I was wondering if anyone out there has some suggestions for me. You
can reply to the list or to me personally ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) if you
think your responses would not be appropriate for the whole list. And
let me apologize in advance for the length of this post...
I'm trying to solve several problems at once (seems to me like many
other people face these same problems). Here are my needs (for use in
my home network):
-- a fault-tolerant (RAID 5 or mirrored) network drive, say
250 GB - 1 TB, available from Windows
-- web content filtering proxy / firewall
Now I know we've talked about specific software solutions (such as Samba
or Dan's Guardian) on this list before. If you have suggestions on what
software I might use, I'm all ears. But I'm mostly interested in what
kind of hardware I might get or reuse to make this work. I'm pretty
sold on Linux for the OS, but there are still a blinding array of
possibilities, even if I ignore the choice of distribution. For
example, my co-worker has installed Linux on his Linksys router for his
firewall, and Linux on a NAS server for his network attached storage.
I'm not quite as adventurous, and I'd really like one piece of hardware
that does both. In my mind this would save me maintenance (fewer
patches to apply) and maybe even cost. Any comments?
I was thinking about getting a new bare-bones Intel or AMD system. One
problem I have with that is that every computer I've purchased so far is
from Dell or Apple, and neither offers a system without the OS. Any
suggestions on where I might turn to get a Linux-ready system (need not
be pre-installed) suitable for the above purposes, preferably for less
than $300? I'm also looking for input on what the system requirements
would be for such a system. Is 512 MB of RAM enough? Should I get
hardware RAID or software RAID? In terms of importance to me,
reliability is second only to cost. I don't want my files to disappear
because my single RAID controller failed and the drive is unreadable by
another controller.
Another choice is to reuse an old computer (Pentium 4, 2.2 GHz). It
does not have a SATA controller, so I'd be stuck buying new ATA drives
(it currently has 2 80GB drives, which is really not enough for what I
want to do). Would I be crazy to use something that old from a
reliability standpoint? Also seems like a waste to buy new ATA drives
(are they even available any more?). Another option of course is to buy
a SATA controller card. Any idea how much that might cost?
I look forward to your replies. I'm open to any ideas you might have on
how to solve these problems.
Kevin Wise
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