File Server

On windows, what is the best way to make a file server? Is it just simply sharing a folder, or are there ways that are better?

That question is a bit vague.

Are you serving to a small LAN or are you making a corporate class fileserver? Are you concerned about security? Bandwidth? Access restrictions?

Are the clients all Windows clients? What about Linux, Macs, and UNIX clients?

Assuming with a simple question you want a simple answer...


Yes. You can certainly make a server by just sharing the drive on a network. I'm actually doing that for now until I get sbs for more control over the situation, but for now, it works, and I haven't seen any problems *yet*. I'm sure I'll see some though. You'll get a better answer from someone more knowledgable than myself if you give more details. What do you plan on using for a server? (what processor, mobo, drives, ram) How do you plan on setting up a network? (routers, cables, nic's...) What kind of files do you plan on sharing? (database, pictures, video, game server...) Give us what you have now, and where you want to be, and I'm sure someone can give you a map.

yea well... i want to put games and music on it. I want to increase the speed over the network cause games take forever to load off of my server. i have all windows clients and im running for a small LAN. im not worried about firewall or anything but i do want to make it so only i can view the files. unfortunatley, i have windows me on the computer with the harddrive that i want as the file server. are there apps that can create a full file server and dedicate system resources to make my network faster?

Network speeds are determined by three things:

1)The sender
2)The recipient
3)The technology used for connecting 1 and 2.

An app can't change #3. 1 and 2 change depending on what they are doing and the hardware in them.

alright. so basically, i cant do anything to make the "file server" go faster? like what im saying is that what can a file server do that just sharing a network drive cant?

A real hard core server running a server OS can do lots (way more than I know). I started to look into it, but instead of screwing it up, just look for yourself here. It's $450 though.As far as speeding things up, that's a hardware issue. First, QS's #3. The network medium is vital. You'll want some good cat5 cables (you might be able to get away with even cat3 over short distances, but I don't think it's even worth messing with it). Just a couple feet will be just a couple bucks. Next, you'll need good network cards. If you're just connecting the computers, you can just use a crossover cable and connect them directly. If you're going to want internet access for both of them (and why not?), you'll need either two nic's on one computer, or a router. I personally have yet to mess with it, but I'm looking at gigabit switches right now since I've yet to see a gigabit router. Even if you get gigabit cards, switch and put in cat5, you might still not be able to get your files as fast as you want. The speed of the drive would be the bottleneck then. This is where a good server would be nice. With onboard raid and two drives set to raid0, you can get your files off the drives faster. ME would just be asking for trouble. XP would just treat the drives as shared, and do whatever it's told to do. XP Pro is said to have better networking features, but I'm not sure (even after reading about it) what exactly that means to you and me. A server os though, would allow you to control the network instead of it being like lunchtime at an elementary school.

Games take forever to load? Just put them on your local drive. I'd only keep data on the server and run all apps locally. Do that, get rid of ME, and see how much more of an improvement you want after you see how that runs. You might find that a couple $mall steps could give you what you want instead of going full bore into servers.