Looking to ditch WHS2011

[thestrangebrew1]

For basic file storage, and maybe streaming media once in awhile, would windows 11 work fine? My current server holds my dvd/bluray collection (80%) and photos/docs (photography is one of my hobbies and I backup my wife's iPhone pics on it everyonce in awhile). Other than that, I don't use my server for anything else. Don't even use Plex anymore, but I might fire it up again.

The kicker is my hardware: Intel g620, 2gb RAM, ASrock mobo (don't even remember the model) 128gb ssd for the OS, 4x2tb hdds. If I can't run windows 11 due to hardware, or if it's not recommended for my use, I'll need either hardware recs to upgrade the box, OR I'm open to maybe just getting a dedicated NAS like Synology/QNap, but I'll have to get new hdds and don't really want to drop a bunch of $. And I have no experience with Linux, nor do I have the time or patience to learn a new OS lol. Thoughts or recommendations?

 

[lxskllr]

If what you have works, why switch? Don't connect it to the internet, and updates don't matter.

 

[igor_kavinski]

For basic file storage, and maybe streaming media once in awhile, would windows 11 work fine?

I still use Win7/Win8.1 on some machines. They stay out of the way, unlike Win11 which has a tendency to break stuff with updates. Just the other day I lost about an hour re-installing Safenet token software after the security tokens stopped working at my workplace after the most recent "large" Win11 update (it said estimated 30 min required but actually updated in less than 10 min). The thought that bothers me is, what if the re-installation hadn't worked? I would've been there all night.

 

[thestrangebrew1]

If what you have works, why switch? Don't connect it to the internet, and updates don't matter.

Hadn't actually thought about that. I don't need to access my server away from home anymore so this should work pretty well. And I can just add more storage as needed.

 

[Red Squirrel]

If it's not connected directly to the internet (which you should never do anyway for a file server) then it will be fine as is.

But if you want something new, look at Linux and setting up mdadm raid and then using either NFS or SMB for the file shares. With ChatGPT, Grok etc stuff like this is fairly easy to do now as it will walk you through the whole process.

 

[In2Photos]

I use unRAID for my file server. Up until recently it was running on an AMD Athlon 3000 1.9GHz with 2GB of RAM. They used to have a free version but not sure if they do anymore.