Tuesday, May 01, 2007

The Quest for a Cheap, Compact, Silent Network File Server for Home - Revisited

I've been considering the need for a small cheap easily concealed silent home network file and print server and have finally made a decision. I've revised my requirements and thrown out the need for it to act as a mail server as this just added too much complexity to the project, and have ordered a second hand Compaq Evo D510 USDT from a seller on eBay.

Why did I opt for a 5 year old PC from a company that doesn't exist anymore? Well there are a number of reasons. Primary reasons are that it is cheap at under £70.00 (excluding memory & HDD, but I've got some memory and a HDD from other machines that I'll use), small enough to be easily concealed, thereby making it reasonably secure and more importantly tidy, and it has a max power draw of 50W (which I'll be considerably under once its up and running).

Secondary reasons are that by using an old PC I'm effectively keeping it from being added to landfill which combined with the low power consumption means that its pretty 'green' and there is a lot of documentation out there for the hardware if I should run into any problems. Also I did bid on a number of Linksys NSLU2s but they kept going for between £40.00 and £50.00 which considering their limitations and power requirements seemed much too close to the £70.00 for the Evo D510 for it to be a sensible purchase.

Hopefully it will arrive in a few days and I can get it all set up for the weekend, when I'm hoping that I'll be able to move it and a few other unsightly bits and bobs (modem, router, etc) into a small gap between my desk and the wall where they won't be unsightly. I'll also hopefully be able to resurrect my printer which hasn't been used for over a year. However I'm not holding out much hope that it will work as it is an Epson and they are notorious for the heads fatally clogging after protracted periods of inactivity (which in Epson time is anything longer than a few days).

So the quest is over, now I can begin to build a home network which is something I've been meaning to do for some time now.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

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5/5/07 20:58  

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