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remember that old PC you stuffed in the closet yeah that one today it's been

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given a second chance this old

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machine isn't worthless even with its

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9-year-old CPU and complete lack of a graphics card why I'll let you in on a

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little secret not all PCS need to be for

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gaming tired of paying for Google Drive host your own cloud storage hate running

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USB drives through your TV host your own media server the possibilities are

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endless with the help of pulseway that sponsored today's video we're going to

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show you how to repurpose that old rig into your own personal server for cheap

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or even

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free the first thing to learn is that servers are just computers the word

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describes a role not a specific type of Hardware sure the servers in Big Data

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Centers do look different than your home PC they're built for reliability with

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redundant power supplies and ECC memory they prefer many slower cores rather

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than a few fast ones and they lock consumer IO like tons of USB audio or

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display outputs but that's because they're serving hundreds if not

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thousands of clients we're not which is

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why even our aging closet PC an old laptop or even a $30 Raspberry Pi can

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all act as our first Home Server this this Optiplex 710 we picked up from our

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local recycler free geek is the perfect candidate not just because it's cheap

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at1 176 us but because the bones are

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solid it's got a hyperthreaded quad core Intel i7 3770 128 gig SATA SSD for a

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boot drive and a reasonable 1 TB of bulk

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storage at this price point though there

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are some compromises we have to make it's 12 gigs of RAM or mismatch and

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predictably it doesn't have a GPU and even if we did add one we would likely

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run into issues with the power supply because value engineered power supplies

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like this 250 watt one while they're

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generally pretty solid they don't leave a whole lot of head room to play with

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nor does it offer additional PCI Express power cables but don't fret what really

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matters here is that we have a blank canvas to work from and by the way now

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is a great time to open up your rig and give it a good dusting and you maybe

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refresh your thermal paste while you're at it it's it needs some love now let's

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set up our OS so before you say it we're not going to install Linux today we know

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that moving to a Linux or FreeBSD based option does have both performance and

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feature benefits over Windows however if you're just starting out and you've got

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an old Windows-based machine already around this is the easiest way to get

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your foot in the door and that's what we want this video to be a start not the

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end if you guys want to see a followup where we we use traz or similar rattle

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your Sabers in the comments and get subscribed the first thing you're going

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to want to do is factory reset the PC now if you're running Windows 7 or 8 now

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is a good time to upgrade to Windows 10 or 11 keep in mind that a lot of those

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old Windows keys will still work to activate newer versions of Windows if

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you're already there hit the Windows key and type

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reset H it's slow then click on get

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started all you need to do from here is run through the prompts and until you have a fresh Windows install we ran win

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Arrow tweaker to disable automatic updates and kill Cortana and also

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disable a lot of the extra bloat like Telemetry that can suck away valuable

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resources from an older system like this now we're ready to set up our server to

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actually do stuff for starters we're going to download Plex Media Server for

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our media and pulseway to manage our system remotely if you're thinking why

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would I need remote access to this dinosaur well it's not because we plan

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on accessing it from across the world but rather because we may not have a

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Speare monitor keyboard and mouse to leave connected to it let alone the

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space instead we can operate it headlessly that is completely controlled

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via any web browser or the pulseway app neat setting up Plex is simple install

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the application run through the prompts and definitely read that Ula am I right

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they are very legally binding the beauty of using a Windows PC to start your

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server hosting journey is that the user experience isn't and I mean this with

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the utmost most respect to all command line Warriors complete crap usually you

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just download what you need the links are in the description and install and configure it with a goey and then you're

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done it really is that easy we can't cover all the options here of course you

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could run a remote torrenting box or an ad blocking server for instance but if

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you're following along and you do hit some roadblocks hop on over to our Forum

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where there are tons of friendly fellow nerds willing to help you out love you

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guys pulseway setup is similarly easy just click through the wizard and sign

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in at this point you'll have full access to your files and settings from whatever

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web browser you use to access pulseway and we're done service is running

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pulseway is up you can actually get away with not even setting up a network share

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or anything and just using pulseway to manage your files remotely but having a

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direct folder share on your local network is pretty nice so we're going to

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do that too it just takes a few more steps and you won't be able to access it

