Don't forget Microsoft allows you to run a Trial version of any version of Windows Server for up to 3 years. Trials are only 180 days, but you can rearm that timer 6 times.
@@raphaelcardoso7927 Because a tonne of businesses small and large use it. So having a windows server just to learn on let alone to utilise it for services is great. I personally use Proxmox now and run a bunch of Linux containers for most of my stuff, but Windows is at the core of pretty much everything so having knowledge on it is very much needed.
@@leogiri2863 there's a lot of tutorials how to do anything on linux so how are they more complicated? also its easier to get most server software working on linux than windows so
I've been in the self-hosted land for a while now (it's one of my earliest passions), and yet I still come here to get some inspiration and see what is new. Anthony's videos are awesome! If you ever wanna discuss stuff, I'd be happy
Anything new I should know in Feb 2023 or can I still use Pulseway to start my home server system? I may want to render videos on a secondary Pc so maybe a network card connecting the two could help
I would love to see a series of increasing difficulty levels for servers. Something like turning an old rig into a TrueNAS server and then progressing into a full blown homelab rack setup.
I recommend openmediavault bc the hardware requirements of it are very low, so it is possible to repurpose old machines with it, I found truenas/freenas a bit hardware consuming
I love that they are going out of their way to show people how to create their own servers, and this will definitely be enough for the average user. To also answer the question in the video, it would be awesome to see a follow-up video explaining more advanced methods, Linux and the like.
the only thing is they talked about replacing Google Drive but only downloaded Plex, I was thinking they were going to talk about NextCloud or a similar cloud service.
Additional steps I’d recommend are: - enabling power on on power loss - using Windows autologin feature - setting up a program such as AnyDesk (task scheduler is your friend)
Be careful with the "enabling power on on power loss" function, especially when not owning an UPS. I've had a server going trough unholy shutdowns, rebooting continuously for more than three hours during reoccurring power-outages after a lightning strike.
Edit. Sorry didn't realize anydesk was remote. 2 more things. Add a remote connection so you can log into the server and tell windows you don't want to sign up for a Microsoft account. I use tightVNC but we use UltraVNC at work. Also I told windows to reboot once a week. FYI. I am moving from a windows server to a Open Media Vault OMV (currently running 2 servers). The primary reason I picked OMV was there are pi versions so I assume it's super light weight and low power consumption, also it just runs. Added bonus it has room to grow with Docker support (more advanced, but lots of YT vids). I am currently running the OMV OS from a USB stick but plan on making it permanent as it has been super solid. One other thing they make a 5.25" to 2.5" adapter that can hold 6 laptop sized disks. (Make sure you have power and SATA cables).
Please, make that dude become the chief-speaker! He is by far the best, speaks clearly and doesn't put any fake excitement or outrage in his voice. He doesn't perform a show, he teaches. Love, love, love it!
A part 2 or a continuation in general would be great. Showing more of the amazing things you can do with your own server, remote access and all that good stuff.
Did this at my job with an old PC they had. We needed a way for tablets in the shop to access blueprints on a Windows network share. It had to be a simple easy one app solution for the tablet side. So I turned the old PC into a web server that would access the network share, list all jobs and blueprints, then when a blueprint was chosen it would fetch the blueprint pdf and using some nodejs magic displays the blueprint right in the Android web browser. Everything is done in the browser on the tablet side. I'm quite proud of it considering I'm just a shop guy myself and not an IT guy by trade. I just know how to do stuff.
I spent 2 days checking how to use an old PC to create my own server. You guys nailed it, I'm starting on this tech world and you guys make things look really easy. Thank you for doing this.
Hey man, I found the way you speak, tone/pace/cadence etc is fantastic. Nothing sounded scripted and your clear/concise way of speaking was great for learning. Thank you!
@@22oreos the reason I mentioned "Linux with Anthony" as aposed to ATT (Anthony Tech Tips) is because LTT already has a huge community that are somewhat interesting in computing. It would expose less people to Linux if it was on a separate channel.
I’d love to see the next level, installing on Linux with an older machine like this using TrueNAS, as suggested by Anthony. Calling it “Level 2” or something might even help tailor the audience. Some useful info in the video might be convincing the server to communicate with windows locally (on LAN) or remotely (family elsewhere). A family photo server project sounds awesome.
I agree completely! Would love to see this! I think it's maybe spooky to some people to change OS but I got a lot of benefit by running very light Linux distros like Ubuntu Server and Lubuntu on my old hardware. My current Lubuntu machine I had actually tried to upgrade to Windows 11 just to see if it would do it and it basically told me no.
He never even addressed the _other_ reason why using Linux is ideal: A nine year old computer is more than serviceable, but not on Windows. It's going to chug on any current version of windows, regardless of how much you cut it back. Linux, on the other hand, will have no troubles, even with a "bloated" desktop environment like Gnome.
I could also see something like handling power safety to have the device connected to a battery and auto-save and shutdown when main power is lost then auto-restart when it gets back but that's maybe a bit more advanced. I could also see something on how to configure auto-backups to the server which could be cool.
Been homelabbing for many years. I am not the target audience for this video, but would LOVE to see more like it. More high production quality "ops/homelab for beginners" pls
It's a good start I guess...I remember that Windows box I used as a server, then experimented with Debian VMs in HyperV for Home Assistant, then Docker, then ditchEd Windows and went full Debian, and now have 40+ containers for all bunch of stuff the whole family uses daily! It's a journey that takes years :)
Petition to for LTT to make a complete Home Assistant setup, from lights to fans, to temp. to curtains with motion sensor, luminosity sensor, humidity/temp sensor, etc powered by similar server as this (an old pc) and everything automated/controlled from one single app.
This is GREAT. As a "old parts = home server" enthusiast who uses Linux, would love to see Anthony deep dive into that world. Either way... dope stuff!!!!!!!!!
In general old hardware as server usage is a good idea, but it depends on how much you value security. Especially intel hardware tends to have many exploited holes, which ironically serve as backdoors now ... or maybe even served intentionally as backdoors?!? It would be no surprise since snowden and co at least. The list of hardware exploits is long and reaches implementations like Intel's ime, secure boot, uefi, tpm and even in the cpu and x86 isa itself, deep down to the micro code. Spectre and meltdown, you name it, no matter which former hardware security device you take, they have been exploited. In my opinion, security hardware is one of the most stupid and nebulous things to do, when it comes to it security. In consequence you just can throw the hardware away. In case somebody does not believe or underestimates the daily attacks on servers, just set up a ssh server, connect it to the internet and record the log in attempts to your machine for just a couple of minutes.
if you do a deep dive, you ending with a home datacenter, or close to this, i swear you. i made a nas, now im on unraid with hba and all this funy things, curently runing 56 TB and climbing.....
I had a machine that size once. I grabbed a low-profile GT 610 (which was reasonably recent at the time), and a PSU to support it which was too big to fit the case. It was thankfully modular, so I just threaded it in from the outside. So I had a clunky Frankenstein'd cash register with a huge GPU hanging off of it, which could handle Skyrim reasonably well. It was a fun project.
Even when he runs into u planned things and have to address it, it feels like part of the video and doesn't feel rambly or long winded like a lot of other youtubers
Echoing many other comments here - I would love to see more like this! The most I've ever dabbled in home server stuff is a private Minecraft server but this format definitely makes me want to find out more possibilities for my old rig.
I would love if they could provide a continuation on the Linux part of the video. I have my own home server with many applications being served, but it is using an operating system modified specifically for ease of access rather than having my own special control panel and installing applications by hand. While it is still Linux, and you can pretty much do whatever you want on it as it is Debian with some fancy scripts in the big picture, I would be curious to see them dabble with setting it all up on your own and having a custom control panel displaying all the applications that you have and their status. I am especially curious about how they would set up e-mail and nginx with a domain you own without using a system that does everything for you about the setup, because I find it hard to move to the manual side of things due to that exact reason. You are no longer dependent on app updates for your specific platform, but rather can update everything yourself without any need to depend on someone else (however, you have to set it all up yourself and troubleshoot it yourself as well).
I would love to see an unraid build, just started using and found it a lot easier than expected, for me the largest issue was terminology. I know they have a bunch of unraid videos, but thats using it at the extreme, not as the 'average' home user would. Another thing that would be handy, is tips on where to get cases that support a large number of 3.5" drives. I was unable to find any old servers locally and searching online for affordable 'nas' cases was nightmare. no online stores that I could find allowed you to filter by number of drive bays. then when you find a case that lists a bunch, its very hard to tell if you will even be able to use them all. I ended up paying way to much for an ancient 4U 'media pc' case that was missing parts.
@@myopinion69420 Newegg let’s you search based on number of drive bays for both desktop and server cases. For desktop cases, as just one example, the Node 804 can hold nine 3.5” drives and two 2.5” drives. Various models of Fractal Design’s Define R series can hold 8+ 3.5” drives, with the newer models holding more drives, along with a couple of 2.5” drives. There are a fair number of options from other companies but I can understand the difficulty of finding them. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack unless you can search by the number of drive bays.
I'm glad I saw this video because it pointed me in the right direction for building my own Plex server and backup server for way less than an off the shelf NAS.
I managed to build my new "daily driver" over the last 1.5 years and had been wondering if I could do exactly this with my old one. Thank you, and I hope to see more of these types of things to come :)
Yep, did this to my old PC when I upgraded. It now lives a relatively quiet life as a backup/media server and sometimes stream encoding rig, and it works like a charm.
