Broken Site
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| techiem2 Apr 04, 2007 6:04 AM EDT |
The host appears to be down. From the summary it appears that he's basically saying that just because you need to get a new hard disk to turn an old box into a reliable data server, that it is therefore not worth the effort because of of the cost of running the machine. ?? So you should just buy an external hard disk and directly connect it to whichever comp needs the data at the moment? Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of setting up a data server, which is to give easy, immediate, and simultaneous access to the data to the machines on the lan? As for the argument that buying the hard disk for an old machine may be too much of an investment, the hard disk could be quite easily moved to a newer machine if needed/desired later. I'm just not following the logic I guess. But then, my lan fileserver is a k6/2-450 with an 80GB data drive on a Promise controller. (really do need to add another data drive to that one of these days) |
| tuxchick Apr 04, 2007 8:49 AM EDT |
??? strange article with no point that I could find. |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 04, 2007 9:04 AM EDT |
The site's back today |
| DrDubious Apr 04, 2007 1:34 PM EDT |
If you want real scrounged-machine server, just dig up a bunch of old hard drives and turn 'em into a single spanned volume... Okay, sure, not the most reliable way to do it, but it's cheap... |
| Sander_Marechal Apr 04, 2007 2:00 PM EDT |
If I read it correctly, the authors point is that the hard drives of old PC's are usually too unreliable to run as a fileserver for another couple of years. He advocates using old PC's only to move data, not to store data with. |
| techiem2 Apr 04, 2007 2:23 PM EDT |
That's the impression I got. That along with saying that the power used by the old machine makes it not worth putting a new disk in since you can just carry around a usb/firewire one instead... |
| tracyanne Apr 04, 2007 2:48 PM EDT |
So old harddrives are unreliable, replace them with a new one(s). I replaced the old 40 Gig hard drives in my old P3 500 box with a 120 Gig and a 200 Gig, the things been running like that for nearly 2 years (before that I had 3 40 Gig drives), and I've only taken it down once in that time to upgrade from Mandriva 2005 to 2007. I think it was down for 5 minutes 6 or 7 months ago due to a power outage in this area. It seems pretty cost effective to me. |
| Sander_Marechal Apr 04, 2007 4:03 PM EDT |
tracyanne: True. But the point that the author is trying to make: For a few bucks more you buy the same size drive as an external USB drive. I don't agree with the author actually. A fileserver allows you to serve to multiple PC's and keep stuff centralized. An USB drive does not. NAS devices could do that, but they are significantly more expensive than an USB hard drive -- thus invalidating the author's point. |
| dthacker Apr 04, 2007 6:41 PM EDT |
You wouldn't leave your company's data on a 7-plus year old hard drive and you don't want your treasured photos there either. Buy new drives, back up your data, and store at least one of the backups outside your house. BTW, anyone want a dozen Pentium 100 towers? Dave |
| jdixon Apr 04, 2007 6:56 PM EDT |
> You wouldn't leave your company's data on a 7-plus year old hard drive... I'm pretty sure we've had at least some drives that old in our various Novell servers. The upgrades required to move from Novell to Active Directory have pretty much eliminated those servers though. I believe the last Novell server was shutdown about 2 months ago. |
| jdixon Apr 04, 2007 6:58 PM EDT |
> A fileserver allows you to serve to multiple PC's and keep stuff centralized. And if you're reusing an old machine with Linux, you might as well put two drives in it and run software raid. That way you have a backup in case one of the drives dies. |
| tuxchick Apr 04, 2007 7:47 PM EDT |
On second reading it makes more sense. Hard drives, fans, and power supplies are the weak points in old systems. A USB drive makes good sense as a backup drive for smaller networks- you can do network backups, and it's only running when you need it. If you want a fileserver that runs all the time, an old PC with a couple of new RAID-ed SATA drives works well and doesn't cost much. |
| Sander_Marechal Apr 04, 2007 10:03 PM EDT |
> BTW, anyone want a dozen Pentium 100 towers? I bet Helios (from http://www.lobby4linux.com) can use them. |
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