I know this isn’t build a pc, but everything over there is so gaming oriented I thought I might get better advice here.

I’m a noob that wants a home media server for sharing photos of my kids with my family (across the country), video library sharing to some family members, and streaming my music collection to my phone (and maybe my dad’s).

But I’m considering ripping my father in laws extensive bluray collection (well seeing it up so he can rip them into my library) so I reckon a full tower is required for HDDs.

I’m imagining unraid, with a big pile of used drives. What I like about that approach is that I can economically add storage as the video library grows as I/we rip. Or are used HDDs a false economy.

I think the only processing intensive thing in the use case list is ripping and video library sharing. I have no concept of what sort of processing is required. Should I get a graphics card?

There’s a Lenovo TS-140 (E3-1226 V3) available available used for $80 Canadian. Is that a good place to start?

I

  • @cron@feddit.deEnglish
    1•10 months ago

    I’m not convinced that a pile of old HDDs is a good fit for your homeserver.

    • Many small disks will consume more energy than fewer large disks. Currently, the best capacity per price seems to be in the 20TB segment. A similar argument can be made for noise.
    • The HDDs you have might not be perfect for 20/7 usage. I personally would recommend using disks that are made for continuous usage.

    Start with what you have, but if you outgrow your setup, buy proper hardware. And make backups.