Computers & Electronics

Re-purposing an old desktop as a file server or NAS

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Deal Fanatic
Dec 28, 2005
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Re-purposing an old desktop as a file server or NAS

Hey RFD,

Happy New Year. I recently purchased a Gigabyte Aero 15X that has more or less made my desktop obsolete. I was looking at buying a NAS now that my photo collection is growing (2 TB and steadily rising), but thought why not re-purpose my desktop as a server? The server would need to:

1. Run PLEX Server (I have the lifetime subscription).
2. Accept Windows 10 back-ups from my wife and I's laptops.
3. Store our photo and media collection.
4. Back-up the local content to Amazon Drive.
5. Sync music with Google Play Music.

Questions for you guys:

1. My desktop is an i7 2600k with 16 GB of RAM. Should that be sufficient for transcoding (outside of 4k h.265)?
2. Any recommendations on what OS to run? I'm obviously in a Microsoft environment right now, but I'm also handy with the Linux CLI (did my entire thesis running Ubuntu--svn was a godsend!).
3. Is it worth buying a hardware RAID controller? I *think* my Asus motherboard has one built-in, but I have also read that software RAID has come along so far that it's not worth going the hardware RAID route.
4. Any recommendations on hard drives? It's been a while since I purchased a spinning disk drive. Last I looked into it, WD Reds were all the rage. Have Seagate or other manufacturers finally caught up?

Thanks in advance!
48 replies
Deal Guru
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Feb 10, 2007
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2/3) buy a license of unraid then setup your nas that way,
-you can run plex server as a docker image
-if you really want to have windows somewhere you can spin up a vm as well
-forget traditional raid setup

4) if you got the unraid route, get a ssd cache drive and then the rest any drives will do
The sweetest gyal
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Dec 28, 2005
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sexyj wrote: 2/3) buy a license of unraid then setup your nas that way,
-you can run plex server as a docker image
-if you really want to have windows somewhere you can spin up a vm as well
-forget traditional raid setup

4) if you got the unraid route, get a ssd cache drive and then the rest any drives will do
Thanks, I will look into unraid. Right now Windows 10 is installed on a 128 GB Intel SSD, then I have a 2 TB WD Blue drive (nearly full), a 640 GB WD Black (full) and a 500 GB Crucial MX 500 (full). Would the 128 GB Intel drive be able to do double duty as the Unraid install drive and the cache drive?
Deal Guru
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Feb 10, 2007
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unraid runs off a usb so the cache drive is just for cache or if you want have vm or docker

if you drives are full, you are going need set of drives before you can move the data off there
The sweetest gyal
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Mar 23, 2004
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That system is pretty overkill for what you're trying to do. Since you have a K and are probably overclocked, I'd recommend going back to stock at the very least, if not underclocking; and undervolting in any case. A Sandy i7 isn't really exactly something you'd call power-efficient for 24/7 operation; it's also very likely overkill for what you need to do. Undervolting will help a bit on bringing power down at least. IMO only Haswell and newer should really be used for this because older desktop processors are too high on the power consumption chart. It does however depend on how much you're willing to spend on electricity/what you consider a negligible increase.

Hardware RAID is not really worth it unless you have some specific purposes or goals in mind; or if you're running a lot of drives. With just a few drives (2-6), I'd probably just stick with software and motherboard connections. Stuff like FreeNAS actually runs best like this and hardware RAID cards are actually highly discouraged. FreeNAS is good and you have a bunch of RAM there which FreeNAS needs/uses (the more the better) so you could go that route. You didn't say how many drives you have/how much storage you will have though. I started using FreeNAS at first but found I preferred something more user friendly so I ended up moving to Xpenology instead.

