Over the past few years ive gotten desktops from various smaller thrift stores but not i feel like i have too many and im not sure what to so with them? Do i save them and turn them into a bugger project? Do i make a nas out of one of them? Im stumped theres so many things to do with a pc that i dont know where to start, or if this is even the right place to post in?
I pretty much saved theses from e-waste and scalpers but most of the machines are devices nobody wants or has a issue.
How old are we talking?
In the end PCs are useful only if you can run useful sodtware on them, but besides nostalgia there ain’t much use I see in them.
I have a mix of eras of computer ranging from ddr to ddr3. most of what i have is from the windows 7 era, my “collection” mostly contains dell OptiPlex’s or whatever looks neat.
Ive heard you can do alot with a dell OptiPlex but i want to make a nas but im unsure how well it would be to store personal files with?
Since there are a lot of OptiPlexses with different specs I will give you a general advice for making home servers.
Use newest desktop you have and/or the one that took the least beating since you will need all the perfotmance and uptime you can get.
If you opt for used storage (like some hard drives you have), make them into RAID with redundancy (at lrast one possible drive failiure, preferably two if you can).
Also look for power efficiency, so if you have a laptop (and can add at least 2 drives in it for RAID) or a recent i3 or i5 dekstop (or even i7 if undervolted) that would be your best bet.
Also look for decent network interface card. Try to avoid 10/100mbit and look for 1gbit, though I doubt that old PCs can even push 1gbit. Also make sure that the LAN plays nice with linux.
For the OS, use something stable like debian, or if you want to thinker Alpine is fun and also really stable. Also Ubuntu Server is a solid choice.
When deploying services like a file server if you just want something that works (or at least should be easier than other options) YunoHost or CasaOS are your friends, but you can learn docker (or run without encapsulation) and nginx (or other reverse proxy I don’t care).
For a file server everyone has their preference, but I use SeaFile since it is crossflatform and simple with good integration.
As I said, for any questions about selfhosting just hit c/selfhosted and ask away.
You can eke a lot of use out of an old computer as long as it’s not a public server. I ran my sister’s old Celeron laptop as a Debian server for doing local sftp file transfers at my parents’ house when visiting there for holidays, which it was perfectly useful for until like 2018, when it finally fully died. In the end it ran as a server more years than it was useful as a windows workstation.