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from Starbucks unfortunately or fortunately we've got a drive set up

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here called LTT simple server that we'll go into and we have a folder we want to

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share what we'll do is we'll right click go to give access to and then click on

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specific people from here either you can allow only one person to access the file

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like it is normally or in our case we're going to give everyone in our local

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network access being sure to change their permissions from read only to read

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and write creating a Melting Pot and boom the folder is now

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able to be added as a network share by copying the link into the add a network

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folder prompt in any network machine on your local network don't forget to go to

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the Network and Sharing Center to ensure both network discovery and file and

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printer sharing are turned on under the private settings or if your network is

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set as public you should set that as private because it won't work on public

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networks not by default double check that really that's it for making a basic

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file server and with it we can do a Litany of cool things we can point our

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Plex server to the storage folders and access the entire drive over the network

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we can set up a Windows remote desktop connection or go easy mode and use pulse

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ways built-in remote desktop tool to control our server from any in the world

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without exposing our IP to the net we can also update Windows without having

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to log into the system itself even from your phone and the best part is that

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we're still running Windows we're not running Linux you don't have to learn anything new if your main rig BS itself

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you have an easy to configure backup PC just waiting in the wings but what if

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you want more control or what if you

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don't have a Windows license to throw at your pile of spare parts well you could

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run a standalone Linux server of course but as we've seen in the Linux challenge

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that's not always for the faint of heart UNR and prox MOX are also feature Rich

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options but they're not super easy to use either for an intermediate user we

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would suggest traz core previously known as frez it's free easy to install and

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has a decent UI that's it video over

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just kidding let's kick it up by adding more storage and data redundancy these

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two 12 TB ironwolf Pro drives can handle

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that beautifully at $400 a pop they

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aren't cheap but considering that 10 tab of Google storage costs 70 bucks a month

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if we did the math this upgrade will pay

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itself off in under a year including the PC not to mention you will own and

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control all of your data all right we've got the 1 tby drive out and the first 12

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TB Iron Wolf in but now we have a

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problem where does this go we can't

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exactly like just throw it here and be done with it we can't put it here

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there's just not enough clearance like there's there's no Provisions there's

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not even another s cable

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unless this optical drive now serves no

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purpose oh there are some screws in there that I need to get rid

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of ah okay cool but there's another

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problem yes this freed up some room and

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yes this is SATA um they're not they're not the same

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size so that's where this comes in this

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will accept a 3 and 1/2 in drive like

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so and slot

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in something like so oh yep okay

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obviously I need to actually Mount that first but uh that's the plan let's go

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let's get to it let's see if it still works next now

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with the DVD drive out because who needs one of these these days we have a freed

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up SATA power and data cable right where we need it so our second drive now

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definitely screwed in is absolutely

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plugged into the system and I'm not getting a display this is very troubling

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one moment please two things that we learned just now first always check your

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cables second a lot of these old machines sometimes have issues with just

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like outputting anything via DisplayPort yeah these are the kinds of things

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that these old systems will sometimes give you trouble with but once you have

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it all set up and running here we go we've got 12 terabytes of storage right

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here did I say 12 I meant to say 12 terabytes of redundant storage yes now

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it's time to raid these things we're going to be setting up raid one which

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means the drives will be mirrored there's no performance benefit on wres

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anyway for reads there is but if one dies you get to keep 100% of your data

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hit the Windows key and type storage spaces then create a new pool using the

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steps we've linked down below you will need to format your

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drives first make sure you do that there we go un format

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drives I'm I'm allergic to Del storage

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space resiliency 2way mirror yep file

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system NTFS size okay so 10.9 terabytes

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that's 12 terabytes and create storage space formatting the storage space we

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are good to go and there we have it a 12

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terabyte redundant Nas boox for under

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$1,000 and each of these hard drives costs about 400 bucks so that's telling

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you something this particular form factor is actually really easy to hide

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somewhere inconspicuous especially if you use pulseway to do all of your

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remote monitoring and maintenance so huge thanks to pulseway for sponsoring

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this video we hope you enjoyed it and if you want to see more of this sort of DIY

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server content don't forget to get subscribed and check out all of our

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other server videos we'll have those Linked In the End screen for you for now

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see you later