Advice for total novice, convert HP Z400 to media server?

[Jurie]

Hi all

I'm still very much a novice and instead of paying £500 for a fancy Synology "Disk Station" I was wondering if I could turn my old HP Z400 into a kick ass NAS for a fraction of the price instead. I have a very old 1TB NAS that I currently just use as an external HDD. I happen to have a couple of 6TB Toshiba N300 drives and I can always get a couple more later.  I also have a Netgear GS108 Ev3 on it's way.

 

What I would like to do is:

1. Store and access all my data locally or via the internet - I have tons of ebooks (mostly .pdf format).

2. I would like to access my email and calendars on Outlook locally or remotely.

3. I would like to access my notes on OneNote locally or remotely.

4. I would like to work locally (mostly) with Autodesk (AutoCad, Fusion 360 and Inventor), Photoshop, Blender, Inkscape and possibly later with DaVinci or other free Video- and Audio editing software and perhaps a music creator app. at some point.

5. MOVIES! I have a few hundred (if not thousand) movies on my old NAS that I would like to watch on my tablet when I'm half way across the globe if possible or on my TV when I'm at home.

6. I'm thinking about getting an android box, is there anyway to stream movies remotely from the android box?

7. I'm not really a big gamer BUT may be tempted to install a Flight and/or Space Simulator game, maybe KSP, at some point.

8. I also have millions of photo's and looking for a decent way of archiving these as well.

9. Safety and security is fairly important to me.

 

Am I correct in assuming I can do all of the above and more with UnRaid?

Is it something a novice like me can or even should attempt OR would I be better off just getting an el cheapo NAS from ebuyer?

Any ideas for a nice clean ATX case and any other hardware I will need to purchase if I do go ahead with this project? I'm also assuming I will need to do some power supply mod if I'm going to use a new case.

Any ideas on what OS to use? Don't know if it makes any difference what OS my desktop will be running but it will be running Win 10.

Would it be possible to speed things up with Link Aggregation OR is that just something stupid a novice like me would suggest OR perhaps something I might want to attempt later down the line?

Possible to download torrents direct to the new server?

 

Edited May 1, 2020 by Jurie
typos

[trurl]

2+3 Seems to me you should already be able to do these. Not sure how Unraid would be involved for those.

 

4+7 VMs that can run all that software could be hosted on Unraid.

 

6 Do you mean the movies would be stored on an "Android Box" and streamed FROM that storage? Or did you really mean the movies would be stored on Unraid and streamed TO the Android box?

 

1,5,8,9 Very typical uses for Unraid, as is torrents and other downloading applications as dockers hosted on Unraid.