@@sadafdavre1147 Simple - I stream on Twitch sometimes, and whatever data is sent to Twitch has to be encoded, that is it has to be "translated" to something Twitch will accept. This is usually done in one of two ways: The first is to use a signle PC and let it handle everything - Playing games, recording, encoding and things like custom overlays (basically stream bling), alerts, music and whatnot. This is the simplest and least expensive way of doing things, but require a fairly powerful PC to make everything run smoothly. There are also a handful of games that appear to be notoriously difficult to get to run well on a single PC setup, so there's that. The second way is to run games on one PC, and have a second PC that records what you're doing on the first PC. The second PC will then handle the encoding and whatever else you need it to do, which frees up resources on the first PC as it no longer has to do _everything_. It can make for a smoother stream, since you can dedicate each PC to a specific task, and it also offers some degree of redundancy in case one PC goes down. The drawback is that it's more complex, require more setup and you have two PCs that can potentially bork and go down. As for me I'll admit I did it mostly for the challenge and experience. My main PC is powerful enough to run all my games and handle the streaming side of things on its own if necessary, but since my old PC is still in working order I thought "Eh, wny not?". So I guess it's less "my old PC is a server now" and more of a general "hey, I repurposed my old PC instead of dumping it in the e-waste" thing.
How did you set up the streaming platform. I'm trying an NDI plugging with obs, but stream isn't as smooth as straeaming straight out of the gaming pc. I game, yes, there's a very good FPS boost. But server obs is not getting smooth video input. So actually made my twitch stream look worse. Again: how did you set it up?
@@BagheeraRaceGamer depends on the GFX card in the encoding PC and your LAN network. for best results for NDI it's recommended to have both Gaming PC and Stream PC connected via ethernet to the router so you get that full 1Gbps.
You guys haven't actually done a whole lot on "low level" home servers. I've recetly set up an old PC as a Plex server with unraid but I would love to see more videos like this for ideas on what else I can use it for.
I recently bought a laptop with a broken screen to work as my plex server. $60, only 15w TDP, and 7th gen Intel CPU means it can hardware transcode like a boss. No regerts at all.
@@DJmaschine1 i3-7100u. Just be sure you get something with USB 3.0 ports for connecting storage, and Gigabit Ethernet. Those ports are rare on laptops these days.
I'd like a beginner NAS setup with TrueNAS, specifically with setting up redundancy, and probably mismatched drives. (Because we all know the drives we add to our pool wouldn't be new using old parts) As much as I'd love to have about 8k for a bunch of mass storage drives, I'd like to be able to use older and less reliable drives with redundancy and replace drives as they die.
If performance and uptime isn't a concern, you can totally do this. You can mismatch vdevs in a zpool, however it will have it's drawbacks, obviously. Especially with a setup like the one you're planning however, PLEASE, for the love of god, have backups. Always. You won't be in for a good time elseways.
TrueNAS is easy to set up, so far I have had my boot drive fail, should not have used 10 years old drive for the boot. Also had a 1TB drive fail about a month ago. I should have never put that drive in the NAS. But other than that TrueNAS has been easy to use now I want to upgrade my network speeds. That is what happens when you use OLD HDs for storage.
If you want to mismatch drives, i would strongly recormend getting unraid instead. Unraid is built for exactly what you are describing (throwing whatever you have at it, and fixing it in software). Truenas on the other hand is using ZFS and generally take a lot of inspiration from enterprise setups. Mixing drive sizes in Truenas is a bad idea even if you make it work, because ZFS is built with identical drives in mind, so using mixed sized drives could easily compromise on data integrity and might even depending on the exact setup give you worse performance than unraid given the way unraid distributes data compared to zfs/truenas
I have had enough of those shareware NAS products and buying a QNAP and a SYNOLOGY were just far more time saving, easy to use and maybe reliable? idk for older unreliable drives windows storage spaces has worked well.
@@nathanielletourneau9952 they constantly talk about every new-cutting-edge-overpriced piece of hardware that comes up just for sponsor money, how many TVs and speakers has Linus installed in his home by now? We just saw a video of them spending almost 1k on a server for media consumption under the excuse of "repurposing an old PC", $400 on a drive just for redundancy yisus. Not to mention the thought of having an full core i5 PC just laying around your house. Do you have many of those? I sure as hell don't, and if I did, I'd give it to a family member who needs it or sell it because I actually don't have that much money to spend. This entire channel is "first world problems TV".
@@Guryguazu i think they talk about new tech because it's relevant, not for "sponsor money". I don't know, I just don't get being so angry about it, tech is inherently a very modern space, I don't see how ltt can avoid its modern characteristics, some of which are bad examples of consumerism. I don't mind watching him showcase expensive tech, just like I don't mind watching someone showcase a Tesla, or a race prepped motorcycle, or anything that's expensive but impressive and to a degree hard to attain. I mean I get it if it isn't your jam, but then, why are you here? Also, what's wrong with first world problems? Not everything always has to be about third world problems. Tho I would agree ignoring them completely is bad.
This is content that is very close to my heart, reporopusing old PCs into servers turned into a hobby for me! If you have an old shuttle PC with an i3 this is even better ! Pity you didn't show off Freenas's capabilities but I guess it's for another video :)
it hit really close as this is exactly how I started off! I started with the family computer just learning stuff, then adding/buying old/cheap hardware just to learn a few things about general computers and networks. watching that gay dude from NCIX, demo some really cool hardware that I wish I could afford some day, then started watching LTT. Even though I don't really have any real use for most of their videos anymore, it's really a joy to watch good quality content that I know is made by people that understand how it is to not be a 1337 haxor that does everything through CLI on the first try.
I remember years ago repurposing my old IBM that I got for almost free to be the router in my house before home routers were good. Ran a Linux distro from a floppy disk call BBI (Broadband Internet) Agent. It was great, web based GUI and all. I ran that for years until I bought a new at that time Linksys WRT-54G. And eventually that got DD-WRT on it.
This is absolutely the gateway drug of having a home server. I started off with the tiny SFF dell optiplex with a 3770 in it. Threw in a 4tb drive, an ssd, and 2 1tb 2.5" mechanicals (double sided taped where the dvd drive used to be and connected to the usb header with usb to sata adapters) Finally upgraded to a 2u server with 11th gen hardware and 28tb of storage earlier this year.
Careful, your next step might be what mine was... a 42u rack, 24 drive DAS with SAS, full Cisco network, and over a half dozen Dell and HP rack mount servers 😂🤣😂🤣
What kernel do you use? Just curious and moving around between kernels. Found one to be particularly good in that it's super secure (and entirely OSS of course), but with security comes the slight inconvenience of extreme firewall issues, read-only root part, added complexity and need for reboot with every app install/update, etc. But once I got used to it, it's fairly nice and super well performing. Still got some kinks to work out with it though (like restarting services and issuing warnings before auto-reboots for security patches).
@@serpent77 haven't researched or even heard of DAS, some quick reading led me to see it as similar to SAN. Couldn't find many resources online, but is it just another term for SAN or a completely different technology? Oh and you don't happen to use Ceph as a SAN-like solution?
This. The 24/7 power is killing. 1W 24/7 costs about 2 euro in EU (20ct/kWh), even more now electricity is double priced (more like 4eur/W/yr right now). My old ivy bridge system consumes ~50W idle. My new 5600G server about 12W. At current electricity rates, the cost of new hardware has paid itself back in about 2 years. And then imagine that Intel 9th gen + Fujitsu D3643-H, or NUCs are even more energy efficient.
As someone who has been dabbling in this already for a few months, I would love to see a full series on this sort of home server. Benefits of different OSes, different uses and applications (beyond just file storage and plex - stuff like discord bot hosting, website hosting, etc), possibly how to use a hypervisor and VMs.
I recently bought a new mobo/cpu/ram and have been thinking of turning the old stuff into a server but have zero server experience. this video answered a lot of questions i had! thanks!
In our current world of throw everything in a dumpster and start over, I really really love it when you guys make content reusing or recycling any old hardware. This hits home with me as both an avid PC nerd but also as a environmentalist. Well done as always Anthony :-)
The consumerism is only half of that problem though. What would really go a long way are right to repair laws. The few repair shops around that deal in electronics often have to learn from trial and error because most companies do not release repair schematics. And repair shops frequently either have to rely on salvaged components from other units, or reproductions from dubious sources overseas. If companies released repair schematics and sold replacement parts either through good will (lol, never happen in a capitalist society) or more likely through legal mandate, then that would go a long way to people fixing their products instead of buying new ones every couple years. The simple fact is that this buy, use, throw away, society we have today isn't an accident. It's a result of years of pressure from our corporate overlords - the modern day oligarchs - actively cracking down on things that hurt their profits. Allowing consumers to repair their machines loses corporations money.
LOL my home file server is a 2002 Athlon Hammer with 2.5gb of RAM and 8 TB of RAID storage, two 100/1000 NIC cards. Doesn't have to be fancy, even recapped the board.
I saw this and was so glad somebody with a large audience made it. I have used my old computers for servers and firewalls. Most people don’t think there is any reason to keep these guys.
I would love to see a run down on why you would choose unraid over truenas or whatever else. aWould be useful for us people about to take the dip into a custom server as an upgrade from a box system.
Seconded. LTT has used Unraid in the past, and from what I've read, it seems better for my use case, but I could definitely stand to learn more about both.
@@0Aberration Indeed I know LTT has used both and i know there's plenty of documentation out there covering their functionality, but call me a small brain I can't handle all of it and I've ended up flip flopping back and forth and putting of the upgrade.
Perfectly timed video, been thinking about what to do with some of my old PCs lately. Would definitely be interested in a follow up video. From one Anthony to another, Great job.
Would love to see a more complex version of this. Even a series of increasingly hardcore videos so anyone at any level can set this up. Also, I'm switching to Linux to avoid Windows 11. I would love to see the Linux version of this video.
People always balk when you talk about 10 gigabit network adapters "because your ISP doesn't go over 1 gig." You can tell they're the ones that needed this video. Thank you for your service.
Thank you, LTT, for spreading this sacred knowledge. It's so painful watching so many people honestly believing that their 1-3-5 year old PCs are worthless and throwing them into trash, turning hexacore CPUs into keychains and the like. And I'm afraid that a lot of those people would be shocked to know what they just destroyed. Ignorance is off the charts sometimes. Someone close to me was about to throw out a 4-5 year old laptop because it had a broken screen, something that can be repaired for a tiny fraction of it's cost... And they don't even have a replacement. They assumed it's broken and they have to buy a new one... AAAH
I was thinking about it where if you had your second PC help process stuff with the other they could become one and become the ultimate processing beast.
