Hey guys.
A combination of circumstances requires me to use a laptop in one room as a print server and a desktop in my room (on another floor) is a torrent box. This is rather wasteful so I have decided to consolidate.
I first started looking at the Intel D201GLY2. It'd be kept in the same room as the printer, I could hook up an external drive, and could just transfer that over to my desktop whenever. An added bonus is that I wouldn't have to go beyond my current (limited) computer knowledge to set this up. As per the review here, it'd use ~30W.
Then somebody pointed out that the zonbu, linutop, fit-pc, etc. type systems draw half that amount of power. But someone on here said that one of these doesn't have a gigabit controller so it would not be a capable file server. Does this mean it's not apt to be a torrent box either? Also, a lot of these seem to use Linux. I have no experience with Linux, so I'm not really sure what I'm saying here, but if I hooked up an external drive to one of these, would I have to format it (the HDD) to be Linux compatible? Would the external HDD then be incompatible to my Windows machine?
After some more researching, I came across some people talking about the NSLU2. It seems to do everything that I want, but again, Linux. Also there seems to be some hardware hacking/flashing things involved. I only scanned some of their conversation and the technical documents, but the setup seems really complicated. It still appeals to me though, considering the power consumption and low cost.
So considering what I want to do and keeping in mind power consumption, what option should I choose? Is there something else out there I'm not aware of? Should I start learning Linux now? Should I take this query to another board because this isn't the place to ask? Anybody with experience with any of this feel free give your input. Thanks in advance.
Low power torrent box and print server
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Here's another alternative, if you can live without Gigabit LAN. I know I could.
How fast is your internet connection? Unless you have something way above the norm, gigabit won't matter as far as torrent. (Can't go faster than your net connection anyway, many net connections don't even reach 10Mb/sec.)
Why not just use the laptop for your torrent as well?
Saves energy by not requiring creation of new computer/components,
plus many laptops use less power than desktops.
Considering that creation/distribution/recycling computer components takes significant energy, reusing is often more energy efficient. (See the green computing forum here, or ecopcreview ).
Or if your laptop isn't up to the task, a second hand laptop would probably do the job. Either way you could run whatever OS you are comfortable with.
Linux can handle many of the file systems used on Windows, so you could certainly have external drive formatted FAT32 and work on Linux or Windows. Many Linuxes will work with NTFS, but little more hit or miss since it is a proprietary filesystem.
In one of the threads here there was some router mentioned that has a USB port on it, which can be used for torrents.
viewtopic.php?t=46669&highlight=
Don't know if it will do what you want out of box, or if you would have to mess with replacement firmware (Linux).
Why not just use the laptop for your torrent as well?
Saves energy by not requiring creation of new computer/components,
plus many laptops use less power than desktops.
Considering that creation/distribution/recycling computer components takes significant energy, reusing is often more energy efficient. (See the green computing forum here, or ecopcreview ).
Or if your laptop isn't up to the task, a second hand laptop would probably do the job. Either way you could run whatever OS you are comfortable with.
Linux can handle many of the file systems used on Windows, so you could certainly have external drive formatted FAT32 and work on Linux or Windows. Many Linuxes will work with NTFS, but little more hit or miss since it is a proprietary filesystem.
In one of the threads here there was some router mentioned that has a USB port on it, which can be used for torrents.
viewtopic.php?t=46669&highlight=
Don't know if it will do what you want out of box, or if you would have to mess with replacement firmware (Linux).