Show us your slimservers!

I finally got my slimserver:



It's a Tranquil PC T7HSA. Via C7 1Ghz cpu, 1GB RAM, 500GB hard disk, will take up to 4 USB 2 external HDDs, running Windows Home Server (a limited form of Server 2003). Fanless, the only noise is the hard disk, and despite the lack of fans it barely gets warm to the touch. Slimserver is very responsive through the remote, even when copying FLACs over the network at the same time. The CD is just for scale - it's a pretty small box.

So, what are you guys using for slimservers? I expect any combination of NAS drives, mac minis, old PCs with linux parked in a cupboard, etc...

 

Hi Isac

A very nice little goodie...

However you would need immediately an external HDD for the back-up. Something I learned is just neccesary. :grrr:

A partition is likely not to be more than around 400 GB so a good 500
FLAC albums can be in there.

I use a 6TB stacker PC and external backup. Very data safe and expensive solution.

But that is not a small cude low noise thing.

Gerner

 

Yup.

 

i used to use an old p2 400 with xp and 300 mb of ram with 1/2 tb of drives in it - now i'm using my main pc (a crappy acer dual core with a gig of memory and about a tb of hdd scattered over 5 drives) as a music and movie machine along with basic normal pc stuff (tinternet and letter writing etc.) does the job as i'm in a pretty confined space at the moment.
no pics tho sorry.

 

An old PC (PIII) built up by Audiofi with RAID and an external back-up.

When it breaks, I'll just get another old PC and do the same.

Luckily, I can hide it in the loft and patch into the home network. I have a few fans on it to keep the HD's really cool.

Just leave it on 24/7 and forget it.

 

The other thing that bothered me was power consumption and resultant running cost, especially as such a server is likely to be on 24/7. Say a typical P3 box with 300W power supply is actually likely to use about 150W in general use as a server. That will use 1314kWh per year. Typical energy cost is 10p/kWh, so you're looking at £130 pa. By contrast the tranquil uses 25W, or £21.90pa. Since my electricity bill is typically £40 per quarter, I'm keen to keep it down.

 

I use a Mac Mini - been on permanently for over 4 months and has never let me down.

 

I often wondered how much my server costs to run 24/7. At least I also use the server for work so don't feel too bad.

I used to leave my Bryston amp on all the time until I found it used 190W at idle.

 

19W maximum for my Buffalo Linkstation Live NAS running slimserver, and its a print and file server too!

Not bad for £130 and a few hours hacking.

 

Can you expand on this please?

I.e. how did you install Slimserver on your NAS?

 

Instructions here:
http://www.fieldnetworks.com/slim/linkstation.html

 

Thanks Andrew, I'm sure it'll be useful to some members here.

 

Actually I followed the instructions here: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?FreelinkLinkstationPro

(I've just noticed the page to install Freelink has moved, and can now be found here:
http://buffalo.nas-central.org/index.php/FreeLink_for_the_Linkstation_Pro
)

There are a few different versions of the linkstation, so you have to make sure you follow the right instructions when updating its firmware.

It's not actually very difficult, I had no problems even though I hadn't used Linux before.

Thinking of doing another now, in a box with a squeezebox, T-Amp and speakers, as a squeezeboombox.

 

Thanks Phill. I really like the Buffalo NAS but I don't need it. Perhaps next time I rebuild my PC.

So judging by the lack of pictures, can we assume that no one has a neater Slimserver than Isaac?

 

i bought a small form factor dell machine, which is based around a PIII 1ghz and 256mb of ram. It runs a very very cut down version of windows XP, and has a 400gb hard disk in it.

At my current average size of a WMA lossless CD rip, i should get up to about 1000 albums on that drive, which far exceeds my needs at this stage.

I back up to an external USB 400gb drive.

The dell cost me £20, the hard disk £40, so a fairly cost effective solution.

 

With the appearance of 32Gb SD memory cards (!!), I assume solid state Slimservers will start to become an option within 4-5 years (provided you don't have a huge music collection)

 

It's not 32GB SD cards that will pull it that way, but the current 128GB SSD (Solid State Disk) which will grow in capacity. They're 2.5" or 1.8" S-ATA hard disk replacements.

However, I think it's unlikely. They currently cost significantly more than hard disks, and their benefits (very low power consumption, very fast access times) are not big for a slimserver. However, you will see more and more laptops use SSDs instead of HDDs.

 

I hate the name SSD, there are no spinning discs in there!!!

 

Forgive me. I can get excited about technology that makes improvements. I can get excited about HDTV. About BluRay. I can't get excited about products geared towards lowering standards in all areas bar convenience.

I hate modern mobiles. I hate 32" LCD monitors and I hate so called Digital TV. What's to get excited about wasting cheap Chinese storage space on never to be listened to MP3's illegally downloaded from some crappy torrent site spamming you with porn emails?

SSD? SSB is where it's at and he's still spinning plenty of discs AFAIK.

Rant over. Do carry on. Sorry for the intrusion.

 

What makes you think they are Chinese? We had a 50MB (yes MegaBytes, it considered big in those days) SSD on our IBM Mainframe in the late eighties. It was called an SSD because it appeared to the Mainframe as a disk drive, it was fast access storage compared to real discs so used for paging. I just don't know why they still use the name SSD.

Anyway, I don't see why the SSDs lower audio quality, they are just an alternative to other types of storage.