Don't laugh! Will this old rig work as a starter unRIAD server?

[In2Photos]

I have my college (circa 2000) PC sitting in my attic. I am wondering if I can use it to try out unRAID. Here are the specs:

 

ASUS A7V

AMD Athlon 750MHz

384MB PC133 RAM

 

There are no SATA ports obviously, but there are 5 available PCI slots (up to 133MB/s) to add some SATA cards.

 

So here is what I intend to use it for.

 

Storage!

 

Duh!

 

OK, my storage needs are not as large as some others yet, but I know they will become larger and larger now that I have started ripping my DVDs and will soon be ripping my BDs. I will have a 1.5TB drive (probably 2 actually, one for parity) and a 500GB drive. My photos, family videos, movies, music and other data will be stored on it for use on 3 machines, one i7 photo machine, one AMD Athlon 3000+ HTPC, and a laptop. All are connected through 10/100 routers (one wireless acting as a switch).

 

So is this something I should even consider? Or am I wasting any money buy buying parts for this machine?

 

If the old machine won't cut it I have thought about upgrading the HTPC and using the parts from it for the unRAID server.

 

Thanks for your thoughts!

[Joe L.]

I have my college (circa 2000) PC sitting in my attic. I am wondering if I can use it to try out unRAID. Here are the specs:

 

ASUS A7V

AMD Athlon 750MHz

384MB PC133 RAM

 

There are no SATA ports obviously, but there are 5 available PCI slots (up to 133MB/s) to add some SATA cards.

 

So here is what I intend to use it for.

 

Storage!

 

Duh!

 

OK, my storage needs are not as large as some others yet, but I know they will become larger and larger now that I have started ripping my DVDs and will soon be ripping my BDs. I will have a 1.5TB drive (probably 2 actually, one for parity) and a 500GB drive. My photos, family videos, movies, music and other data will be stored on it for use on 3 machines, one i7 photo machine, one AMD Athlon 3000+ HTPC, and a laptop. All are connected through 10/100 routers (one wireless acting as a switch).

 

So is this something I should even consider? Or am I wasting any money buy buying parts for this machine?

 

If the old machine won't cut it I have thought about upgrading the HTPC and using the parts from it for the unRAID server.

 

Thanks for your thoughts!

It is easy enough to test.

 

See if you can boot an unRAID flash drive.  If it boots, and you can see the management interface on your LAN, then odds are it will do for a start.  You probably have enough RAM, although you are below the normal minimum recommended.  If your 500Gig drive is PATA all you'll need is an inexpensive 2 port SATA card to connect the 2 1.5TB drives.

 

when you boot the unRAID flash drive do not assign any drives on the "Devices" page.  (You should see them in the drop-down-list though)

As long as you do not assign any drives on the devices page and start the array you'll not write to any of the existing disks while you perform the tests.

 

Joe L.

[WeeboTech]

This is probably enough to test unraid and boot it. I would highly recommend scrounging for more used ram. It's less then the minimum.

Without enough ram there can be random processes killed thus causing frustration and leading to the belief there is an issue with unRAID rather then the core issue of not having enough ram.

 

I would not spend too much money on this machine when a new motherboard might provide more embedded (and faster) SATA ports along with more modern and faster memory.

 

Consider the $60 for a promise TX4 and Ram vs a new motherboard with embedded SATA ports.

[RobJ]

It is also possible that your BIOS won't support PATA drives over 127GB, so if that 500GB drive is PATA, even it will require an addon IDE card.

[In2Photos]

Thanks for the response!

 

I have decided not to sink any money into this old machine. All of my drives are SATA drives so I would need at least a 4 port card. I need to upgrade my HTPC so that it has enough horsepower to play 1080p material anyway so I think I will use my current one for the server instead.