For exactly this purpose I'd always recommend any enthusiast that buys Intel to not cheap out and get an F-SKU. An iGPU costs ~10 bucks more, but makes using it as a server later on so much easier
I would love to see a video on setting up a NAS for beginners. I'm at the point of hoarding in which I need to be considering a NAS. Although to be honest it seems so intimidating after watching videos in which you showcase setting it up. Would love a video like this to help other people like me get started with setting us a NAS and more.
I use mine as a render farm. I'm a student in 3D and making 3D renders can take quite a while so I use my older computer (i5, gtx 1080) with my newer one (i7,rtx 2080) to render during the night or when I am away. A render that would have lasted an hour now last between 30mins and 40mins (now 8 to 15mins) depending how I split the tasks between both computers. Pretty useful!
@@erniefern my render settings were not optimal the last time I posted. Since then I experimented with it and found better settings and a better way to split tasks. Main computer does the heavy tasks (sub scattering, glass materials, etc) and the other one does the lighter tasks. It now takes 8 to 20 mins for a video render.
@@digvijayredekar17 network rendering for 3ds max and Maya. There is some documentation for it on autodesk's website. It's complicated to setup but once it's done it works out well
Is there an app for android tv/smartphones that lets you use the media server as if it was a comercial streaming service (like say, netflix)? Would be interesting to make one for home use and have in a actually good bitrate all the stuff I actually care to watch, instead of just whatever the regional contracts allow me to.
I have my own home server that I use for hosting some videogames I play with friends, plex, DNS to not memorize the IP of all device connected to my network while need to ping or connect, I use as a backup storage too. To me, it's a must having one that do its job and is 24/7 available.
9:55 - This is ONLY true under a limited number of ways HDDs can die. Especially in the slower ways drives can die, your data may corrupt and that corrupted data will be mirrored on the second drive. So it is important to note, mirroring is less about backup and more about uptime. If you are using this for personal use, an automated backup to the second drive will be smarter 90% of the time, so that is data corrupts, you can roll back.
Sure but realistically how often are you going to access the files? The data could be corrupted for a long time before you ever get around to playing that movie or tv show or whatever.
@@altokers If you want your data to be as safe or safer than it would be on a cloud drive (where they have redundancy to protect against data loss), then you use a separate incremental backup. Like they said, RAID1 mirrored is not a backup. years ago I had a LaCie NetworkSpace Max 2TB set up as a 1TB RAID1 NAS, and learned the hard way when the controller died and I wasn't able to recover anything. But I had off site backups that served me well (pun intended).
@@altokers when my hard drives failed, they did so gradually, having slow loads in some sectors and clicks before data started getting corrupted. So by the time it got to falling apart, I moved all important data to another drive. So there are signs when it starts getting wrecked. Mind you I had to replace maybe two hard disks in over a decade. I used a lot on multiple computers, just adding bigger ones as needed. So by the time a 500Gb one started dying I had multiple terabytes to spare.
I think you can just store the hash/checksum of chunks on your hard-drive right beside the content. Since a corruption in HDDs typically is localised to a region, you know that if a hash mismatches from the content, either the content has been corrupted, or the hash (which means it's likely the content has been corrupted too). If so, you can prevent from rolling the updates to the other HDDs.
I love these kind of videos. I can tell Anthony is just loving going over this and his passion for it, I think Linus needs more of this in their videos.
@@KingBowserLP yup. I still have 2 netbooks and an old dell in working order that I got for free from relatives and friends. Also have another old laptop with a broken screen. They could all be decent servers. I just don't really have a need for one right now. I just sometimes use them as travel computers or dumb terminals in places they might get damaged or stolen.
I sm so happy I found videos like this. He explains everything very simply and since I'm just learning about servers, this was extremely helpful! Thank you!
Holy shit!! I literally just started this project a day ago. The timing of this video is unbelievable. I literally thought... God I wish I knew Anthony or Wendell IRL because I need help! Haha what a great Christmas present!!🎄 🎁 Oh and please do a TrueNAS version!! Preferably, with a PCIE NvME Adapter Cache or Boot drive if possible!! Thank you guys, @LTT so much for this!!
"Remember that old PC you stuffed in the closet?" Oh man, the nostalgia of running a single core server from under the stairs.. My mom hated the idea thinking it'd eat our electrical bill, but I assured her the AMD Sempron +3000 would only cost as much as a lightbulb.
if you happen to live in an area that requires household heating in the winter, think of it as saving money on your heating bill! that's what I do with mining on my PC, heats my room, can turn off the heating, and make some cash
Yeah i remember when I had my old Sempron with 1,5gb of RAM running XP and a Bukkit server. It worked fine for me and a couple of friends. Good old times! Edit: Now I have an old 40w Xeon with 12gb of RAM running win10 as an HTPC and a xpenology VM for NAS stuff
I’ve been slapping Linux on my old pcs and making NAS servers for years. Especially old laptops are great for this because they have very low power consumption.
@@ETHANR26 make sure to keep all your networking ports open, and never have it run a VPN. if you have slowdowns you might also want to disable the firewall on your server.
Love it, I just upgraded my PC and was left with most parts to setup a server of sorts. This helped guide me through the decision process as I plan to turn it into a media server or something for minecraft xD
100% for reusing old hardware like this. I do it too. I’m curious how idle power draw factors into the cost of the machine. Older machines didn’t do this as well as new ones do. Also you need that DVD drive to rip discs for the Plex server you just set up 😉
This is the main problem too. My 4th gen intel DDR3 system with a budget yet "efficient" motherboard idles around 60-80 watts and my ryzen 3600 system around 80-100w. This is due to the motherboard components. Oh and ryzen cpus consume at least 20watts idle no matter what
I mean this being a server, I'd say physically ripping CD's off of it isn't an ideal use case, Maybe a USB one and use your main PC to rip them directly to network share. I kinda like the idea of shoving a homemade server in the attic and forgetting about it. These days you can network start it, monitor thermals and performance all remotely. Also an epic use case I observed using mine was I would remote in using RDP and on a local network or even off a local network (Stay away from forwarding these ports if you don't know what you're doing) on local network there's almost no latency or visual issues. Or off a local network it means that I could use a Chromebook and perform any task I needed with that. Super cool.
freenas is horrible, I have had many reliability issues and crashes and the people who are building it are assholes just use something else like truenas. just FYI freenas goal is to sell their product services to enterprise level customers, it is free for you but if you actually use it in a business and want support then they charge you.
Been doing this for years with a G3220 Pentium, 4gb ddr3, HD6450 1gb and 6 hard drives! Built myself for like £30, brilliant media pc and home server. Very glad to see older computers put to use 😆
@@Tom60 Interesting question, I have written a few papers on energy consumption. I only turn on my home server when I intend to use it, and as it doubles as a home theater pc, usually only 1 pc is in use. Plus, it has lower power consumption than my other computers or than accessing a remote corporate owned server in addition to my own device from which the remote server is accessed. I suppose removing the HD6450 and other flares would reduce power consumption but I think it useful to keep unnecessary components installed such that the PC can also be a backup if your main desktop dies, as Anthony explains. I have liked some people suggesting the use of laptops due to lower power consumption, but you then lose native 3.5" hard drive support.
@Ash Thanks for the reply, I have this in mind because I want an app that runs 24/7 using about 5-10% of the processor in the background at idle, this is why I take into account the energy consumption. I understand for small uses like Plex, ... and only turning it on when you are using it is not going to consume much power.
I love Anthony. His way of talking really makes me feel like I'm learning something. Like that one good teacher in high school that you still remember to this day.
I did just this! Took my old A8-7600 APU system and I currently use it as a Minecraft server. All I had to do was install Linux and Minecraft. Nothing else!
It would be great to see an intermediate/advanced version of this video! Things like running a database to monitor a raspberry pi and display it on grafana for example :)
I literally decided last night to go ahead and create a home server. I hadn't thought through everything I was going to do with it, but this video could not have had better timing XD Great content as always!!
I think a video on using an old pc for virtualisation would be good. The day I learned I could run multiple computers in my computer was a really good day. Especially given Hyper-V is part of Windows 10 and up.
I was an IT tech at a local dried fruit company almost 5 years ago. I learned they ran a hypervisor setup which blew my mind. I knew about virtual machines already, but I didn't know about Hyper-V or ESXi. When I saw how they setup virtual machines I was amazed. I was so amazed that I bought myself an older HP Workstation from eBay for about $40 and spent another $40 in RAM and a CPU to upgrade it and started tinkering with ESXi at home. Way overkill for what I use it for, but a pretty good learning experience.
This is actually a fantastic idea, recently ive been thinking about making a nas/media server at home so seeing more things like this, especially with TrueNAS Core would be great to learn about
That Pulseway you talk about (also your sponsor), is another $528 a year for people outside the US. Unless you know what to do (lucky for me I do) with older machines and understand their capabilities, there are endless opportunities to turn them into a powerful machine if you know how. I just wished the video would cut the crap and go straight to the point if its going to help people who are starting out or are learning.
Why can't users understand that Scale is still under RC stage? What is there to compare when one is at U7 another is still at RC1? Please educate yourself on TrueNAS life cycle at Lawrence System. You come here for entertainment, not education.
@@TanKianW79 i know it is. But id still like to hear his opinion on moving from freebsd to linux. It was just an example. Id love to see them do tutorials on a lot of subjects.
It’s good to see videos like this. I imagine most tech people have been doing this for years anyway. One thing I didn’t like is having to spring for a Pulseway sub at $32 US every month? Am I missing something here? The whole video is about doing things cheap”ER” but spending that ongoing dough makes it out of the realm of possibility for some folks. Lots of free options out there but they couldn’t talk about those because the video was sponsored by Pulseway.
