Here's my 2TB server...

[Mini-Me]

Hi all.
:)

Thought you all might like to see a couple of shots of my home-made server:

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/8079/server1cy6.jpg

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/1336/server2au0.jpg

Box is made from 18mm laminated MDF.

This looks a little more in-place in a cupboard, then a computer case.

I built the case just because I could.
:p

That, and I wanted to see what a homemade PC case could look like.

Purists will notice that it is not a 2TB server, but 1.9TB...

The Red button is the power-on button, the black button is reset.
The green LED is the power-on light, and the red LED is the HDD activity light.

The switches and LED's are mounted on a spare piece of old circuit board.

The system is based on an ASrock motherboard, with 256MB of RAM and Win XP Pro w/sp2, Duron 1200(1.2GHz) CPU, which is MORE then enough for a file-server.
XP install is minimal, with all optional components removed, and all eye-candy turned off to maximize performance. Admin is via Remote Desktop Support(RDS). CPU load when in use averages 3%.

[George Hallam]

nice

lol i see you have a single 500Gb HDD for star trek :eek: :p

[mjc]

Looks good...

[jlreich]

I like it. :cool:

How do you have the hard drives mounted? Do you just have two screws coming through the bottom of the case?

[Ajmukon]

i do not see any air holes...

EDIT- missed them on first glance...

[Mini-Me]

nice

lol i see you have a single 500Gb HDD for star trek :eek: :p

Yep, but that 500GB is partitioned into two 250GB's.
One of those 250GB is for Star-Trek(Voyager, Enterprise, TNG), the other is spare, and empty at this stage...
:)

[Mini-Me]

I like it. :cool:

How do you have the hard drives mounted? Do you just have two screws coming through the bottom of the case?

Yes.
They are screwed to the case using long screws.
I matched the thread from the small ones, and bought some long ones from a fastening supplier, so as not to damage the normal thread in the hard-drive.

[Mini-Me]

i do not see any air holes...

EDIT- missed them on first glance...

Yep, large hole on the left beside the PSU is the intake hole, with air being sucked through the case, past the hard-disks, and exhusted out the right.

The fan on the right is a 120mm 12v type, but running on 9v via a regulator circuit, to reduce the fan/air noise.

Even at 9v, this fan moves a lot of air.
Noise level is about the same as an average tower-case system, but the unit is located in a cupboard in the next room, meaning you can't hear this noise from the other room.
:)

The regulator can be set for 6v, 9v or 12v, so in summer I run the fan on 9v to keep the air-flow up, and in winter, I will drop the voltage to 6v as the ambient temperature is much colder then, and you don't need the wind-tunnel effect quite so much!

Here's what it looks like in the cupboard:

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3274/server3ch3.jpg

There is only a power cable and network CAT5 connected to it - no mouse, KB or monitor, as RDS allows me to access the box for anything that needs doing.

[Variable]

I am thinking of building a similar set up for movies to push to my TV. What do you use to call the movies up to play on the TV or do you use a computer monitor?

[Mini-Me]

I am thinking of building a similar set up for movies to push to my TV. What do you use to call the movies up to play on the TV or do you use a computer monitor?

The system is based on a "Front-end" and a "Back-end".

The Front-End, is the mediaplayer PC itself, connected to the home network, and the Back-End is the server, which dishes out the files to any computer on the network which asks for them.

The Front-End PC is a 2GHz Compaq USFF(ultra-small form factor) PC with a 10GB hard-drive, no CD-ROM drive, No floppy. This makes it nice and small, but with enough grunt to suck the data across the network and play the media.

The Front-End PC is connected to a VGA-TV converter box, which then outputs S-Video to the TV set on AV1.

The sound goes via the home-stereo system.

The mediaplayer software is Zoomplayer, and you can find it here:

www.inmatrix.com

It is a very good mediaplayer software, and has nice big text for easy reading of what you want to play. Here is a shot of it's full-screen file-browser:

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/1151/zpbrowserex2.gif

You can change the font, size and colour in the settings, if you want.