gigabit NAS from a Walmart eMachine

One of my big projects/hobbies at the moment is building a digital archive of my all my families photos and videos. We are also digitizing all of my late father's artwork we can track down. (My dad was a very prolific artist and writer... we still haven't even cataloged his entire body of work!) The scans of all the old pre-digital slides, negatives and prints are being done by Scan Cafe. So far I've gotten on batch of scans back from them and I'm very happy with the results.

For the "I.T." side of my project, I'm using a multi-tiered system to maintain the stability of the data:
1. Master server with RAID-6 storage (also runs Digital Asset Management System)
2. Back up server with simple rsync mirror of the master server
3. Off-site Internet based "Cloud" backups.
4. DVD backups of high-value metadata and configs

The Backup Server does double duty and acts as the "Cloud Pusher" server.

At present I'm building the Backup Server / Cloud Pusher. Because none of the inexpensive cloud back up providers (i.e. Mozy / Backblaze) support Linux yet, the Cloud Pusher needs to run Windows. Windows is not my favorite OS. However, in this case it's a necessary evil.

The Cloud Pusher will be running 24/7, so low power utilization is also a requirement.

To address all the requirements I finally settled on using a refurbished Walmart special, the eMachines EL1300G-01w slim desktop. Compared to good contemporary hardware, it's a complete embarrassment...totally low-spec and slow. But for my purposes it is nearly perfect: It's inexpensive, comes with Windows pre-installed, and is fairly power efficient due to it's CPU and other components. (AMD Athlon 2650e / nVidia GeForce 6150se / nForce 430 / 2Gigs RAM ) Seriously, for what it cost, including the Windows License, it's a very good deal. ($180) I would not have been able to even build a functional computer sans OS for what this refurbished eMachine cost. Mass market hardware is so cheap these days!

However, the included 160 GB hard drive was totally inadequate for this project. I replaced it with a 2TB Hitachi.

To migrate to the new 2 TB drive, but keep the OEM install of Windows Vista, I used a fantastic live Linux distro called Parted Magic. Parted Magic is a Swiss Army Knife for disk partitioning, cloning, backup and system rescue. It also has a ton of tools for checking hard drives, system hardware, and doing other useful stuff. To be honest, due to recent versions graphical improvements, it's even become my favorite "Micro-Distro" / "Thumb Drive Distro". Parted Magic has everything you need to boot a machine and get a web browser running. ( When not at work, that's all I typically need anyway.)

Before I even got started with the migration to the new drive, the first thing I did was go though the OEM Windows install and remove the Bloat-Ware and "Craplets" that every OEM seems hell bent on pre-installing. Vista is notorious for it's sluggishness, but with tweaks it can be pretty usable. I went though and optimized performance by turning off un-used services, flashy graphics, etc. Honestly, those two exercises were the biggest use of my time. (And one of the reasons why I so detest Windows). I could have easily set up Linux in a FRACTION of the time required to whip this OEM Windows install into shape. Walmart and eMachines put so much crap on the machine is makes it almost un-usable. They should be ashamed. The Windows license was "free" with the computer, so I guess I had to "pay" for it somehow. But I can see why people have such low opinions of these cheap computers. Windows and the junk the OEMS install on them make the computers seem like complete junk. (When in truth, the hardware is actually pretty powerful)

Once the machine was all tuned up I was ready to start the migration. This is where things got a bit tricky. The EL1300G only has two SATA ports and both are used. (One for the DVD-RW and the other for the hard drive) I COULD have used a USB bridge board to hook the new hard drive up to the computer, but then performance would suffer. I would have also lost access to a lot of the low level control of the drive. What I did was unplug the DVD-RW and use the SATA port it was taking to plug in the new drive. Here is a photo of the computer with the case open and both hard drives plugged in:

[PHOTO]

To boot Parted Magic I used a USB Thumb Drive rather than a CD. At this point I have to comment on how awesome bootable thumb drives are. Not only are they relatively fast compared to an optical drive, they are so convenient! In this case, I could copy stuff from hard drive to hard drive over SATA, for best performance, even though I only had two SATA ports. (Meaning I could not boot from a device on either SATA port) I used Clonezilla (in Parted Magic) to clone the old hard drive from the old 160 gig to a the new 2 TB drive.

After the cloning was done, I re-partitioned the drive using GParted to re-claim the area that was occupied by the OEM "restore" partition, and reserved some new space for my own "restore" partition, which in this case is an disk image I created with PartImage. My new restore partition is also a reserved space for a potential future Linux install. Basically, the entire new setup has a little bit of "future proofing" built-in to protect for the case of a Linux dual boot setup. I haven't bothered doing the install yet, since this machine doesn't need Linux yet. But all the partitions required are in place.

So I guess the gist of this post: Love-fest for Cheap Hardware. Love-fest for Parted Magic. Check out the tool. It's super useful and a great example of how Free Software is completely superior to commercial software. Here is my finished NAS / Backup Server / Cloud Pusher