Any geek girl’s media collection is probably bigger, and more important, then her prized assortment of designer shoes . From her SciFi movie collection, Cosplay picture pile, to her eclectic video game themed soundtracks- a girl’s gotta have what she wants, when she wants it. To maintain this important material properly, she should be able to store and stream her media collections efficiently from a home media server.

A home media server usually refers to a small personal computer, or NAS (Network Attached Storage), which is dedicated to storing and sharing various digital media such as videos, music, and pictures throughout your home. Lets be clear, this isn’t simply allowing file sharing and having access on all your devices, this is creating a dedicated central hub that powers and pushes your favorite things in the world to you and doesn’t eat up the memory and processes of your main devices. There are many other benefits of using a home server, but basically it comes down to if you utilize a lot of media and have vast collections of it (even physical as you should convert it digitally anyway), you should be using a home media server.

There are all kinds of ways to setup up a home server, as well as a lot of different devices and software you can you could use.  The purpose of this article is to provide general steps of establishing a home server and to link to resources for on creating one with some of the many ways you are able to. 

Before you begin setting up a home media server, you must ask yourself how comfortable you are at setting a server up and what you are capable of spending. These will be the driving factors in your overall decision of how to obtain or create a home media server.

Determine Server Hardware

Do you want to buy a pre-built server, do you want to use an old PC, or do you want to build one yourself?  This decision is impacted by having the appropriate equipment that will suffice around the home.  Keep in mind that a media server is utilized exclusively FOR your hosting and sharing your media files, and not your day to day computing needs. In other words, don’t try to use the laptop you play your Facebook games on in the living room.

There are many pros and cons when choosing to create or purchase a new home server.  An old computer might actually a good match for a media server’s fairly low-key system requirements, or can be with a few smaller upgrades, and would only essentially require the installation of the server software/operating system itself. The biggest impact on your server’s performance is fast, high-capacity hard drives and a Gigabit Ethernet interface, so these are the things you should ensure old equipment is capable of.

It is important to note, that you do have some other minimal standards to use old equipment before you should choose building it as your home media server. I have provided the minimal specs needed to run a Windows Home Server as a comparison point.

Minimum specs advised:
• 1.0 GHz Intel Pentium 3 (or equivalent) processor
• 512 MB RAM
• 80 GB internal hard drive as primary drive
• 100 Mbit/s wired Ethernet

On the other hand, if don’t want to deal with the hassle and your equipment barley is up to minimal specs, you will want to look at a prebuilt server or to build one yourself.

Determine Server Operating System/Software

What server operating system is best for you? This really comes down to what you are comfortable and capable of using and how much you can afford to spend. You can go top end pre-configured software that will guide you through the install process and allow you to walk away forever- but will cost you money. Or you can choose software that will have to be configured and maintained- but it will cost you time and energy.

My advice is to weigh your time (anticipated effort in coordination with your networking knowledge), against your money and see which one is worth more to you. The end argument is to go with whatever cost you less and is worth more to YOU!

Common Home Server Software:

Here is a list of the top five Best Home Server Software, found at Lifehacker.com, that you might want to check out. I also list three here, that seemed the most popular in my research, along with links to guides on how to set them up individually.

• Windows Home Server The best out of the box solution that is extremely powerful and easy to use. It will cost you around $100, but anyone can set this up and get it running in no time! How to Set Up a Windows Home Server

• Ubuntu:  Automated installation of core components needed (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) which makes it easier then manual installation. Configuration will be somewhat advanced, but if you are decently knowledgeable about home network set up this free solution could be the one for you! How to Setup a Ubuntu Home Server

• FreeNAS:  Bare bones server to allow maximization of resources devoted to storage. While simple, it still comes with great features such as BitTorrent support, web-based file management, and iTunes music server capability.How to Set Up a FreeNas Home Server

Prepare Your Hardware

If not already set up, you will need to attach the standard peripherals and hardware that you will need for installation of the operating system. This will be a Bootable DVD drive or USB stick, Display, and a Keyboard, and Mouse

If you are using old equipment, at this point you want to back up any data as it will soon be gone with your new operating system install. You can also remove any unnecessary components not needed for the install (sound card, .  Dust it out, and clean it up, and then connect it all to your network. The server itself must be connected via an Ethernet Cable.

Install Operating System/Software

Install your new operating system, via whatever drive holds your install in the boot device priority list. Use the appropriate set up sets for the software you chose to run your home server by referring to the guides provided with your individual operating system or the how to guides linked above.

IMPORTANT: After installation, your computer will have to reboot and you will again need to access the BIOS to change the boot drive back to the internal hard drive. Otherwise, you will just end up back at the install process!

If using an old PC, it is at this point you want to change some other bios settings to keep your computer from having a fit when you remove all the peripherals you don’t need later (mouse, keyboard, display, etc.). While in the BIOS menu go to the Standard CMOS Settings Menu, and change to “No Errors.” on “Halt On” value. Restart the machine and follow the reset of the steps in accordance with your software choice.

Remove Unnecessary Hardware
When you’re finished, you can remove the display, keyboard, mouse and external drive, and run the machine remotely from any of the external devices you chose to assess your home media files.

Ensure Devices Linked and Access Enabled

Make sure all your devices are linked in to your network.  Depending on your software choice, you may be required to install small additional software to manage each device or it may just be a tool in the operating system on each connected device. Refer to your device operating system instructions.

Advanced Configuration

Depending on the software/operating system you chose, at this time you may need to do some advanced configurations to choose what files to enable access and who can access them. Refer to your individual guides for how to allow your devices assess to your home server.

So there you have a general guide as to how to identify what kind of home server you want and basic steps to set one up. What do YOU think is the best home server solution?

PLEASE NOTE: When I first began this article, I was meaning to do a how to on using Windows Home Server. However, during my research I found there were so many various options for creating a home server, I decided to turn this into a generic how to promote others researching the choices available to them. I feel it is more important to educate on options available for others to choose, then to simply push one product.

However, it should be stated that this geek went the easy route with Window’s Home Server, as it was the least time consuming and easiest to manage. =P