Turning old laptop into home server? (downloading)

G_Unit

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May 16, 2009
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So I have an old laptop that is catching dust. (512MB RAM/Intel Celeron M processor/40GB HDD). I was wondering can I use my laptop as home server?

Ideally this is what I would like it to do:

Power on laptop (server) remotely when required (by having it connected to my network through ethernet)
I want to be able to access these files internally (don't want to remotely access them (through internet))
I want to be able to turn it off when required.
I want to be able to use RDP to use a web browser or install a torrent client so I can initiate my downloads.


I am starting to check out OS like Free NAS, but wondering what are my options and is all of the above possible? My aim here is to just be able to use this laptop for downloading and then being able to access it remotely within my internal network.
 

G_Unit

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May 16, 2009
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Thanks for your reply. I do have a "Wake on LAN" function in the BIOS. But my network adapter does not support WOL (wake on lan)?

How does the Wake on LAN work? Can it wake up the laptop from standby and/or complete shutdown? If so how would I go about doing it please?
 

USAFRet

Illustrious
Moderator


WOL (wake me up when there is some LAN activity) won't bring it up from a power off shutdown. Sleep, yes. Just send it to sleep after a while.

Go into the LAN adapter settings, and Sleep setting, and see if there is a WOL option.
 

G_Unit

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There is no WOL option, the only options I have for my ethernet card is:

Link Speed/Duplex Mode
Network Address
Recieve Buffer Size

Would it still be possible?
 

G_Unit

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Just a quick update. I updated the ethernet drivers and the following options appeared:

WakeUp on ARP/PING
WakeUp on LinkChange
WakeUp using APM mode.

Does this change anything?