 TERABYTES of disk, and that's a full NAS for $300. But the Drobos do start to look tempting if I'm only using it for file storage....

Please tell my wife you think my best option is to buy a new computer kthx :)

[tyggerjai]

The real question is whether I want to save up for a whole new machine, and shuffle the China machine down to file server, which is looking likely. And use the old old box for watching movies or something. It's still a 2.5Ghz Pentium with 2 gig of RAM, seems a shame not to actually *use* it for something.

[thorfinn]

USB to SATA cases run you around $40-$100 on their own, depending on where you get them and whether you want enclosures or what. :-/ If you're talking about adding three of them, that's $150 to $300 bucks worth of USB SATA *cases*, drives not included.

You can buy USB drives in enclosures for $100-$200, depending on what size you want. They'll no doubt work. It'll be slow as all fuck though compared to internal drives.

I say go ahead and price the various options you have - by the time you add up what you want, I bet just buying a new computer will be cheaper *and* better, by a long way. Moore's law pretty much applies to everything.

Also... DVI is obsolete, it's all HDMI nowadays.

[tyggerjai]

Wasn't thinking enclosures - I think you can get USB->SATA internal adaptors for much less. But I haven't looked recently.

And yes, $150 for a mobo/CPU/RAM combo to throw in my existing case is indeed the cheap easy way.

I have a monitor that does DVI, and a card that does DVI, and DVI handles HD content. It's not *that* obselete :)

[tyggerjai]

But yes, now that I look, places like Scorptec (who aren't the cheapest) have baseline systems with case and PSU and monitor and everything for $400, which might be the way to go. It'd be nice if I had worked more than 13 hours last week ... :)

[thorfinn]

Today's Special Deal:

http://www.mwave.com.au/sku-22040433-Seagate_Barracuda_Green_2TB_SATA_6Gb_s_Internal_Hard_Drive_5900RPM_Speed_64MB_Ca

[tyggerjai]

Megan says "stop that immediately".

[thorfinn]

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE! HALF PRICE! GRAND SALE! NEITHER BRUNASWEEK OR FOOTISGREY!

[tyggerjai]

Two of those and one of these:
http://www.mwave.com.au/sku-50990038-MWave_Lite_System_Mid_ATX_Tower_Intel_E5400_2_70GHz_Dual_Core_2GB_DDR3_RAM_500GB

$500 and pocket change plus the time to install FreeNAS, done.

Lend me $500 and some pocket change? ;P

[thorfinn]

If I do that we'll both be in trouble from both our wives.

ETA: And not the fun kind of trouble, either!

[tyggerjai]

Also, my wife says I'm not allowed to listen to you.

[thorfinn]

Tell your wife I'm actually encouraging you to just send all your old computers to Computerbank or the rubbish tip, and just buy a single new one. :-)

[tyggerjai]

"Get rid of the old ones first"

Actually, given that all I do is WoW, I can probably use the China machine for storage, the old old box for playback, and the laptop plugged into a monitor for gaming. So all I need is the drives, because the China machine does SATA. I think. It certainly has PCIE.

[thorfinn]

Sounds okay, except that playback of HD content may require more grunt than the old old box has, depending on how old you're talking about.

[tyggerjai]

State of the art gaming rig from 2004 :) P4 2.53GHz (overclocked), 2 gig of corsair RAM (overclocked), and whatever the second tier ATI video card would have been. I think it'll be ok, but there's only one way to find out....

[thorfinn]

Yep. Plug it in, play something from a network mounted drive, see how you go. I'm not sure if 100MbEthernet is too slow for HD content. Potential bottlenecks all over the place...