I'm gonna set up a little home server for file storage, backup and file exchange with people I work with.

I never did that so any piece of advice would be great. I don't want to spend much on it (10 - 13k) and haven't been to Pantip / Fortune for a while so here are my questions:

1. What hard drives are the best value for money right now? How much are they? (As big as possible but still good value)

2. What would be the minimum specs for CPU, Ram and power unit?

3. Can you recommend a good cheap raid motherboard?

Any ideas or pointers what I should look out for are appreciated as well.

Thanks!

Hi,

While it is not a big deal in a non-critical system like this, you might check the hard drive manufacturer's sites for drives that are specifically for RAID - they will not have 'heroic' data recovery routines built into them.

You don't need a lot of RAM or fast CPU for a fileserver. Adaptec and others have RAID controllers on PCI cards - you don't need to buy a new MB for that.

Peter

Have you ever take a look at Microsoft Windows Home Server? If not I think you should.

WHS is based on Windows Server 2003 Business Edition and don't need Monitor Keyboard and Mouse for to run.

If you take a look at the picture you get all specs. for just Home use, the min. spec much enough and you can even use an older computer for that, maybe just use bigger HDD's.

Cheers.