I am looking for some direction in creating a home media server. I consider myself a pretty smart guy, but server speak has always intimidated me. I find my head spinning and I just don't get it. Just want an idea of where to start with using what I have. Been to a few forums and looked at freenas.org but I still can't put it together. What I have: corei7 w/6GB RAM running Win7. It has a 320GB main drive, and 3 other drives, 3TB, 1.5TB and 750GB. What I want to do: convert it to a home media server that all devices in my home can access (laptops, firetv's, etc...). Currently the machine is in my office loaded with music and movies (including home movies with the kids), but if I lose a drive, I lose everything. I run XBMC on it and pump video to 2 tvs in my house via an Hdmi extender and a switch. I have my firetv in another room side loaded with Kodi and stream all of my movies that way. Ideally I would like to convert the PC to a server and hook it up in my basement, never to be seen again. Just be able to view its contents from windows machines using a web browser. I don't want the server to run on windows. Something lightweight, since all it will be doing is transcoding video on the fly with no bloatware running the background. Much thanks to anyone who is willing to push me in the right direction!
read up some more on xbmc now called kodi as it can do what you want,i'm pretty sure it can however if you need a server software,not sure what it'd be called tho member ps355528 will know http://distrowatch.com/
