How to Convert an Old PC into a Modern Server

You could e-recycle it--hand it off to a responsible company that will dismantle it and recycle the parts--but what do you gain from that aside from feeling good about being environmentally responsible? Allow us to suggest another solution: Repurpose the old hulk as a local server. You can use it as a repository for automatic PC backups, or set it up as a file server that you and your employees can access while you're on the road. Those are just two of the roles that an older PC can perform that are of far more benefit to your business than having the machine collect dust or head for the dump.

Best of all, the software--FreeNAS--that will power this machine is exactly what its name describes: a free operating system for network-attached storage. And side from being free, FreeNAS is easy to install, configure, and run. You'll find everything you need to know in this guide.

Installing FreeNAS

Before you begin your FreeNAS installation, obtain a USB thumb drive with a capacity of at least 2GB. You'll install FreeNAS to this drive and boot from it, because you can't run the OS on the same drive that you're using to share files from. Alternatively, you can buy a very small solid-state drive, install FreeNAS on that, and boot the server from it; but investing in such an SSD is an unnecessary expense (unless you're worried that someone might remove the USB drive without realizing the consequences).

Now, power up the computer, tap the key that calls up its BIOS boot menu, and choose the option to have the machine boot from its optical drive instead of from its hard drive. If no such menu exists, you'll have to enter the BIOS itself and change the boot order there.

While your system is rebooting, repeat the step where you chose which drive FreeNAS will boot from by default--but this time specify that you want it to boot from the thumb drive plugged into one of the system's USB ports.

Setting Up Your Storage

Once FreeNAS has finished loading, you'll see a console screen that lists all of the networking options you can set for FreeNAS. At this point, your server is up and running.

Assuming that your system works fine at the default settings--and it should, as long as it's connected to your network via ethernet cable--you'll receive an IP address that you can use to access FreeNAS's primary settings. Type this IP address into the Web browser's address bar on any system connected to your network and press Enter.

To set up your storage volumes, click the Storage button in the upper-left corner of the FreeNAS Web-based configuration screen. From there, click the Create Volume button that appears in the main window. Give your volume a name, select the number of drives you'll want to use to create the volume, and select ZFS as the file system type. You'll find that ZFS delivers a number of benefits that the Unix File System does not. If you're combining multiple drives, you'll have an opportunity at this point to select which RAID type you want to use.

Next page: Set up shares, and configure your backups.