Old HP Compaq

[foxyloxley]

Would you mind going into the limitations of these possibillities a bit more? Why you say its not an option here, or if there are just alot of obstacles to overcome to accomplish it.

Thanks

to get a RAID set up, you require additional HDD's adding into the box. Now, on a desktop / tower, you will have aome room to move, and a wiring setup that can handle additional HDD's too.

BUT
lappie is restricted on room, as in, NO ROOM
so not able to attach additional HDD's inside box

RAID is a way to build in redundancy into your system
RAID 5 requires at least THREE HDD's, and works by striping data over each HDD so that each disc will contain 2 parts data, and one part parity data, so if you lose a drive, you swap it out, add a new -IDENTICAL DRIVE] into the unit, and re-initialize drive, then system will re-write the lost data back onto new drive, so you get you data protected

short version I know, but Google for RAID and there are a LOT of pages to read

as a lappie you are stuck with basic options
and of those, the test bed is probably the best one to use
after you add a new drive natch :P

if you REALLY want to play with file server / FTP
then save up
use a site like ebuyer.com [UK based that one]
and buy a PC in bits
use the 80 / 20 mark
so you NEVER buy this years big boy on the block
but get LAST years
will give 80% of performance for about 20% of cost

NOW you can go wild, would advise a Linux server option, unless you can get an MS NOS [Network Operating System] W2K3 onwards
and set the box up as a file server / print server / FTP
have OS mirrored to allow for redundancy / security there
and implement RAID 5 for DATA
I used 3 500GB drives to give me a 1TB data store

mind you, I also lost a drive, and on installing new drive, where it said "do you want to DELETE data" I said yep
so maybe double check my ideas elsewhere too

NOW you will have a box to play with
with sufficient space to store plenty of data
and getting a DYNDNS account will allow for FTP too

DYNDNS as you will probably have a dynamic IP, so it will change, setting up a DYNDNS account, they will poll your system, and update the IP address, now when you want to FTP, you go through DYNDNS, and they will provide the correct path

have fun