@@Zysperro yeah especially when they showed a specific "tweaker" to literally change a single registry key. I am wary of programs like that having access to system stuff. Not because I am paranoid of them stealing data but because several widely-used utility programs had adware and hamful programs added on updates, from the top of my head CCleaner and Utorrent. Actually still use OLDER version of the latter.
Pulseway is a remote monitoring and management platform for Managed Service Providers, so I'm not sure why they're sponsoring this video. One person running a personal server at home is not their target audience, at all.
Personally I would love to see a continuation of this. You could do it from a how to get the absolute max usefulness out of an old system. Windows file history for automatic backups. Imageing of your main rig for quick rebuilds after an incident. Hosting a game server on the side possibly.
Is there an app for android tv/smartphones that lets you use the media server as if it was a comercial streaming service (like say, netflix)? Would be interesting to make one for home use and have in a actually good bitrate all the stuff I actually care to watch, instead of just whatever the regional contracts allow me to.
VERY similar to what I learned how to build a server for my home and friends! And I have some quick notes for those who want to try it: 1. Have a soul of making toss. You might encounter so many problems from everywhere on your system, but solve one issue would enhance your skill dramatically. 2. Windows is a very good way to get into this. In fact, I never install other system on my 5 times server installation experience (except my router which runs padavan, it has a DHCP server though), but I'm highly recommending NOT using the Windows 10 or 11 for consumer, like the home edition. Instead, find for Windows enterprise (LTSC), or Windows server 2022. They don't have those fancy things or auto update, makes it pretty fit for a 24h running server. 3. For hardware, if your PC is very old, check or change a good power supply and CPU cooler for QOL. I bought a 1U FLEX power unit for my first home server, and that thing is insanely noisy, even 10 meters away. 4. Just try it, computer skills are very useful. After successfully building a server in your LAN, try setup your router for access from WAN (Concern safety issue first), use ipv6 to bypass the NAT, configure a DNS to avoid typing IP address every time, and so much more interesting things!
If you have the connections available, I’d definitely add a small SSD for the system drive. A 128GB SATA drive is going to be under $40 and will decrease noise, boot times, and power consumption. Plus you can make a backup image of the whole drive and save it on your bulk storage once you have everything configured properly.
There are some crazy cheap smaller drives out there too. I wouldn't use them for Windows but Linux has a small footprint and will happily fit on a sub 32GB drive..
@@TheGodOfAllThatWas running certain OS types without extra configs on usb is quite dangerous... high writes and reads tend to kill these little boys faster than you think...
@@cjchico Just a note. On old motherboards before nvme standards were around, if you want the m.2 to be a boot drive using a pcie adapter, make sure the m.2 device can support booting such as samsung 950 pro and some plextor drives.
A follow-up on this topic would be excellent! For those of us whom are tech savy, but still benefit from this kind of highly informational content, LTT has been a godsend.
I'd like to see a followup with a step-by-step setup of Jellyfin on a newer Linux machine with remote viewing. I am trying to do that right now, but I'm just a hardware junkie and a complete idiot when it comes to the networking side.
More videos like this would be great, I love the high end pc videos but it's really nice to see stuff aimed towards everyday budget projects
True
Anything for the budget of a pentium 4 PC? 🤩
Yes, I particularly would like a video about shucking external drives for use on budget home servers
Agreed
I agree with you, this content is golden. Thie is actually how I first started my first server.
"This old machine isn't worthless. Even with its 9 year old CPU..."
_looks over at his 9 year old main pc_
Why must you hurt me, Anthony?
I have a 10 yr old one
How about a 20 year old pentium 4?
Same lol
My old FX chip is crying inside..... at least the tears keep it cooler!!
fx8350 crew represent
Don't forget Microsoft allows you to run a Trial version of any version of Windows Server for up to 3 years. Trials are only 180 days, but you can rearm that timer 6 times.
Why windows servers though?
@@aq6304 and more complicated, but of course we're not mentioning that, right?
@@leogiri2863 it's really not tho.
@@raphaelcardoso7927 Because a tonne of businesses small and large use it. So having a windows server just to learn on let alone to utilise it for services is great. I personally use Proxmox now and run a bunch of Linux containers for most of my stuff, but Windows is at the core of pretty much everything so having knowledge on it is very much needed.
@@leogiri2863 there's a lot of tutorials how to do anything on linux so how are they more complicated? also its easier to get most server software working on linux than windows so
This video single handedly launched my home server side hobby. Thanks Anthony
It did the exact same thing with me lol
Is that the guys name - I always like his videos a lot he's very very good at communicating.
@@leoleo-sp1db Yes, the presenter's name is Anthony. He's awesome.
I've been in the self-hosted land for a while now (it's one of my earliest passions), and yet I still come here to get some inspiration and see what is new. Anthony's videos are awesome! If you ever wanna discuss stuff, I'd be happy
Anything new I should know in Feb 2023 or can I still use Pulseway to start my home server system? I may want to render videos on a secondary Pc so maybe a network card connecting the two could help
I would love to see a series of increasing difficulty levels for servers. Something like turning an old rig into a TrueNAS server and then progressing into a full blown homelab rack setup.
As someone that has stumbled through making a freeNAS box as a quarantine project, I'd love to see how to make a homelab rack setup like Linus has.
I recommend openmediavault bc the hardware requirements of it are very low, so it is possible to repurpose old machines with it, I found truenas/freenas a bit hardware consuming
Yes! Level it up through a series of videos! I love it!
agreed
Yes!
I love that they are going out of their way to show people how to create their own servers, and this will definitely be enough for the average user. To also answer the question in the video, it would be awesome to see a follow-up video explaining more advanced methods, Linux and the like.
the only thing is they talked about replacing Google Drive but only downloaded Plex, I was thinking they were going to talk about NextCloud or a similar cloud service.
Definitely would love to see more content on DIY storage / servers.
@@Ninja00007x what
He's just born to explain tech in a way that not many others can do. Linus is lucky he got you.
I've noticed that its very rare anyone other than Linus hosts LTT anymore and it makes me sad because we miss out on stuff like this
Do not dead name
@123leop this was before it was announced bro
@@123leophe still a dude lmao
@@123leop Womp womp.
Still a dude.
Additional steps I’d recommend are:
- enabling power on on power loss
- using Windows autologin feature
- setting up a program such as AnyDesk
(task scheduler is your friend)
Be careful with the "enabling power on on power loss" function, especially when not owning an UPS.
I've had a server going trough unholy shutdowns, rebooting continuously for more than three hours during reoccurring power-outages after a lightning strike.
@@iChimbo yes, a server edition
Edit. Sorry didn't realize anydesk was remote.
2 more things. Add a remote connection so you can log into the server and tell windows you don't want to sign up for a Microsoft account. I use tightVNC but we use UltraVNC at work.
Also I told windows to reboot once a week.
FYI.
I am moving from a windows server to a Open Media Vault OMV (currently running 2 servers). The primary reason I picked OMV was there are pi versions so I assume it's super light weight and low power consumption, also it just runs. Added bonus it has room to grow with Docker support (more advanced, but lots of YT vids). I am currently running the OMV OS from a USB stick but plan on making it permanent as it has been super solid.
One other thing they make a 5.25" to 2.5" adapter that can hold 6 laptop sized disks. (Make sure you have power and SATA cables).
@@ElectronicPleasure RDP requires a professional license
@@ElectronicPleasure It's been sponsored by Pulseway :). They were probably not allowed to mention RDP. :D
Please, make that dude become the chief-speaker! He is by far the best, speaks clearly and doesn't put any fake excitement or outrage in his voice. He doesn't perform a show, he teaches. Love, love, love it!
Yeah this dudes the king, other fella is a nightmare
@@M.Godfrey Linus?😂
@@M.Godfrey I think you just might be gay for him I don't think there's a single comment from you that doesn't talk about him
@@Yikeo we’re baritone brothers
@@Yikeo I do it to piss other guy, ANTHONY IS THE GOAT
A part 2 or a continuation in general would be great. Showing more of the amazing things you can do with your own server, remote access and all that good stuff.
yeah this just the surface, need more depth for better settings.
Agreed!
Did this at my job with an old PC they had. We needed a way for tablets in the shop to access blueprints on a Windows network share. It had to be a simple easy one app solution for the tablet side. So I turned the old PC into a web server that would access the network share, list all jobs and blueprints, then when a blueprint was chosen it would fetch the blueprint pdf and using some nodejs magic displays the blueprint right in the Android web browser. Everything is done in the browser on the tablet side. I'm quite proud of it considering I'm just a shop guy myself and not an IT guy by trade. I just know how to do stuff.
I hope you got a raise for that
@@Yoloswegster I bet the employer was simply satisfied he gets more bang for his buck :D
We need more videos like this please. I'm tired of talking about PCs and having games be the only talking point for some people!
Especially at this time of short supply and the right to repair conversations going on .
Right?... I use pc's for everything BUT games.
I'm taking this as a sign that I should go buy myself a new PC for Christmas so I can have an "old" one to use as a server.
Good luck
Yea buying a new pc …
best time for a prebuilt TBH, there's "sales" but also it's not like you can buy parts ATM LOL
lol same
Or if you can get hold of a Raspberry Pi 4B there’s a cheaper home server for you.
I spent 2 days checking how to use an old PC to create my own server. You guys nailed it, I'm starting on this tech world and you guys make things look really easy. Thank you for doing this.
Did you do it?
@@madern7 I did! Now I am using my old cpu as a Home server
@@javierreyesruiz8018 would love to actually do this
@@javierreyesruiz8018 how did you get past the use a business email thing?
oh I'm starting out with hardware too, good luck friend
Hey man, I found the way you speak, tone/pace/cadence etc is fantastic. Nothing sounded scripted and your clear/concise way of speaking was great for learning. Thank you!
Im all for more videos like this. We need "Linux with Anthony" because thats a really solid next step
"Linux with Anthony" should totally be a series on it's own.
