I made my backup server from a 2003 HP D530 SFF motherboard running FreeBSD. I bought an old case with power-supply with a Windows 98/2000 sticker and a matching Intel Pentium 4 sticker. I collected my 400MHz DDR memory 1280MB and 2 IDE disks 250GB and 320GB. I added another 320GB laptop SATA disk on a SATA-1 plug on the motherboard. I installed FreeBSD-12 (32 bits), because I needed ZFS for the weekly backup of 14 Virtual Machines (260 GB LZ4 compressed). The system has two cables; Power and 1Gbps Ethernet. It is controlled and monitored remotely using XRDP, conky and a remote desktop client in a Windows 7 VM on my main desktop. If needed I can fall back to ssh of course, but I prefer the more complete FreeBSD-XFCE GUI with all conky details. It is backing up my 16GB 2018 Ryzen 3 2200G with 64-bits Ubuntu 19.04 to my 1.25GB 2003 Pentium 4 with 32-bits FreeBSD-12 :) :) It is running now for 2 months 1 hour/week for backing up my data (rsync/samba) and VMs (zfs send/receive -i) without any issue.
I remember, when my manager come in to my desk, and doing nothing, I just run putty, and connect to my server, and usually then run tail -f on some log file, and keep in running, and pretend that I'm checking the log. in 5 minutes, he's gone.
Nice, I made a NFS out of a Lenovo X61s thinkpad that I paid about £35 for. That's running FreeBSD. Never thought to just use the bare board and a docking station. 😎
It is Wednesday morning, and I stumbled upon your video while I was searching for the topic "NAS from old laptop components" in RU-vid. Nice coincidence 😂
Hey man looking forward to the follow up video, as an OpenBSD user myself I share your thoughts that it's a great OS. Nice tip re neofetch and I also didn't even think about using it as a nextcloud server.
Cool idea, to just put the mobo onto the docking station. Also using here used x230 for all my servers - but using just the mobo and maybe a cardstock, wood, or acrylic case really kills the raspi as a server idea. Keep up the good work, very real and inspiring!
I turned an old Dell Vostro with a smashed screen into a home server, so far it's working quite well. I installed CentOS as that's what I'm most familiar with
Sorry for dropping this here, but I've been thinking of buying a new battery for my x230 (6 or 9-cell, not quite sure yet) and I'm wondering whether non-Lenovo batteries are any good. Do you have any experience with any?
hey guys, so I this point, I don't know what to do with the server??? I have UBUNTU PC attached to my TV like a movie station, and I have separated desktop, what can I do with the server? thanks
Server made from old laptop has some other advantages, such as battery. If there is a power outage, you usually have at least some juice in the battery, so you server will stay online a bit longer. A bit like poor man's UPS. Anyway, when it comes to making home servers, one of the most important factors is the power consumtion. I miss this info in this vid. Anyway, good work nonetheless!
self-hosted VPN to use on unsafe networks seedbox NAS, media server or a home theather backup server nextcloud instance a lot of stuff really. /r/selfhosted is a good place for inspiration
@@WolfgangsChannel sorry , i saw your self hosting video afterwards . It answered all my questions ;) . Love your channel , a cool idea would be to make a wireless harddisk from The leftovers
I thought of using a laptop as a home server, but the problem with laptops is that they are not very upgradable. I bought a used xeon X3220 based server for 10$ instead. I currently run 9HDDs in 2 RAID matrices, have sata ports for 8 more drives thanks to pci-X SAS expansion card which I also got for 10$ and a 4 port Gbe Intel network card that I use for SMB multichannel. Connecting that many drives using USB (even 3.0) would simply be extremely impractical.
@@WolfgangsChannel ok thx. I am beginner, like very beginner. I installed now Ubuntu Studio. But its bad or slow. So i dont know if its the Distro or the "weak" Laptop. I thaught Linux is lean and runs fast even on old Mashines. idk i will keep searching and testing.
@@kirschkern8260 Ubuntu studio is focused on content creation (main part of it is modified linux kernel that lowers latency on audio or something) for comfortable usage of ubuntu i would recommend kubuntu (kde is superior) or if you still feel like your laptop is too slow try some low resource DE like XFCE/LXDE/LXqt. Also check out Manjaro for user friendly distro with frequent updates.
cool and inspiring. I think i will switch to Openbsd soon. It would be interesting to see some hard data on energy consumption of the "server". Stay fresh // bud
@@WolfgangsChannel i have a couple of gutted HP Probooks that I use - one as a HTPC and one as a server, both idle at 11w and hit 35 under load. I did try a dual xeon server but I cannot justify the 200w idle power consumption.
@@MrChicken420 discord is not under a "free as in free" license like gpl. Some hardcore stallmann's wont use any software thats not under a "free as in free" license, thats the joke. Personally, i like opensource / free software, but if there isnt another way, i also use proprietary shit.
best educational true video. .....by the way i used pi as server and let me down many times by the lack of power and lots of issues once enough stuff is on it. basically one can do no more than blinking leds with this crap pi stuff which pretends to be a charity! but in truth is fully commercial money making rubbish. I would not recommend pi! And what's the hell of MAIADB!!!
