File Server Mobo

[cold.nut]

What kind of File Server motherboard should I hit up? Looking to put a family file server to work.

 

[EarthDog]

Just about any motherboard will do.. there are not specific 'file server' motherboards. Im assuming you are not overclocking so that doesnt matter. Just make sure it has enough sata ports for your hard drives.

 

[jmdixon85]

Look at the fileserver in my sig, it just uses a normal mATX board. I use a cheap 2 port Via SATA PCI card for my DATA (RAID1) storage instead of using the mainboards onboard SATA. That way I can change the mobo without having to re-build my RAID array again on a different board. Instead I simply install the Via card into the new board.

 

[madhatter256]

I'd get a board with a gigabit lan. Helps if you're transferring/streaming more than one large HD media file, but you might end up paying more for one.

My fileserver board: MSI 9625 Speedster board w/ 1.6ghz Pentium M CPU.

 

[jmdixon85]

^Good point. I got my board for free but had to buy a PCIe gigabit LAN card for it.

 

[Neuromancer]

Consumer wise for onbaord make sure and get something with ICH9/10 The Matrix raid is not important, its just a gimmick, but the 9/10 setups are really strong and have great raid performance. If only using 2 or 3 harddrives Matrix could be useful, run a small raid0 stripe for OS and they rest in 5 for a little extra data security. But 5 across the board will be fine and do not pay a premium for something with Matrix raid.

Get a cheap socket 775 chip and 2GB of low speed DDR2 and you should be good to go

If going AMD, their raid setups are not as strong, but if not looking for a single share partition, again you should be fine (you can just share drives individually and let users have their own partition to deal with if data security is not an issue.

You can also run software raid (IE let windows/Linux whatever) handle data parity. Do not know if it can handle a raid5 but raid1 should be simple enough And like Matrix raid, you can partition it how you like (leaving unraided partitions at the beginning of each drive etc)

 

[nd4spdbh2]

No need for anything special... my file server has 1.5TB of storage off a cheap ECS G33T-M2 matx mobo with an e4300. Has on board pcie gigabit thats connected to the 100mbit router to get to the outside world. Then two more gigabit nics to make up my special gigabit lan between my main comp server and htpc.

And i still got 3 sata ports left on the mobo, and 1 left on the pci raid card. I love it

 

[QuietIce]

What kind of File Server motherboard should I hit up? Looking to put a family file server to work.

My son-in-law is an IT tech and used an old P4 (1.8 GHz) he had sitting around when he decided to make a file server. It really doesn't take much of a computer to run one.

As was mentioned earlier I'd get a RAID card instead of using the on-board SATA/RAID. There's nothing wrong with the on-board RAID but if the motherboard ever goes out or you'd like to move the HDDs to another system you're hosed without it...

 

[Neuromancer]

No need for anything special... my file server has 1.5TB of storage off a cheap ECS G33T-M2 matx mobo with an e4300. Has on board pcie gigabit thats connected to the 100mbit router to get to the outside world. Then two more gigabit nics to make up my special gigabit lan between my main comp server and htpc.

And i still got 3 sata ports left on the mobo, and 1 left on the pci raid card. I love it

g3x core is extreemely power hungry, i would not recommend that

My son-in-law is an IT tech and used an old P4 (1.8 GHz) he had sitting around when he decided to make a file server. It really doesn't take much of a computer to run one.

As was mentioned earlier I'd get a RAID card instead of using the on-board SATA/RAID. There's nothing wrong with the on-board RAID but if the motherboard ever goes out or you'd like to move the HDDs to another system you're hosed without it...

Use what you have laying around if you are building.. . G4 intel chipsets use about half the energy of G4 so if purchasing it might be worthwhile to get the newer more efficient chipset



gernerally you use what you have. Windows raid is also an option and might be transferrable between PCs. Although generally not recommended, I would look into it if HW raid is going to be an issue.

 

[Kuroimaho]

I would get a cheap AM2 which supports 45nm cpus. I am building a HTPC for my parents and use a 690G based mobo I have I checked it could be bought for 30$, add a 240 and still under 100$.