As for drives the WD Reds are okay, the Red Pros are 7200RPM but they are significantly more expensive. Seagate offers the IronWolf series as competitor and all of the 6TB and larger ones are 7200, without having to step up to IronWolf Pro. (4TB and below IronWolfs are 5900RPM though.) Those are your usual suspects for home NAS/server use though. Some people say to just buy the cheapest drives (per TB) you can get, regardless of it being designed for NAS or not. Stuff like the Hitachi or Toshiba ones that tend to go on sale. But those people typically have like 6 or more drives. What they say from that point of view makes sense because once you start getting into a lot of drives, the savings really add up plus you've probably got more redundancy already so having a drive fail once every couple years or something isn't a huge deal. So again it's going to depend on how much storage you're after, how many drives you're going to be buying, and what your budget is. Just stay away from any "green" drives with the parking/power saving crap--that's definitely not good in server/NAS use. Note that WD discontinued its Green series but the Blue series basically became the Green series after 1TB. Therefore stay away from those drives (WD Blue).
Deal Addict
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Dec 29, 2008
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Been looking into trying freenas or unraid for a while now, but just not ready to invest the time. My current setup has been windows server essentials, mainly for the excellent client backup features. Not only does it backup data it also backs the entire PC. I have at times needed to restore a PC, all i had to do was pxe the PC or use the bootable usb select a restore and up and running in an hour.

If you do decide Windows stick to server essentials 2016, essentials experience has been crippled in server 2019. There is a unsupported way to install the 2016 experience role on Server 2019 Standard but seems more hassle.
Deal Fanatic
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Oct 8, 2006
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I went the unraid root for pretty much the same system (2500k instead). Its working great for me. Doesn't take much to get it running. Does cost a bit though. FreeNAS is free though. But like people said, it's not the most energy efficient cpu.
Deal Fanatic
Dec 28, 2005
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ES_Revenge wrote: That system is pretty overkill for what you're trying to do. Since you have a K and are probably overclocked, I'd recommend going back to stock at the very least, if not underclocking; and undervolting in any case. A Sandy i7 isn't really exactly something you'd call power-efficient for 24/7 operation; it's also very likely overkill for what you need to do. Undervolting will help a bit on bringing power down at least. IMO only Haswell and newer should really be used for this because older desktop processors are too high on the power consumption chart. It does however depend on how much you're willing to spend on electricity/what you consider a negligible increase.

Hardware RAID is not really worth it unless you have some specific purposes or goals in mind; or if you're running a lot of drives. With just a few drives (2-6), I'd probably just stick with software and motherboard connections. Stuff like FreeNAS actually runs best like this and hardware RAID cards are actually highly discouraged. FreeNAS is good and you have a bunch of RAM there which FreeNAS needs/uses (the more the better) so you could go that route. You didn't say how many drives you have/how much storage you will have though. I started using FreeNAS at first but found I preferred something more user friendly so I ended up moving to Xpenology instead.

As for drives the WD Reds are okay, the Red Pros are 7200RPM but they are significantly more expensive. Seagate offers the IronWolf series as competitor and all of the 6TB and larger ones are 7200, without having to step up to IronWolf Pro. (4TB and below IronWolfs are 5900RPM though.) Those are your usual suspects for home NAS/server use though. Some people say to just buy the cheapest drives (per TB) you can get, regardless of it being designed for NAS or not. Stuff like the Hitachi or Toshiba ones that tend to go on sale. But those people typically have like 6 or more drives. What they say from that point of view makes sense because once you start getting into a lot of drives, the savings really add up plus you've probably got more redundancy already so having a drive fail once every couple years or something isn't a huge deal. So again it's going to depend on how much storage you're after, how many drives you're going to be buying, and what your budget is. Just stay away from any "green" drives with the parking/power saving crap--that's definitely not good in server/NAS use. Note that WD discontinued its Green series but the Blue series basically became the Green series after 1TB. Therefore stay away from those drives (WD Blue).
I've already put the 2600K back to stock speeds. Energy consumption was a concern, but when I looked into the Synology systems, their 4-bay setups are ~$500 - $600. Even at 13.2 cents per kWh, that's about 5 years to break even on the NAS.
Deal Addict
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Jun 4, 2004
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Why not start by just using the desktop as is and go from there if it can't do something you want it to?
Deal Addict
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Jun 4, 2004
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I also agree to staying away from hardware RAID for home use, unless you have the money to constantly change disks in matching sets and to keep a spare controller around in case of failure.
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Aug 29, 2001
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I have a unraid nas that I have been running for many years on a old desktop system. Its awesome from the point of view that it was cheap to cobble together disparate drives I had laying around. Over time it was easy to replace drives with bigger ones. the newer unraid is even better now that it supports plugins, dockers and kvm. I've also converted a old Acer H340 WHS to unraid - it runs a atom cpu and is very energy efficient... but weak for anything but serving files.

