Building My Own Nas Server With My Old Laptop

[rolanddes]

I use a macbook pro. But I also have this old MSI laptop with AMD Athlon 64 1,6 GHZ cpu and 1 GB's of ram and 120 GB of hard disk.

I also have these:
Wireless router-modem with gigabit ethernet connection
iPhone and iPad
750 GB 2.5" USB external harddrive.
Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II 2 TB with firewire/usb/esata
Windows Server 2008 (it's not pirated)

I want to setup that MSI laptop as homemade NAS Server. I'm gonna install windows server on it. I will connect it to my router via gigabit ethernet port. When we come to the storage aspect of the plan, I will connect WD My book via firewire and 750 gb external harddrive via USB 2.0 to the MSI server laptop.

I hope that will enable me:

1- store all my content in WD My Book that is connected to MSI laptop via firewire (by wireless G network)
2- back up my macbook pro to 750 Gig hdd which is connected to using Time Machine (by wireless G network)
3- access WD content as shared network disk with all my devices (iphone, ipad, macbook pro) through wireless network
4- access WD content as shared network disk with another laptop pc (my sisters)
5- access WD content as shared network disk with a wireless media device that is connected to my Samsung LCD TV
6- access WD audio/video content with all my idevices (iphone, ipad) through internet (i will have to install Airvideo or ORB player on server machine to convert and stream to idevices)
7- access WD content with my macbook pro through internet (SFTP)
9- Install Utorrent on MSI server laptop to that it can download my favorite show using RSS feeds without my involvment.

Now, I realize I will face some problems and here is how I think I will manage to overcome:

1- Time Machine of Mac OS demands the target backup drive to be partitioned HFS+. Ok I will format 750 GB backup drive in the mac way. But then how will the server pc (MSI notebook) be able to write or read that drive via USB? I'll buy and install Macdrive, a software that lets windows machines read/write HFS+ formatted disks.

2- How will I connect server pc (MSI notebook) to router via gigabit ethernet even if that laptop has no such port? I will buy an pc card-to-gigabit ethernet card.

3- How will the heat not wear out the laptop? I will keep it upside down with a shut lid. That way the air flow will be perfect. Then how will I access it? Logmein software.

Here's a scheme of my plan attached. I'd really apriciate if you could poin out my shortcomings and error of judegement.
If you could especially help me about security issues and what I should do, that'd be great.
Thanks..

 

[thiggins]

For Time Machine support you need a server / daemon on Windows Server that knows how to process the requests from MacOS. Windows Home Server can handle it. A quick Google search didn't reveal any obvious solution for Windows Server 2008.

 

[rolanddes]

Damn. That mean Im gonna spend 100 bucks more. Is there anything above in my first post that windows home server cant handle?

 

[thiggins]

Not that is obvious. You'll have to Remote Desktop into WHS for admin and to install other apps.

There are add-ins for WHS that may be able to handle your torrent and streaming needs.

 

[kevinherring]

There is actually an AFP server product for Windows that I looked at a few years ago called ExtremeZ IP. Unfortunately it's not for home use as it costs *cough* $795 for 3 users!

I did contact them back then to ask them to consider a single user version for Time Machine users at home but they weren't interested.

I know you would like to use Windows Server, but have you considered Linux? You can do everything you need to for free with pretty much any distro.

Time Machine doesn't require an HFS partition. I have mine formatted as EXT4 (through netatalk on Debian) for example. TM just creates an HFS disk image on top of it which works just fine.

I can't imagine you'll experience any heat issues with your set-up; it sounds like it would be pretty much idle most of the time.

 

[thiggins]

Hey Kevin!
Long time, no hear. Glad to see you're still checking in.
Maybe there's an article here. Email me and let's talk...

 

[rolanddes]

There is actually an AFP server product for Windows that I looked at a few years ago called ExtremeZ IP. Unfortunately it's not for home use as it costs *cough* $795 for 3 users!

I did contact them back then to ask them to consider a single user version for Time Machine users at home but they weren't interested.

I know you would like to use Windows Server, but have you considered Linux? You can do everything you need to for free with pretty much any distro.

Time Machine doesn't require an HFS partition. I have mine formatted as EXT4 (through netatalk on Debian) for example. TM just creates an HFS disk image on top of it which works just fine.

I can't imagine you'll experience any heat issues with your set-up; it sounds like it would be pretty much idle most of the time.

Thanks man. But I do not want to spend time trying to get acquainted with another os. I have that enough from mac os nowadays. Even though I once checked out ubuntu to see what the fuss was about Im gonna stick with a windows server.

Would an Xp server be able to process requests from a mac machine?

Also I found that site which explains how to make your shared space in network accessible by time machine buy using sparsebundle or something.

Here it is:
http://hupio.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/osx-timemachine-and-sambawindows-share/

Do you think İ should give it a try?

 

[teknojnky]

I can't help regarding timemachine (I don't use it), but for everything else it should work fine.

However, what your doing is not really anything about a NAS, its simply a windows fileserver, running on a laptop, with external drives for storage.

I would guess your performance is going to be, not very good, especially if being access by multiple people/devices simultaniously.

In part, for wifi, but also because usb/firewire drives tend to perform much slower for multiple access than single user access.

Putting a gigabit nic (I'm assuming you mean by the PC card slot), may help some, but your clients will still be limited by wifi speeds to the router.

You don't really have anything to lose, other than time, I would get it setup first without buying the gbit card for the laptop, making sure that works ok with at least 1 user, before spending any additional money for the gbit laptop nic.

 

[kevinherring]

I love the creative use of Excel to create a network diagram btw!

I understand about wanting to learn a new OS - I guess it depends on whether that knowledge would be useful (or interesting) to you in the future. If not then stick with what you know!

You can indeed use a regular windows share/samba but it is strongly not recommended due to various reasons that I won't go into here (severe data loss etc).

Ultimately, as teknojnky says, with your set up the wifi link between your router and laptop will be the weakest link so unless you are unlikely to notice 100mbits vs 1gbit ethernet. Even with wired ethernet, unless you are frequently copying multi gigabyte files across the network, you might not even notice the difference between 100mbit vs 1gbit 9 times out of 10!

It depends what you want - if it's just going to be you and maybe a couple of family members using a centralised place to store and download a few files then what you suggest will be just fine.

Kevin

p.s. don't forget to think about some sort of off-site backup for your really important stuff.

 

[rolanddes]

Thanks guys. Your inputs are much appriciated.

A few points though:

1- What's the main difference between what I'm gonna do and a NAS? If the external harddrives were in the laptop (as sata connected internal drives) would it be a NAS than?

2- Will or can this system be able to stream 4 GB MKV movie files even with the bottleneck of 802.11g?

3- Long live excel. I'm a risk management specialist and earn my life by working on excel files

 

[kevinherring]

1. I think the difference is purely academic; I wouldn't worry about it.
2. It depends entirely on your wifi signal strength and position from the router. G should be able to handle it. N would be much more likely.

 

[rolanddes]

Thanks man. This forum is great