Turning old pc into file server

If you have an optical drive, burn that ISO to a disc and then boot from it the way you would any other bootable CD. Installing the OS to a flash drive is handier, and it frees your actual hard drives to store your files.

The entire image is only 1. Hit the Write button, and Win32 Disk Imager will take care of the rest. Millennials love sustainability and vintage items; should you turn that old computer into a fully-functional print server for extra style points? If you have an extra Ethernet network adapter card, you need that in the PC. Download a NIC driver, and print server software.

There are dozens of free choices; Qcontrol from Pcounter is one. Style points if you use a 1. Drag the files for the NIC driver and print server application into the window.

Scan the computer for a file called modules. Connect the printer to the old PC with a parallel cable. Power on the printer. Boot the PC after inserting the disk with the driver and module files. You may have to uncheck the Autodetect PnP function. In a conventional business sense, not really. This is not ideal usage for a 20 year old computer. If you have more than one printer in the office, driver uniformity is best practice. If that old PC has Windows 8 or later, running a modern v4 driver should be fine.

Then click Change Password and do the same. Security first! To set up your storage volumes, click the Storage button in the upper-left corner of the FreeNAS Web-based configuration screen. From there, click the Create Volume button that appears in the main window.

Press the big Change button to cement your configuration. If you have a Mac-only setup, you might be better served no pun intended by configuring the drive for AFP shares. Click it and click the Close button. Finally, click the Services button on the left sidebar and select the Control Services option.

To resolve the issue, make sure that your FreeNAS network settings basically match those of the other computers on your network. Our simple share drive is but the tip of the FreeNAS iceberg with regard to features. Options include locking drive access to users and groups, creating recurring snapshots for restoring older copies of files or deleted files entirely, and using the power combination of Dynamic DNS and FTP access to give your offsite workers easy access to the files they need.