We need a Linux Tech Tips (etc) channel with Anthony!
@@22oreos the reason I mentioned "Linux with Anthony" as aposed to ATT (Anthony Tech Tips) is because LTT already has a huge community that are somewhat interesting in computing. It would expose less people to Linux if it was on a separate channel.
@@afallingtree9114 They could do it like Mac Address?
@@22oreos eh, perhaps. its better than nothing
I’d love to see the next level, installing on Linux with an older machine like this using TrueNAS, as suggested by Anthony. Calling it “Level 2” or something might even help tailor the audience. Some useful info in the video might be convincing the server to communicate with windows locally (on LAN) or remotely (family elsewhere). A family photo server project sounds awesome.
I'd like to see them show the pitfalls of using windows software RAID first, Then showing moving to real hardware RAID with a cheap card from ebay.
@@t0m5k1 hardware raid doesn't really add much these days and is significantly less flexible than software like ZFS.
I agree completely! Would love to see this! I think it's maybe spooky to some people to change OS but I got a lot of benefit by running very light Linux distros like Ubuntu Server and Lubuntu on my old hardware. My current Lubuntu machine I had actually tried to upgrade to Windows 11 just to see if it would do it and it basically told me no.
He never even addressed the _other_ reason why using Linux is ideal: A nine year old computer is more than serviceable, but not on Windows. It's going to chug on any current version of windows, regardless of how much you cut it back. Linux, on the other hand, will have no troubles, even with a "bloated" desktop environment like Gnome.
I could also see something like handling power safety to have the device connected to a battery and auto-save and shutdown when main power is lost then auto-restart when it gets back but that's maybe a bit more advanced.
I could also see something on how to configure auto-backups to the server which could be cool.
Been homelabbing for many years. I am not the target audience for this video, but would LOVE to see more like it.
More high production quality "ops/homelab for beginners" pls
It's a good start I guess...I remember that Windows box I used as a server, then experimented with Debian VMs in HyperV for Home Assistant, then Docker, then ditchEd Windows and went full Debian, and now have 40+ containers for all bunch of stuff the whole family uses daily! It's a journey that takes years :)
Anthony is my safeplace, when he said "love you guys" I took it personally
Would love to see a sequel to this dealing with solutions for intermediate users. Maybe something that works also as a hub for a smart house.
Petition to for LTT to make a complete Home Assistant setup, from lights to fans, to temp. to curtains with motion sensor, luminosity sensor, humidity/temp sensor, etc powered by similar server as this (an old pc) and everything automated/controlled from one single app.
That would be awesome
Yes to this
The opportunity has presented itself, at the new humble abode Linus bought.
I guess that series is called linus's New House
Yes!! I'd love this!
This is GREAT. As a "old parts = home server" enthusiast who uses Linux, would love to see Anthony deep dive into that world. Either way... dope stuff!!!!!!!!!
Yet they decided to bloat it with totally mismatched sponsorship. It's the clash I would not expect from Ant. Dislike.
In general old hardware as server usage is a good idea, but it depends on how much you value security. Especially intel hardware tends to have many exploited holes, which ironically serve as backdoors now ... or maybe even served intentionally as backdoors?!? It would be no surprise since snowden and co at least. The list of hardware exploits is long and reaches implementations like Intel's ime, secure boot, uefi, tpm and even in the cpu and x86 isa itself, deep down to the micro code. Spectre and meltdown, you name it, no matter which former hardware security device you take, they have been exploited. In my opinion, security hardware is one of the most stupid and nebulous things to do, when it comes to it security. In consequence you just can throw the hardware away. In case somebody does not believe or underestimates the daily attacks on servers, just set up a ssh server, connect it to the internet and record the log in attempts to your machine for just a couple of minutes.
if you do a deep dive, you ending with a home datacenter, or close to this, i swear you. i made a nas, now im on unraid with hba and all this funy things, curently runing 56 TB and climbing.....
@@thescandalchannel and what for? spending money just for server lolz?
As someone who is basically already doing what's in the video, I'd like to see a Linux version of this and more.
I had a machine that size once. I grabbed a low-profile GT 610 (which was reasonably recent at the time), and a PSU to support it which was too big to fit the case. It was thankfully modular, so I just threaded it in from the outside. So I had a clunky Frankenstein'd cash register with a huge GPU hanging off of it, which could handle Skyrim reasonably well.
It was a fun project.
I really like Anthony, hes got such a pleasant and fun energy.
Also good job writer and editor, awesome video idea! :)
Agreed. It's like soul food, except tech videos. Also he broke me when he installed that HDD expansion tray upside down.
I second what you wrote.
Even when he runs into u planned things and have to address it, it feels like part of the video and doesn't feel rambly or long winded like a lot of other youtubers
Anthony is awesome. He is so extremely knowledgeable, yet down to earth and relatable. His videos are some of the best.
I see anthony, I click
Echoing many other comments here - I would love to see more like this! The most I've ever dabbled in home server stuff is a private Minecraft server but this format definitely makes me want to find out more possibilities for my old rig.
@@brandonhoover2120 you'll find minecraft real easy, don't get too hyped bout that
I would love if they could provide a continuation on the Linux part of the video. I have my own home server with many applications being served, but it is using an operating system modified specifically for ease of access rather than having my own special control panel and installing applications by hand. While it is still Linux, and you can pretty much do whatever you want on it as it is Debian with some fancy scripts in the big picture, I would be curious to see them dabble with setting it all up on your own and having a custom control panel displaying all the applications that you have and their status. I am especially curious about how they would set up e-mail and nginx with a domain you own without using a system that does everything for you about the setup, because I find it hard to move to the manual side of things due to that exact reason. You are no longer dependent on app updates for your specific platform, but rather can update everything yourself without any need to depend on someone else (however, you have to set it all up yourself and troubleshoot it yourself as well).
It's amazing how many people got into running and configuring their first servers because of Minecraft. That's how I started!
That's so cool, I want to learn how to my old computer into a gaming server
Make this a series. Moving up in difficulty. One every month would be awesome. So we have something to do and figure out.
I would love to see an unraid build, just started using and found it a lot easier than expected, for me the largest issue was terminology.
I know they have a bunch of unraid videos, but thats using it at the extreme, not as the 'average' home user would.
Another thing that would be handy, is tips on where to get cases that support a large number of 3.5" drives. I was unable to find any old servers locally and searching online for affordable 'nas' cases was nightmare. no online stores that I could find allowed you to filter by number of drive bays. then when you find a case that lists a bunch, its very hard to tell if you will even be able to use them all.
I ended up paying way to much for an ancient 4U 'media pc' case that was missing parts.
Exactly what I'm thinking
Yes this. Tired of linus tech advertisement network.
@@myopinion69420 Newegg let’s you search based on number of drive bays for both desktop and server cases.
For desktop cases, as just one example, the Node 804 can hold nine 3.5” drives and two 2.5” drives.
Various models of Fractal Design’s Define R series can hold 8+ 3.5” drives, with the newer models holding more drives, along with a couple of 2.5” drives. There are a fair number of options from other companies but I can understand the difficulty of finding them. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack unless you can search by the number of drive bays.
I'm glad I saw this video because it pointed me in the right direction for building my own Plex server and backup server for way less than an off the shelf NAS.
I managed to build my new "daily driver" over the last 1.5 years and had been wondering if I could do exactly this with my old one. Thank you, and I hope to see more of these types of things to come :)
Yep, did this to my old PC when I upgraded. It now lives a relatively quiet life as a backup/media server and sometimes stream encoding rig, and it works like a charm.
Hey, I'm new to all this, can u tell what do u mean by a stream encoding rig?
@@sadafdavre1147 Simple - I stream on Twitch sometimes, and whatever data is sent to Twitch has to be encoded, that is it has to be "translated" to something Twitch will accept. This is usually done in one of two ways:
The first is to use a signle PC and let it handle everything - Playing games, recording, encoding and things like custom overlays (basically stream bling), alerts, music and whatnot. This is the simplest and least expensive way of doing things, but require a fairly powerful PC to make everything run smoothly. There are also a handful of games that appear to be notoriously difficult to get to run well on a single PC setup, so there's that.
The second way is to run games on one PC, and have a second PC that records what you're doing on the first PC. The second PC will then handle the encoding and whatever else you need it to do, which frees up resources on the first PC as it no longer has to do _everything_. It can make for a smoother stream, since you can dedicate each PC to a specific task, and it also offers some degree of redundancy in case one PC goes down. The drawback is that it's more complex, require more setup and you have two PCs that can potentially bork and go down.
As for me I'll admit I did it mostly for the challenge and experience. My main PC is powerful enough to run all my games and handle the streaming side of things on its own if necessary, but since my old PC is still in working order I thought "Eh, wny not?". So I guess it's less "my old PC is a server now" and more of a general "hey, I repurposed my old PC instead of dumping it in the e-waste" thing.
I did the same to my old AMD A10-7890K when I upgraded
How did you set up the streaming platform. I'm trying an NDI plugging with obs, but stream isn't as smooth as straeaming straight out of the gaming pc. I game, yes, there's a very good FPS boost. But server obs is not getting smooth video input. So actually made my twitch stream look worse. Again: how did you set it up?
@@BagheeraRaceGamer depends on the GFX card in the encoding PC and your LAN network. for best results for NDI it's recommended to have both Gaming PC and Stream PC connected via ethernet to the router so you get that full 1Gbps.
You guys haven't actually done a whole lot on "low level" home servers. I've recetly set up an old PC as a Plex server with unraid but I would love to see more videos like this for ideas on what else I can use it for.
r/homelab
r/selfhosted
welcome
I recently bought a laptop with a broken screen to work as my plex server. $60, only 15w TDP, and 7th gen Intel CPU means it can hardware transcode like a boss. No regerts at all.
@@pilotdog68 what processor does it have? currently looking for a similar setup.