My main desktop I have two large drives using zfs as raid 1 (mirror) with Ubuntu, and use it to also serve out files.
ZoL is actually very easy to use and more trusted then btrfs raid1. unraid is also very easy to setup and use with its gui - and cost effective with its ability to mix and match disparate drives.

I've looked at the Synology and buffalo boxes over the years and I was always shocked at the high prices of them.
72 69 6c 6c 65 73
Deal Guru
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Feb 10, 2007
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well the prices are high compare to unraid because you already have the hardware to work with

if you have to build a new system for unraid alone, the price will most likely on par
rilles wrote: I've looked at the Synology and buffalo boxes over the years and I was always shocked at the high prices of them.
The sweetest gyal
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Oct 6, 2015
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ES_Revenge wrote: That system is pretty overkill for what you're trying to do. Since you have a K and are probably overclocked, I'd recommend going back to stock at the very least, if not underclocking; and undervolting in any case. A Sandy i7 isn't really exactly something you'd call power-efficient for 24/7 operation;
FWIW, a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge system, with just the CPU, a PSU, and RAM consumes approximately 30W doing relatively nothing. (My 7x7200rpm hard drive, 2 TV tuner card, SCSI card, dual Gig-E, etc. i7-2600 behemoth idles at less than 80W. (Measured with a Watts Up .NET meter!)).

So figure $30-$40/year if run 24/7. Just to put it into perspective.

Its pretty hard to imagine it'd be worthwhile to buy a newer platform just to save, at best, an extra 10W of power that might be possible with the latest generation platforms. If even.


BTW, the key to keeping power consumption down on a machine of the Sandy Bridge era is to make use of the onboard graphics. As the add-in video cards of the era, particularly from Nvidia, had terribly high idle power consumptions. Since its a server, using onboard graphics shouldn't be a big deal.
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Mar 23, 2004
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burnt69 wrote: FWIW, a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge system, with just the CPU, a PSU, and RAM consumes approximately 30W doing relatively nothing.
Hmm, I just tested my i7-2600, which is undervolted (-0.10V) and on an mATX board and with an older PSU down to about 35W idle with just a SSD and a 240mm CLC. I'd imagine if I go back up to stock volts I'd be pulling 5-10W more than that. I have an old PSU in there right now which probably does 80 White but I have a new eVGA G3 (Gold) to put in there which I'd imagine will probably drop it to closer to 30W, depending on how poor the PSU that is currently in there is at low-load efficiencty. I think with full voltage and a full ATX board, we're looking at more like 40W which is high, relatively speaking.

That's not bad, between 30-40W but as a comparison, my old ARM-based QNAP box, for example, pulls 8W at idle with the drives spun down. My own server/NAS now is actually run on an Haswell i3-4350, which I managed to get to just about 20W idle with a Gold PSU, with 4 DIMMs and a 120mm CLC. That's still over double what the QNAP was doing but hey it's a lot more powerful too.

However the other difference between say a Haswell i3 and a Sandy i7 is not so much a large difference in total idle pull but the older i7 (and any QC really) jumps instantly and significantly instantly once the CPU starts doing something...anything at all. Under even minimal loading the QC processor will quickly double power over something like an i3. What looks like a 10W increase at idle could really be a 30-40W increase once the CPU is doing anything. Of course the i7 is better equipped to handle a heavy workload but I'm just talking about minimal workload, just anything that isn't idle.

