PC to server?

[Droc]

Im sure this has been asked lots, and looking at the previous threads, as usual I am overwhelmed.

I need more storage, but to be honest I am out of USB and sata ports and drive bays.

I do have a old Q6600 PC thats collecting dust.

I assume I can drop a bunch of my old WD green drives into it and run some sort of server?

I need it for photo backup, media streaming.
What Im also looking to do is cue up torrents on my main PC and have them download to a drive on the older PC?

What should I be looking at? Win7 or some sort of server OS or software?

 

[kac77]

Go with what you are comfortable with. If you have never used Unix/Linux before then it could be more painful than it needs to be. Windows will be slower than alternatives but it will work just fine.

 

[PointandClick]

Go with what you are comfortable with. If you have never used Unix/Linux before then it could be more painful than it needs to be. Windows will be slower than alternatives but it will work just fine.

Pretty much. Unless you have specific needs just go with whatever you have laying around or are comfortable with. If this is just something to stream movies off of and store pictures it doesn't really matter too much.

I don't really care for Windows much anymore and I like tinkering with stuff so I've been through 3 different OS's all in the name of ZFS.