@@DJmaschine1 i3-7100u.
Just be sure you get something with USB 3.0 ports for connecting storage, and Gigabit Ethernet. Those ports are rare on laptops these days.
@@pilotdog68 thank you for that. Do you know how many transcodes the cpu would be able to handle simultaneously?
Love those Videos with Anthony. He`s like your buddy who really knows how to explain stuff.
hes a bundle of sticks...
I'd like a beginner NAS setup with TrueNAS, specifically with setting up redundancy, and probably mismatched drives.
(Because we all know the drives we add to our pool wouldn't be new using old parts)
As much as I'd love to have about 8k for a bunch of mass storage drives, I'd like to be able to use older and less reliable drives with redundancy and replace drives as they die.
TRUENAS or unraid would be great
If performance and uptime isn't a concern, you can totally do this. You can mismatch vdevs in a zpool, however it will have it's drawbacks, obviously.
Especially with a setup like the one you're planning however, PLEASE, for the love of god, have backups. Always. You won't be in for a good time elseways.
TrueNAS is easy to set up, so far I have had my boot drive fail, should not have used 10 years old drive for the boot. Also had a 1TB drive fail about a month ago. I should have never put that drive in the NAS. But other than that TrueNAS has been easy to use now I want to upgrade my network speeds. That is what happens when you use OLD HDs for storage.
If you want to mismatch drives, i would strongly recormend getting unraid instead. Unraid is built for exactly what you are describing (throwing whatever you have at it, and fixing it in software). Truenas on the other hand is using ZFS and generally take a lot of inspiration from enterprise setups. Mixing drive sizes in Truenas is a bad idea even if you make it work, because ZFS is built with identical drives in mind, so using mixed sized drives could easily compromise on data integrity and might even depending on the exact setup give you worse performance than unraid given the way unraid distributes data compared to zfs/truenas
I have had enough of those shareware NAS products and buying a QNAP and a SYNOLOGY were just far more time saving, easy to use and maybe reliable? idk
for older unreliable drives windows storage spaces has worked well.
I love LTT's emphasis on accessible sustainability of tech and hardware! It really feels appropriate for the current market and future of the world.
yeah right, there is nothing sustainable about LTT. These idiots are quite literally the manifestation of consumerism.
@@someonewhocares...2513 Why?
@@someonewhocares...2513 so true. our world is completely fucked. at least they are "trying" lmfao
@@nathanielletourneau9952 they constantly talk about every new-cutting-edge-overpriced piece of hardware that comes up just for sponsor money, how many TVs and speakers has Linus installed in his home by now? We just saw a video of them spending almost 1k on a server for media consumption under the excuse of "repurposing an old PC", $400 on a drive just for redundancy yisus. Not to mention the thought of having an full core i5 PC just laying around your house. Do you have many of those? I sure as hell don't, and if I did, I'd give it to a family member who needs it or sell it because I actually don't have that much money to spend.
This entire channel is "first world problems TV".
@@Guryguazu i think they talk about new tech because it's relevant, not for "sponsor money". I don't know, I just don't get being so angry about it, tech is inherently a very modern space, I don't see how ltt can avoid its modern characteristics, some of which are bad examples of consumerism. I don't mind watching him showcase expensive tech, just like I don't mind watching someone showcase a Tesla, or a race prepped motorcycle, or anything that's expensive but impressive and to a degree hard to attain.
I mean I get it if it isn't your jam, but then, why are you here? Also, what's wrong with first world problems? Not everything always has to be about third world problems. Tho I would agree ignoring them completely is bad.
This is content that is very close to my heart, reporopusing old PCs into servers turned into a hobby for me! If you have an old shuttle PC with an i3 this is even better ! Pity you didn't show off Freenas's capabilities but I guess it's for another video :)
it hit really close as this is exactly how I started off!
I started with the family computer just learning stuff, then adding/buying old/cheap hardware just to learn a few things about general computers and networks.
watching that gay dude from NCIX, demo some really cool hardware that I wish I could afford some day, then started watching LTT.
Even though I don't really have any real use for most of their videos anymore, it's really a joy to watch good quality content that I know is made by people that understand how it is to not be a 1337 haxor that does everything through CLI on the first try.
I remember years ago repurposing my old IBM that I got for almost free to be the router in my house before home routers were good. Ran a Linux distro from a floppy disk call BBI (Broadband Internet) Agent. It was great, web based GUI and all. I ran that for years until I bought a new at that time Linksys WRT-54G. And eventually that got DD-WRT on it.
@@svampebob007 bruh, hes not the "gay dude from NCIX" SHE is that lesbian woman from NCIX that somehow grew a beard
@@mathdantastav2496 😂
I have an older pc with 4 core pentium how good is that as server use?
You guys should start a budget friendly home lab series!. This video single handedly launched my home server side hobby. Thanks Anthony.
lmao did you just combine 2 comments into one into a video that's a year old trying to get views? why
You guys should start a budget friendly home lab series!
Yes! That would be amazing
That backfired with the massive new lab 😂 opposite of budget
This is absolutely the gateway drug of having a home server.
I started off with the tiny SFF dell optiplex with a 3770 in it. Threw in a 4tb drive, an ssd, and 2 1tb 2.5" mechanicals (double sided taped where the dvd drive used to be and connected to the usb header with usb to sata adapters)
Finally upgraded to a 2u server with 11th gen hardware and 28tb of storage earlier this year.
Careful, your next step might be what mine was... a 42u rack, 24 drive DAS with SAS, full Cisco network, and over a half dozen Dell and HP rack mount servers 😂🤣😂🤣
Sheesh, do you even need the storage?
@@geezusotl4021 photographers and videographers:
What kernel do you use? Just curious and moving around between kernels.
Found one to be particularly good in that it's super secure (and entirely OSS of course), but with security comes the slight inconvenience of extreme firewall issues, read-only root part, added complexity and need for reboot with every app install/update, etc.
But once I got used to it, it's fairly nice and super well performing. Still got some kinks to work out with it though (like restarting services and issuing warnings before auto-reboots for security patches).
@@serpent77 haven't researched or even heard of DAS, some quick reading led me to see it as similar to SAN. Couldn't find many resources online, but is it just another term for SAN or a completely different technology?
Oh and you don't happen to use Ceph as a SAN-like solution?
I can’t stress enough how much I’d love to see a follow-up video to this. Great stuff!
Yeah, and one where they actually use a server OS instead of using Windows. Windows is not the best server, to say the least...
Having watched you guys for years, it's amazing how well you still do the simple style of videos. Nice work guys (and gals)
I remember when I used my old dual core desktop PC as a Minecraft server. Good times, until I got my electricity bill...
This. The 24/7 power is killing. 1W 24/7 costs about 2 euro in EU (20ct/kWh), even more now electricity is double priced (more like 4eur/W/yr right now). My old ivy bridge system consumes ~50W idle. My new 5600G server about 12W. At current electricity rates, the cost of new hardware has paid itself back in about 2 years.
And then imagine that Intel 9th gen + Fujitsu D3643-H, or NUCs are even more energy efficient.
@@nlhans1990 Feel like solar would be the way to go...im sure there are options
Couldn't have been that high. I've got 6 pc running 247 plus my huge ass house and it's still not that much. Lmao
@@kizl666 try living in Australia then. Expensive asf.
You should mine and use it as a server, otherwise gdrive is cheaper 🤣
As an ancient PC tech, it was fun watching this and seeing good quality sensible advice delivered in simple bite-sized chunks for novices, nice job :)
As someone who has been dabbling in this already for a few months, I would love to see a full series on this sort of home server. Benefits of different OSes, different uses and applications (beyond just file storage and plex - stuff like discord bot hosting, website hosting, etc), possibly how to use a hypervisor and VMs.
Maybe add power usage as well, because 24/7 on has some power bill effect.
Check out spaceinvaderone and his unraid videos
I second to this. I would like a video about more intermediate/advanced approach to these things
2 years later and this video is aging like a good whisky. Thank you 🙏🏽
I can't get enough of Anthony in my life. Great job into the simplicity and accessibility of all of this 👍
ok
I loved how you introduced a 5.25" to 3.5" bay adapter as some piece of miracle technology hahaha.
Well it's not that common anymore so there might be people in the audience that have never heard of one.
Anthony sneezes then says, "I'm allergic to Dell's bullsh*t." That had me literally laughing out loud.
I died. Haven’t laughed that well in while. So good
He is obese.
@@jinpingthebear110 But funny
That made me laugh pretty good as well.
@Talking Turkey Hopefully his Doctor.
I recently bought a new mobo/cpu/ram and have been thinking of turning the old stuff into a server but have zero server experience. this video answered a lot of questions i had! thanks!
"Remember that old PC stuffed in the closet?"
Yes, it draws 120W in idle.
sell it get an rpi problem solved ✅
This PC draws 25W at idle. -CW
My PC draws 200W at idle
My PC heats the room at idle.... 🙃
lower than the R720 with two E5-2630 v2 at idle running truenas
In our current world of throw everything in a dumpster and start over, I really really love it when you guys make content reusing or recycling any old hardware. This hits home with me as both an avid PC nerd but also as a environmentalist. Well done as always Anthony :-)
The consumerism is only half of that problem though. What would really go a long way are right to repair laws. The few repair shops around that deal in electronics often have to learn from trial and error because most companies do not release repair schematics. And repair shops frequently either have to rely on salvaged components from other units, or reproductions from dubious sources overseas.
If companies released repair schematics and sold replacement parts either through good will (lol, never happen in a capitalist society) or more likely through legal mandate, then that would go a long way to people fixing their products instead of buying new ones every couple years.
The simple fact is that this buy, use, throw away, society we have today isn't an accident. It's a result of years of pressure from our corporate overlords - the modern day oligarchs - actively cracking down on things that hurt their profits. Allowing consumers to repair their machines loses corporations money.
they're spending $400 on a drive just for redundancy
LOL my home file server is a 2002 Athlon Hammer with 2.5gb of RAM and 8 TB of RAID storage, two 100/1000 NIC cards. Doesn't have to be fancy, even recapped the board.
