On 07/02/16 13:46, David wrote:
For an old box, I assume SATA 2 would be sufficient because the bus
wouldn't provide SATA3 transfer speeds anyway (I have some recollection of
being told this on uk.comp.homebuilt some time back).

Its doubtful whether overall sata3 makes a lot of difference to spinning
rust, although it for sure does to SSD!

You will probably be limited by the network anyway for NAS unless you
have gigabit

I can easily saturate a 100Mbps link.

MM. Looking at the specs SATA2 goes up to 2.4Gbps - so could saturate a
gigabit link too.

So:

- Not much CPU grunt neeeded.
- Sata 2 fine
- As many SATA ports as possible
- Best ethernet you can
- Enough RAM to provide sane caching. probably 512MB at least.
- OS to glue it all together - headless servers? Debian really.
- Rsync, software RAID or hardware RAID depending on application and
prejudice.
- STRONGLY RECOMMEND compiling up latest 'minidlna' if you have a smart
TV with dlna support, to make a place to dump ALL your videos.

RIPPING DVDs to MP4s and putting them on the server makes for a vastly
easier experience than trying to find the right DVD.


--
"It is an established fact to 97% confidence limits that left wing
conspirators see right wing conspiracies everywhere"