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Edited on Fri Feb-20-09 07:22 PM by JeffreyWilliamson
And had quite a bit of fun doing it. I decided to use the following New Years weekend to do something with the old computer, and after researching online, I decided to build the media server. I found out that it didn't have to be all that fast, but would need substantial hard disk space. I happened to have a couple of old 180 GB hard drives in the closet from 2 old Time Warner DVR boxes. I took out the computer's original hard disk and installed the first large drive, and then formatted and partitioned it so that it had one 5 GB partition and then a second with all the rest. I then installed an extra copy of Windows XP Professional on the smaller partition.
After that was finished, I attached an old ethernet cable to our router and updated it completely, installed free anti-virus and anti-spyware software, and a registry cleaner. I left everything else at the default configuration since it was really only going to do one thing--share the hard drives with all the computers in the house.
When I was finished, I removed the CD-Rom drive and in its place installed the second large hard disk, formatted, etc. I configured all the network settings, workgroup name, set up the folder structure on the hard disks, (video, music, pictures, documents, etc.), and made sure the folders were shared properly.
I went to the store and picked up a longer ethernet cable and moved the new server into the living room behind the sofa, plugged it in and turned it on, (and let me note that it doesn't have a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, so I had to go into the BIOS and disable the no keyboard warning so that it would boot up), and ran the cabling to the router along the base moulding. Then I hooked back up my new desktop computer and began moving the video, audio, files onto the server's hard drives across the network.
I then set up shortcut folders on the desktops of all the other computers in the house to make for easy access to the server's files, and then set up Remote Desktop Connection from my desktop computer so that I could access the server and keep it updated remotely.
Essentially that was it, all media files are stored in one central location and can be viewed across the network without having to store the files locally. The initial server system was set up and running within a few hours. Eventually I went back in and set it up to stream to my television through my XBOX 360. It now even serves as my web server, using free Apache software, (and that was a pain to set up, but only took a few hours), and supplies a live feed from a webcam I have set up in the living room to keep an eye on the pets.
It can all be accessed here:
www.jeffreywilliamson.net
Specs:
Dell Optiplex, 900 MHz Intel Celeron, 192 MB RAM, 2 x 180 GB HD
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