I saw this and was so glad somebody with a large audience made it. I have used my old computers for servers and firewalls. Most people don’t think there is any reason to keep these guys.
You could also use them for older operating systems for older games
This guy is a fantastic presenter, his pace and tonality are just right
She goes by Emily now, just fyi
I would love to see a run down on why you would choose unraid over truenas or whatever else. aWould be useful for us people about to take the dip into a custom server as an upgrade from a box system.
Seconded. LTT has used Unraid in the past, and from what I've read, it seems better for my use case, but I could definitely stand to learn more about both.
@@0Aberration Indeed I know LTT has used both and i know there's plenty of documentation out there covering their functionality, but call me a small brain I can't handle all of it and I've ended up flip flopping back and forth and putting of the upgrade.
Sponsor money
@@hex8387 na it's all good we aren't talking about phone skins
Exactly
This is the type of content i enjoy more, DIY Things, Projects etc
Those ultimate game pc and whatever builds get old real fast
Perfectly timed video, been thinking about what to do with some of my old PCs lately. Would definitely be interested in a follow up video. From one Anthony to another, Great job.
the video hasn’t even started yet and these comments have me hitting subscribe.
thumbnail truly got the whole vibe across. thank you.
Would love to see a more complex version of this. Even a series of increasingly hardcore videos so anyone at any level can set this up.
Also, I'm switching to Linux to avoid Windows 11. I would love to see the Linux version of this video.
it's easy to avoid windows 11 if microsoft says that your pc is too old for new OS (i have r5 1600)
Glad you're switching to Linux! What OS/Desktop are you going with, and how are you finding it so far?
I just installed Manjaro (which is based off of Arch btw) earlier today and am now dual-booting that and Windows 10.
@blacknester Its just windows with rounded edges mate. But W11 looks great.
@blacknester windows is faster than Linux? Impossible
People always balk when you talk about 10 gigabit network adapters "because your ISP doesn't go over 1 gig." You can tell they're the ones that needed this video. Thank you for your service.
Thank you, LTT, for spreading this sacred knowledge. It's so painful watching so many people honestly believing that their 1-3-5 year old PCs are worthless and throwing them into trash, turning hexacore CPUs into keychains and the like. And I'm afraid that a lot of those people would be shocked to know what they just destroyed. Ignorance is off the charts sometimes. Someone close to me was about to throw out a 4-5 year old laptop because it had a broken screen, something that can be repaired for a tiny fraction of it's cost... And they don't even have a replacement. They assumed it's broken and they have to buy a new one... AAAH
I was thinking about it where if you had your second PC help process stuff with the other they could become one and become the ultimate processing beast.
For exactly this purpose I'd always recommend any enthusiast that buys Intel to not cheap out and get an F-SKU. An iGPU costs ~10 bucks more, but makes using it as a server later on so much easier
And than there is me. I got one intel setup with igpu but no video output on mbo, and other mbo with video output but F version cpu 😂
I would love to see a video on setting up a NAS for beginners. I'm at the point of hoarding in which I need to be considering a NAS. Although to be honest it seems so intimidating after watching videos in which you showcase setting it up. Would love a video like this to help other people like me get started with setting us a NAS and more.
Pretty sure this was that video mate.
@@cang559 what
I use mine as a render farm. I'm a student in 3D and making 3D renders can take quite a while so I use my older computer (i5, gtx 1080) with my newer one (i7,rtx 2080) to render during the night or when I am away. A render that would have lasted an hour now last between 30mins and 40mins (now 8 to 15mins) depending how I split the tasks between both computers. Pretty useful!
Big Deal You save 20mins Not worth it
@@erniefern my render settings were not optimal the last time I posted. Since then I experimented with it and found better settings and a better way to split tasks. Main computer does the heavy tasks (sub scattering, glass materials, etc) and the other one does the lighter tasks. It now takes 8 to 20 mins for a video render.
how did u achieve it? how to setup?
@@digvijayredekar17 network rendering for 3ds max and Maya. There is some documentation for it on autodesk's website. It's complicated to setup but once it's done it works out well
Is there an app for android tv/smartphones that lets you use the media server as if it was a comercial streaming service (like say, netflix)?
Would be interesting to make one for home use and have in a actually good bitrate all the stuff I actually care to watch, instead of just whatever the regional contracts allow me to.
I have my own home server that I use for hosting some videogames I play with friends, plex, DNS to not memorize the IP of all device connected to my network while need to ping or connect, I use as a backup storage too. To me, it's a must having one that do its job and is 24/7 available.
@riker6614 No, it's nothing compared to a refrigerator running 24/7. So unless you're running a GPU cluster, it's very unnoticable.
Do you use open source software for free or cheap? What do you recommend?
I'm an experienced computer person but noob re home servers..
For a backup storage do you have any raid set up or just one disk?
@@gustavovidal2552 Always RAID setup
9:55 - This is ONLY true under a limited number of ways HDDs can die. Especially in the slower ways drives can die, your data may corrupt and that corrupted data will be mirrored on the second drive.
So it is important to note, mirroring is less about backup and more about uptime. If you are using this for personal use, an automated backup to the second drive will be smarter 90% of the time, so that is data corrupts, you can roll back.
Absolutely true. Raid is not a backup.
Sure but realistically how often are you going to access the files? The data could be corrupted for a long time before you ever get around to playing that movie or tv show or whatever.
@@altokers If you want your data to be as safe or safer than it would be on a cloud drive (where they have redundancy to protect against data loss), then you use a separate incremental backup. Like they said, RAID1 mirrored is not a backup. years ago I had a LaCie NetworkSpace Max 2TB set up as a 1TB RAID1 NAS, and learned the hard way when the controller died and I wasn't able to recover anything. But I had off site backups that served me well (pun intended).
@@altokers when my hard drives failed, they did so gradually, having slow loads in some sectors and clicks before data started getting corrupted. So by the time it got to falling apart, I moved all important data to another drive. So there are signs when it starts getting wrecked. Mind you I had to replace maybe two hard disks in over a decade. I used a lot on multiple computers, just adding bigger ones as needed. So by the time a 500Gb one started dying I had multiple terabytes to spare.
I think you can just store the hash/checksum of chunks on your hard-drive right beside the content.
Since a corruption in HDDs typically is localised to a region, you know that if a hash mismatches from the content, either the content has been corrupted, or the hash (which means it's likely the content has been corrupted too). If so, you can prevent from rolling the updates to the other HDDs.
I love these kind of videos. I can tell Anthony is just loving going over this and his passion for it, I think Linus needs more of this in their videos.
He needs a staple and a haircut
@@S-fn3oe 💀
"You remember your old PC you left in your closet."
As a poor person:
"No... Why would you leave a PC in your closet?"
exactly
even if I did have a spare pc I would just sell it immediately
His old PC is 9 years old.
My main PC is 12 years old 😅
@kiwikemist sudo apt-get money
this ^
however, laptops do get thrown out because of battery or display issues and you can rescue them for a free home server pretty easily.
@@KingBowserLP yup. I still have 2 netbooks and an old dell in working order that I got for free from relatives and friends. Also have another old laptop with a broken screen. They could all be decent servers. I just don't really have a need for one right now. I just sometimes use them as travel computers or dumb terminals in places they might get damaged or stolen.
I sm so happy I found videos like this. He explains everything very simply and since I'm just learning about servers, this was extremely helpful! Thank you!
Holy shit!! I literally just started this project a day ago. The timing of this video is unbelievable.
I literally thought... God I wish I knew Anthony or Wendell IRL because I need help! Haha what a great Christmas present!!🎄 🎁
Oh and please do a TrueNAS version!! Preferably, with a PCIE NvME Adapter Cache or Boot drive if possible!!
Thank you guys, @LTT so much for this!!
Strangely good timing, as I was about to make a home server too...
Me too... just set up Unraid like two days ago on an old server xD But I'm still keeping an eye on TrueNAS🤔
"Remember that old PC you stuffed in the closet?"
Oh man, the nostalgia of running a single core server from under the stairs..
My mom hated the idea thinking it'd eat our electrical bill, but I assured her the AMD Sempron +3000 would only cost as much as a lightbulb.
dude check online for a replacement processor like athlon or something and that would run better. sempron is soo bad.
if you happen to live in an area that requires household heating in the winter, think of it as saving money on your heating bill! that's what I do with mining on my PC, heats my room, can turn off the heating, and make some cash
Yeah i remember when I had my old Sempron with 1,5gb of RAM running XP and a Bukkit server. It worked fine for me and a couple of friends. Good old times!
Edit: Now I have an old 40w Xeon with 12gb of RAM running win10 as an HTPC and a xpenology VM for NAS stuff
uh, I still do this, 8 TB on an Athlon Hammer from 2002 or so. What more do I need for a file server?
Y'all have closets?!
I’ve been slapping Linux on my old pcs and making NAS servers for years. Especially old laptops are great for this because they have very low power consumption.
any good guides on doing this securely?
@@ETHANR26 make sure to keep all your networking ports open, and never have it run a VPN. if you have slowdowns you might also want to disable the firewall on your server.
Also the built in battery is a handy UPS.
I have my old 2009 laptop as a Minecraft server with arch no de and running on a cheap 120gb ssd
you talking like u buy ccomputers daily just for their storage
Love it, I just upgraded my PC and was left with most parts to setup a server of sorts. This helped guide me through the decision process as I plan to turn it into a media server or something for minecraft xD
100% for reusing old hardware like this. I do it too. I’m curious how idle power draw factors into the cost of the machine. Older machines didn’t do this as well as new ones do.
Also you need that DVD drive to rip discs for the Plex server you just set up 😉
This was my main question too. I guess an old laptop might be the better option, as it's more likely to have a good power saving state?
@@spspaceboy Very much so, yeah. Desktop PCs for the most part just aren't optimized for efficient idle power draw.
