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CHLSteve wrote: I will take the hard drive out of your PC, and smash it with a hammer to simulate it crashing.

No need. Windows will do it all by itself.

I'd love to know how you do it, but after spending 8 years as a Windows admin, there is no way I can recover a server in under an hour. OS installation and patching alone will take well over an hour. Then I'd need to restore all the data. User account creation, server configuration, and all the necessary tedious tasks add up to well over an hour. Same goes with Linux though.

It's just all a matter of personal preference. I find Linux to do everything Windows can do, but with the added benefit of stability.

brianko wrote:

CHLSteve wrote:Lots of bad advice being tossed around here. I suspect most of you haven't even LOOKED at Home Server, much less used it.

I believe the topic was open-ended: Either WHS or Linux. That covers a lot of in-between ground. Looks like Charles has plenty of interesting options to consider. I've seen no bad advice here, just a divergence of opinion. Choice is good.

And I've looked at Windows Home Server. Then I looked away...

KD5NRH wrote:

Charles L. Cotton wrote:Thanks for all of the great input folks! With the Texas Legislative Session right around the corner, I guess I'd better not take on another project that requires me to learn something new.

If you're just looking for a fileserver, it's pretty easy. Grab a machine that's too slow to do anything else, fill all IDE channels with cheap drives, and install one of the easy distros like Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS. Set up Samba, and never have to mess with it again...until curiosity gets the better of you and you start wondering what else you could be using it for.

I'll throw in another vote for PCLinuxOS. A true Ubuntu rival. I've been tinkering with in in a VM and love it. I'm real tempted to slick one of my Ubuntu boxes and go with PCLinuxOS.

Also, WarHawk-AVG recommended FreeNAS. I've got one running under my desk hosting music for my coworkers and it is a great distro. Grab as many old HDD's you have sitting around and share the drive space in any fashion you wish. iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, etc.

I would agree with Crossfire. Unless you have a lot of time and aren't looking at getting this server up quickly, I'd go with what is familiar. And this is coming from a Linux / Mac guy!

Of course, I'd be more than happy to talk to you about Rackspace!

To answer your question though:

Could I run a Linux server but connect windows machines to it, store files created with windows-base software, etc?

Absolutely! Really easy to do!