Xigmanas?
Let's dive right into it. I share allot of files and videos over the network and having my computer on 24/7 just for file sharing generates allot of heat and noise inside my room, so i was looking for an solution and Xigmanas was the one i choose for the job at hand.
I had an old laptop laying around and decided to transform it into a Xigmanas server booted of and 16gb usb stick and 3 hard drives of 1tb each, this was great because it made less noise and i moved it closer to the main router that had an ups so the noise inside my room was close to none.
Everything was shared using SMB (Samba) without usernames or password so it was easely accesable trough the whole network. The only drawbacks where:
- No security on the data stored, this could be configured but i choose the lazy way since i had other plans for the long run.
- Limited disk space since i was already using both internal sata connections and an usb drive.
- Cpu was on 100% when 2 users accessed a videos or transfering big files.
- Ram was also 100% since this was an older laptop it only had 4gb which is reasonable but low depending on what your uses are.
- Network had only a 100mb connection this slows everything down the most especially when accessing big files.
There were also pros like ease of use, easy installation, web interface to configure everything, don't need to format any hard drives since it can use ntfs the way it was formated from windows
I havent added a guide on how to install and configure everything since this was quite a while back. However it's very easy some say great for beginners, learn how to configure SMB shares and what not.