I am going to attempt to build an OMV server and I am definitely a noob. I go from looking at using what I have and going as cheap as possible to going as bleeding edge as possible. I have started this journey because I wanted to consolidate all my files and also begin to collect my video library into digital form. I have a crap ton of DVD and Blueray movies, but never get to watch them because it seems like it is a pia to actually put the movie into the bluray or dvd player. My family and I will actually watch a movie sitting through commercials, yet we own on disk! I am really interested in building an HTPC… several actually, but I first want to hammer down a decent file server/NAS.
I began with looking at current off the shelf solutions and quickly decided that this was not for me. I do like to tinker and learn and I am interested in learning some type of Linux server/ file storage system. I have a lot of components that I have collected over the years and I am posting here because I believe that OMV is for me and would like to ask you all if it would be worth it to pursue a solution with adding to what I already have.
Case(s)
I have two cases. Both seems to be made from the same manufacturer (not marked), but one is larger than the other and appears to have a full size atx board in it as shown below:
The case is heavy and seems to be well made and has a latch with a lock type of side opening. I have sound dampening material (car stereo dynamat) that I could use where needed for sound. There are currently no fans in the case, but has four purple holders for fans. It has an optical drive that I would remove. I have experience and plenty of acrylic to manufacture a cover / hdd holder for this space as everything is put together with aluminum rivets. I could easily disassemble any unneeded sheet metal and fabricate holders as required. Again I am not certain it would be worth my time, but again I am attempting to utilize what I can. I could fit any board in this beast and change the power supply if needed. I could also modify the side by cutting an opening for a large 120mm silent fan.
I couldn’t find any info on the ASRock board currently in the case, but it does have an AM2 socket and does have SATA
The above case has this power supply:
It is ATX 470W and may have some good noise depreciation qualities. Also my have some decent energy efficiency as it is rated at a .92 PF at full load. Its doesn’t have any type of 80+ certification, but may be good for a build. It also has a pot on the back that is marked low to hi and may be used to control the fan speed? (I think)
The second case is slightly smaller than the first case and has a PC chips board. The front panel is removable and is similar to the above case yet scaled smaller. It also has no fans, but I could modify it as required also:
It is a micro atx M957G with an LGA 775 socket T supporting a pentium 4 celeron d It has SATA 1.5GB/s
The second smaller case has this power supply:
Again ATX, but this one is 400W.
Next I have what appears to be my best MOBO. A gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H. 6 SATA ports. Socket AM2. DDRII 1066:
I have these processors currently:
2 each of AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ I believe they will work in the above Gigabyte board. One Celeron D that will go in the PCChips board in the smaller of the two cases. And lastly one semptron that I am pretty sure is older than the athlons.
I have a few older boards also, but they don’t have SATA indicating that they are probably not worth pursuing right now.
Lastly I have some ram:
4 modules of DDR3-1333 PC3-10666. They are labeled 2GBx2, but I think this means that they need to be installed in pairs… therefore they would be a total of 8GB in a board with 4 DIMM slots. If only this were DDRII I could run it in the GigaByte board. I do not know if it would be backward compatible.
2 modules of the above 2GB PC2 8500
2 modules of the above 2GB PC2-6400
I am not sure if either of the above DDRII modules would run in my Gigabyte board, but I may take the time to set up and see… unless advised to scrap this stuff.
These are just what I feel are the highlights of what I currently have. I have not purchased any new SATA drives for this build yet.
I am struggling with trying to decide if I should scrap all the MOBOs, processors, and ram and just start with a decent server grade board, new processor, and good ECC ram. If I do this then I might as well scrap the cases too -I am thinking I would be advised to anyway… since I am buying such high end stuff why not get a decent case and power supply to go with it. Another route would be to get the new hardware as above, yet purchase a nice power supply and mod the heavy case as required -but I am thinking this would save me about $100 at most and cost me some time in modding and buying fans to do so.
I guess my main question boils down to whether or not I should perhaps pursue the Gigabyte (board shown above) build with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+. I could put this board and processor in one of the cases (probably the larger with the higher rated Power-supply. I also have a veritable plethora of fans and CPU heatsinks that I could used to get her going. I may be able to check if this would run using a spare Toshiba 500GB 5400RPM SATA 3Gbps 8MB Cache 2.5-Inch Hard Drive pulled from my macbook when I upgraded it to an SSD.
If this did work for running OMV… could I purchase SATA III drives and have them be backward compatible with this board? Perhaps with plans to purchase a decent server set up later?
My whole purpose is to get something up and running. I have quite a few older IDE drives with old pics, videos and data. I have a FW/USB G-raid external HDD that I use with time machine to back up my Macbook pro. Basically I have media everywhere and no central spot to keep it. I think many people that are just starting to look at home server / NAS solutions are in a similar situation to myself. I understand that it would be best to have a server type board with no power hogging sound and simple video that would merely be used for initial set up as the box will most likely be run headless. All the stuff I have was good desktop hardware at one time... the question though is is it all useless?
I also have an 27” iMac core2 duo that took a dump about 1 year ago. I believe it is the logic board. It still has the ram and HDD -also probably 2.5” SATAII… but it might be SATAIII. I am so disgusted that it crapped out about 3 months after my applecare extended warranty that I put it all back in the box and have not taken it out since then. Apple will do nothing despite the known logic board issues. I could salvage this HDD too.
Right now the only desktop PC I have is an Athlon X2 6000+ with a 300GB SATA HDD in it. I was trying to avoid tearing this down cause I may need windows to run some school programs -NI Labview stuff. Since upgrading my MBP to Yosemite none of the older VM ware stuff I have on the machine will work until I upgrade to the new VMware and I don’t want to go that route.
I have various iOS devices and two other MacBook pros in the house and 1080p TVs. I would like to eventually work my way to a 4K display and associated HTPC with openELEC / KODI … perhaps running on one of the forthcoming NUCs. For now though as I said above, I would like to get the server or storage set up before looking into HTPC stuff.
Sorry for this long post and explanation. Love the forum so far. You all seem like a great group. Please reply if you have a moment. Again… do you think it would be worth my time to pursue this older hardware as a starting point, or should I simply look to purchase and start with newer hardware. Any recommendations you might have would be greatly appreciated!
Respectfully, Jim