Solved! Home Server

[yobydnub]

I have a fairly new laptop with a busted screen, and what I would like to be able to do, with the aid of an external monitor, is to turn this laptop into a home file server. The problem I have is this: At the moment I have my daily laptop with 6 external hard drives connected to it. This is not practical as firstly It does not make my laptop very portable, and secondly, as I am only using 2 USB 3.0 ports (and a couple of externally powered USB 3.0 hubs) to connect these drives, and other devices, I find that from time to time they all just want to quit and stop working, and usually takes a reboot of some sort to get things up and running again. I want to move all these drives to another location on another computer in order to give me some sort of freedom. I have read in many places I can use software called FreeNAS and turn an old laptop into a server. Since my 'old' laptop has very good specs and 8GB ram it should be ideal for this purpose, and I have not problem with overwriting anything already installed on that laptop (if necessary) in order to achieve this. My concern is this: since the 'old' laptop only has 2 USB 3.0 ports, and I will be connecting all these external hard drives to it (and possibly more in the future) will I come across the same issue that I am having currently where the laptop is goinig to get 'bottle-necked' by having so many external drives connected to it, essentially leaving me with the same problem as I am having right now? Is my only other option to solve this is purchasing an external NAS server to house all these drives? I would very much like to be able to utilize this 'old' laptop, as it has very good specs and is just lying around doing nothing as its screen is busted. I'm hoping someone out there can give me some practical advise to help solve this issue I am having with all these drives connected to my everyday laptop. I apoligise if my question, and particular situation has already been answered - I did spend some time looking through the forum but was unable to find anything that reflected my unique circumstances. Thank you.

 

[hang-the-9]

You are doing storage the wrong way. You want an actual NAS, not just a bunch of USB drives connected to a laptop. It won't really slow things down with all the drives on it, but it's a very poor solution for mass storage.