Some of this of course is more academic than anything--as you point out $40/yr is likely not considered as much at all. Though it does depend on energy rates in OP's area as well. One of the things they get you with on electricity bills is the "delivery charge" which, even if you have very little power draw is still going to "get you" whether you used a lot of power or not. Tricky hydro companies :mad:

And yes you're right going with anything other than iGPU is a bad idea. If you're unlucky enough to have a P67 chipset board (which has no FDI) best idea is to just set it up with a GPU installed and then pull it and not have any video output thereafter as it's not really necessary anyway. That said an HD 5450 will add only about 5-6W to the power draw at idle, though granted this can be "absorbed" a bit if the PSU gets more efficient seeing 5W more load--i.e. you could add 6W of actual power draw but if the PSU becomes slightly more efficient with that extra draw it might come back as 3.5W at the wall. As a side note, GPUs can be undervolted too :)

It's all about trial and error though with these low-power machines--definitely should have a Kill-A-Watt handy to test with. Personally I like to try to get things as low as is possible on a machine like this (one that isn't/can't be OC'd and will be on 24/7 but idle a lot of the time). As said though the end result may be more theoretical than anything you'll really care about on your power bill.

One question I have though...let's say OP actually has a P67 board, obviously no display output can be had here since there's no FDI support in that PCH but can QuickSync still be used since the processor has the iGPU and is QS capable?
Jr. Member
Dec 11, 2017
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Ottawa
burnt69 wrote: FWIW, a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge system, with just the CPU, a PSU, and RAM consumes approximately 30W doing relatively nothing. (My 7x7200rpm hard drive, 2 TV tuner card, SCSI card, dual Gig-E, etc. i7-2600 behemoth idles at less than 80W. (Measured with a Watts Up .NET meter!)).

So figure $30-$40/year if run 24/7. Just to put it into perspective.

Its pretty hard to imagine it'd be worthwhile to buy a newer platform just to save, at best, an extra 10W of power that might be possible with the latest generation platforms. If even.


BTW, the key to keeping power consumption down on a machine of the Sandy Bridge era is to make use of the onboard graphics. As the add-in video cards of the era, particularly from Nvidia, had terribly high idle power consumptions. Since its a server, using onboard graphics shouldn't be a big deal.
If one is going to buy new hardware ....
A Raspberry Pi 3 B kit costs ~$100 and consumes less than 2W ($1.56/year in hydro).
Plus it has a much smaller footprint and produces no noise since it is fanless.
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ES_Revenge wrote: One question I have though...let's say OP actually has a P67 board, obviously no display output can be had here since there's no FDI support in that PCH but can QuickSync still be used since the processor has the iGPU and is QS capable?
Quicksync is not possible on P67 board, period.
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glamper wrote: If one is going to buy new hardware ....
A Raspberry Pi 3 B kit costs ~$100 and consumes less than 2W ($1.56/year in hydro).
Plus it has a much smaller footprint and produces no noise since it is fanless.
I don't know much of an improvement the rpi3 is over the rpi2, but the rpi2 struggles to maintain 30MBps on an ext3 board.

If you're going down this route I'd recommend a beefier board and one with a real sata interface
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glamper wrote: If one is going to buy new hardware ....
A Raspberry Pi 3 B kit costs ~$100 and consumes less than 2W ($1.56/year in hydro).
Plus it has a much smaller footprint and produces no noise since it is fanless.
And how are you going to connect harddrives with it? Through USB 3.0? and 100mbps internet?

Yes, it is theoretically doable, but slow and unreliable
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For NAS, a banana Pi would be significantly faster for similar power usage and not a lot more cost.

For anything performance related you are always better off getting an alternative Pi out there. Banana Pi, for example, is around $50 but it can connect with SATA port and has Gigabit Ethernet port.

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