building a file server: hardware questions
 

Hi,

I have really enough hardware, disks, all kind of cards at home, and I want to clean up. I want to get rid of small hard disks, to rebuild my desktop computer etc. in order to do that, I want to build a file server for all home users, which can take 10-12 disks (now 6-7, but I want to have enough space in the future).

I know generally what I need, but I would like to get more information from you. I am also not sure about some parts or I am not able to find the I want.

these are two main parts which are giving me headache:
1. big case which can take 10-12 disks and can be quiet
2. motherboard and cpu


@1:
I saw a few big tower cases, which can take 10x 5.25 (external) and probably a few inside. do you have some suggestions? I could by a Lian-Li case, but I don't want to spend $/€ 300 for a case.

@2:
I thought about buying an old Pentium M CPU (mobile), because it is a pretty powerfull cpu and it does not need much power. Some of these can be found relatively cheap today (because of all dual cores etc.).
File server should be available 24/7, and buying some kind of mobile CPU which will not affect my electricity bills could be a nice solution. it should also be quiet.
enough micro-atx motherboards (which are not cheap) for theese cpus are available.

1GB RAM will be inside, and a raid card.

I will use only software raid, probably 2x or 3x raid5 with LWM etc. OS: Slackware 11.0 because I have Slackware on all my boxes.

I would appreciate any comments.

Thanks.

M.

As I just saw, old pentium M CPUs are pretty cheap (2nd hand, ebay), but still the motherboards are pretty rare and expensive, starting with € 130.

Maybe it was not sucha good idea to build a file server with mobile CPU. ideas, suggestions?

M.