korith

In a 2 story house as well with a basement, ended up putting one router on the top floor and one in the basement, so we could wifi coverage everywhere in the house. For the the enclosure, if you don't want to go with a rack. At a friend's place, we hung up a spare kitchen cabinet on the wall of the basement office to hide the patch panel in, along with the router, modem and phone, and a small ups. Another useful tool, you can pick up or possibly borrow, a wire puller (electricians fish tape), so you can limit number holes you end up punching in the walls. Another thought, a friend moved into an older home and we ended up running cable thru the old central vac tubing to save time, since he had no plans to use the central vac.

Just need a wallet that can support the cost of the drive.

Cat5e is good enough. Figure out where you plan on to you put your switch and server, then figure out all the points in the house where you want the cable run to. May even want to run a few cat5 to the same room. Get an idea of how you are going to route all the cables thru the walls and the house. Guesstimate the amount of cable you'll need, can buy 1000ft cat5 in a box, read the various reviews on the brands and go with something that looks good. Get a good set of crimpers, a punch down tool, some wall plates, a bag of rg45 connectors. Depending on how many cables you end up with, may want to get a small patch panel as well. For sure check out some youtube vids to get an idea of how to crimp the wires.

Switched over to quantum on all the computers last month, and remembered this thread. Just thought I'd tack a link into this thread. It's a custom Userchrome.css for firefox that has a ton of options in it that you can adjust, in a text editor, very easy to do. So you can change the way firefox looks, acts and works. https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx

I still use an older hp n40l and a n54l microserver. A year ago could find a used n40l for about $100-125. Small size, its quiet, I don't hear it in the room. 4 drives in the bottom bays, and you can stick a parity drive in the top. So 5 drives easy. About once or twice a year, I open it up and clean out any dust. Here is a huge thread on the hp microservers,

this site will help ya generate a userChrome.css file if ya want to change up the url bar https://www.jeffersonscher.com/gm/url-bar-tweaks.html

I didn't realize how much of an improvement quantum was over v56. The loading speed just blows it away. I think the speed is a bit more noticeable on older systems. Been using firefox so long, gotten used to some of the addons. I still need to get a few replacements for some addons I had in v56, before I can swap over to quantum for good. Some of the customization you have to do with css. I'm a creature of habit, been using firefox for over a decade now, took me a few hours to make it look like the old setup I was used to. Don't think I'll ever get used to tabs on top, above the url! By the way you can download a portable version of quantum, that won't mess up your regular profile if you just want to test it out.https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

Good deal for sure. Not in the states anymore else I'd be grabbing a few.

Oddly enough, the reason I end up shutting them down every 6 months or so, is so I can blow the dust out of them.

using firefox, grabbed an addon that adds in a night mode option. not perfect but it seems to do the job.

Great price I think, shouldn't take long to get a buyer. If I was still in the states, I'd have grabbed them.

Went from living 5min away from microcenter, now I'm 23hours away from the same store, sigh...

when I click on it, it takes me to a link to https://goo.gl/AAqtR

Check out http://pcpartpicker.com/ you can look up parts, there is usually a price history graph at the bottom of each page. for example http://pcpartpicker.com/product/rkV48d/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd40efrx

Found this thread, looks like it may have what you are searching for...

Thanks. Themes, that was the word I was after, display style was all I could come up earlier. Sad considering I used to set up forums for folks years ago and dealt with this stuff all the time.

I can't seem to find the option if there is one, to change the display style. Was hoping to find one that doesn't have the white background. A bit hard on the eyes.

I been using http://torguard.net/ for I think 4 or perhaps 5 years now. Mainly use them for streaming from diff countries or when traveling, and of course for torrents. Speeds are good, think they have servers in like 40 or 50 countries, but I usually just connect thru the ones in Canada. They allow 5 devices to be connected at once. Cost is decent $60 a year, but if you follow them on twitter, they usually post up a promo code during most holidays, that drop the price in half. With christmas and new years approaching, there should be another promo coming. I think I'm paid up till 2018. They just had a black friday promo end. Never had any real issues with them, service has been great with them. The few times I've had questions or problems connecting to certain servers, they've replied to trouble tickets in an hour or two. Oh one nice feature I like is, if you pay like 5 or 10 bucks more, you can get a regular dedicated ip to use.

Checkout this part of the wiki http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility#PCI_SATA_Controllers . Not sure how up to date it is, but it is worth a quick read and should give you a good starting point on the different terms and basics. The wiki has a list of some cards that have worked for folks as well, though the forum is probably more up to date on that. You can also motherboards with more than 6 sata ports.

Free Parity Checks For Everyone!

One of my local stores had one at $25, was able to get it. The rest of the stores were either out of stock or still at $109. Just watching the ones at $109 for when they drop down to $54, probably pick them up for that price unless the price drops right down to $25. $7 or even $14 a tb isn't bad at all.

Some walmarts have a Seagate 4TB Backup Plus Desktop Drive on clearance for $25 to $54. While many others still have it at the $109 price. Should be an item to keep an eye on if its still at full price at your location. I was able to get 1 for $25. Slickdeals link discussing the deal https://slickdeals.net/f/9235515-54-seagate-4tb-backup-plus-desktop-drive-ymmv-in-store-walmart?v=1 Inventory checker, just enter in your zip. Been using brickseek for a year or two now, sometimes the inventory numbers are a bit off, but Ive found the prices to be more or less accurate. http://brickseek.com/walmart-inventory-checker/?sku=34969072

Read about this a week or two ago on some news site. Supposedly the $85 figure is being misquoted by many sites. Problem is one site posts up an article and then a few dozen other news/tech sites rehash the same thing. I can't seem to find the link I read though in the browser history. I did find http://techreport.com/news/30860/seagate-5tb-barracuda-and-2tb-firecuda-drives-are-big-and-speedy , mentioning the 5tb drive being for $245 for now, 2 year warranty. And a 2tb firecuda sshd for $105 with 5 year warranty, I think the original $85 might have been referring to this drive. It will be interesting when more physically smaller drives with larger capacity starts to hit the market and become the norm. Should affect other hardware too, like drive cages, enclosures and cases as well.

Didn't realize people didn't use it any longer. I'm still using v5, I'll update it someday.

Helped a friend who had never seen a command line in dos/windows or unix before. There is a learning curve, but it is very doable. The install info, wiki and the forum are good sources of info. Once you install unraid, and have it set up, install unmenu, and chances are you may not have to deal with command shell very often, or at all if you keep a basic setup. I think the biggest gotcha moment for my friend was learning that there is no confirmation for some commands, like when you delete or are moving files. In windows, there are a lot of times when prompts similar to 'are you sure you want to delete this file' or warning prompting you not to do things, with linux not so much. So be sure of the commands you are typing!