This is the main problem too. My 4th gen intel DDR3 system with a budget yet "efficient" motherboard idles around 60-80 watts and my ryzen 3600 system around 80-100w. This is due to the motherboard components. Oh and ryzen cpus consume at least 20watts idle no matter what
@@spspaceboy But Laptops usually don't have more than one or two SATA Ports. And you cant just expand it via PCIe... Or am I missing something
I mean this being a server, I'd say physically ripping CD's off of it isn't an ideal use case, Maybe a USB one and use your main PC to rip them directly to network share. I kinda like the idea of shoving a homemade server in the attic and forgetting about it. These days you can network start it, monitor thermals and performance all remotely.
Also an epic use case I observed using mine was I would remote in using RDP and on a local network or even off a local network (Stay away from forwarding these ports if you don't know what you're doing) on local network there's almost no latency or visual issues. Or off a local network it means that I could use a Chromebook and perform any task I needed with that. Super cool.
I'd love to see a more comprehensive episode about home server stuff, especially with freenas!
freenas is horrible, I have had many reliability issues and crashes and the people who are building it are assholes just use something else like truenas. just FYI freenas goal is to sell their product services to enterprise level customers, it is free for you but if you actually use it in a business and want support then they charge you.
Been doing this for years with a G3220 Pentium, 4gb ddr3, HD6450 1gb and 6 hard drives! Built myself for like £30, brilliant media pc and home server.
Very glad to see older computers put to use 😆
Is it cheaper to do this taking into account the price of energy consumption?
@@Tom60 Interesting question, I have written a few papers on energy consumption. I only turn on my home server when I intend to use it, and as it doubles as a home theater pc, usually only 1 pc is in use. Plus, it has lower power consumption than my other computers or than accessing a remote corporate owned server in addition to my own device from which the remote server is accessed. I suppose removing the HD6450 and other flares would reduce power consumption but I think it useful to keep unnecessary components installed such that the PC can also be a backup if your main desktop dies, as Anthony explains. I have liked some people suggesting the use of laptops due to lower power consumption, but you then lose native 3.5" hard drive support.
@@walrusman151 and most computers don't use that much while idling
@Ash Thanks for the reply, I have this in mind because I want an app that runs 24/7 using about 5-10% of the processor in the background at idle, this is why I take into account the energy consumption.
I understand for small uses like Plex, ... and only turning it on when you are using it is not going to consume much power.
Exactly what I was looking for and an entertaining presentation to boot. Yuk, yuk. Thank you!
turning old PCs/laptops into servers has been a HUGE hobby for me for ages now and I'm so happy to see it talked about on LTT :)
I don't get it. What's the appeal of it? To access more data and stream videos from your other home devices?
Was waiting for something like this for a while now , hopefully it evolves to a series 👌🏻
I love Anthony. His way of talking really makes me feel like I'm learning something. Like that one good teacher in high school that you still remember to this day.
I did just this! Took my old A8-7600 APU system and I currently use it as a Minecraft server. All I had to do was install Linux and Minecraft. Nothing else!
I'd really like a follow-up where you offer entirely free options for remote management instead of pulse way. Avoiding subscriptions would be nice
Rdp manager that windows has by default.
I wouldn't trust a free service that has access to my network and data.
As a super basic free option, I use Chrome Remote Desktop
Parsec can work well for this use-case
Pulse way is the whole reason for the video, in case you didn't know. Lol!
It would be great to see an intermediate/advanced version of this video! Things like running a database to monitor a raspberry pi and display it on grafana for example :)
I literally decided last night to go ahead and create a home server.
I hadn't thought through everything I was going to do with it, but this video could not have had better timing XD Great content as always!!
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I think a video on using an old pc for virtualisation would be good. The day I learned I could run multiple computers in my computer was a really good day. Especially given Hyper-V is part of Windows 10 and up.
I was an IT tech at a local dried fruit company almost 5 years ago. I learned they ran a hypervisor setup which blew my mind. I knew about virtual machines already, but I didn't know about Hyper-V or ESXi. When I saw how they setup virtual machines I was amazed. I was so amazed that I bought myself an older HP Workstation from eBay for about $40 and spent another $40 in RAM and a CPU to upgrade it and started tinkering with ESXi at home. Way overkill for what I use it for, but a pretty good learning experience.
This is actually a fantastic idea, recently ive been thinking about making a nas/media server at home so seeing more things like this, especially with TrueNAS Core would be great to learn about
These sort of accessible gateways into doing in house servers is something I definitely love to see-both on LTT and in general.
"I'm allergic to Dell's bullsh*t." LMAO best comment in the entire video. Great non-script statement.
That Pulseway you talk about (also your sponsor), is another $528 a year for people outside the US. Unless you know what to do (lucky for me I do) with older machines and understand their capabilities, there are endless opportunities to turn them into a powerful machine if you know how. I just wished the video would cut the crap and go straight to the point if its going to help people who are starting out or are learning.
Give him a sever/linux related channel already :p id love to see a truenas core vs scale video from anthony.
a channel related to linux lead bt anthony? where i have to sign? that thing would be massive, and probably would give a nice boost to linux users!
I second this!
Why can't users understand that Scale is still under RC stage? What is there to compare when one is at U7 another is still at RC1? Please educate yourself on TrueNAS life cycle at Lawrence System. You come here for entertainment, not education.
@@TanKianW79 i know it is. But id still like to hear his opinion on moving from freebsd to linux. It was just an example. Id love to see them do tutorials on a lot of subjects.
Me finding my 10-year-old PC in the closet: *You're as beautiful as the day I lost you.*
Me looking at the 20 year old pentium 4 Pc: oh so you're not useless after all..
You really sparked my interest in this. I've been getting into building a gaming rig lately but this is something I didn't know I could do.
Why isn’t there a “What is a Server?” LTT video…… that’s all I need
I love how clear and well explained the instructions are! And I really like how Anthony is in front of the camera! Natural talent!
It’s good to see videos like this. I imagine most tech people have been doing this for years anyway. One thing I didn’t like is having to spring for a Pulseway sub at $32 US every month? Am I missing something here? The whole video is about doing things cheap”ER” but spending that ongoing dough makes it out of the realm of possibility for some folks. Lots of free options out there but they couldn’t talk about those because the video was sponsored by Pulseway.
Gotta advert the sponsor lol
DId you notice that there were no quick bits? Because half of the video is an ad.
@@Zysperro yeah especially when they showed a specific "tweaker" to literally change a single registry key. I am wary of programs like that having access to system stuff. Not because I am paranoid of them stealing data but because several widely-used utility programs had adware and hamful programs added on updates, from the top of my head CCleaner and Utorrent. Actually still use OLDER version of the latter.
Pulseway is a remote monitoring and management platform for Managed Service Providers, so I'm not sure why they're sponsoring this video. One person running a personal server at home is not their target audience, at all.
Let's not forget their $150 required fee when signing up for their 'onboarding' lmao
Does anyone have any better "free" or single license purchase for local control only?
Personally I would love to see a continuation of this. You could do it from a how to get the absolute max usefulness out of an old system.
Windows file history for automatic backups. Imageing of your main rig for quick rebuilds after an incident. Hosting a game server on the side possibly.
Is there an app for android tv/smartphones that lets you use the media server as if it was a comercial streaming service (like say, netflix)?
Would be interesting to make one for home use and have in a actually good bitrate all the stuff I actually care to watch, instead of just whatever the regional contracts allow me to.
VERY similar to what I learned how to build a server for my home and friends! And I have some quick notes for those who want to try it:
1. Have a soul of making toss. You might encounter so many problems from everywhere on your system, but solve one issue would enhance your skill dramatically.
2. Windows is a very good way to get into this. In fact, I never install other system on my 5 times server installation experience (except my router which runs padavan, it has a DHCP server though), but I'm highly recommending NOT using the Windows 10 or 11 for consumer, like the home edition. Instead, find for Windows enterprise (LTSC), or Windows server 2022. They don't have those fancy things or auto update, makes it pretty fit for a 24h running server.
3. For hardware, if your PC is very old, check or change a good power supply and CPU cooler for QOL. I bought a 1U FLEX power unit for my first home server, and that thing is insanely noisy, even 10 meters away.
4. Just try it, computer skills are very useful. After successfully building a server in your LAN, try setup your router for access from WAN (Concern safety issue first), use ipv6 to bypass the NAT, configure a DNS to avoid typing IP address every time, and so much more interesting things!
If you have the connections available, I’d definitely add a small SSD for the system drive. A 128GB SATA drive is going to be under $40 and will decrease noise, boot times, and power consumption. Plus you can make a backup image of the whole drive and save it on your bulk storage once you have everything configured properly.
There are some crazy cheap smaller drives out there too. I wouldn't use them for Windows but Linux has a small footprint and will happily fit on a sub 32GB drive..
@@chaos.corner At that point though I think I'd rather run off a USB stick.....Although for some users/distros that might be a bit advanced.
You can also buy a pcie card to accept an M.2 drive if you run out of sata connections.
@@TheGodOfAllThatWas running certain OS types without extra configs on usb is quite dangerous... high writes and reads tend to kill these little boys faster than you think...
@@cjchico Just a note. On old motherboards before nvme standards were around, if you want the m.2 to be a boot drive using a pcie adapter, make sure the m.2 device can support booting such as samsung 950 pro and some plextor drives.
A follow-up on this topic would be excellent! For those of us whom are tech savy, but still benefit from this kind of highly informational content, LTT has been a godsend.
I'd like to see a followup with a step-by-step setup of Jellyfin on a newer Linux machine with remote viewing. I am trying to do that right now, but I'm just a hardware junkie and a complete idiot when it comes to the networking side.
I love how calm Anthony is but then turns around to sneeze and goes into straight savage mode 😂
I absolutely loved that part
literally lol'd when Anthony said that
10:10 "I'm allergic to Dell's bs". Anthony is the GOAT