[Gllug] More on energy saving use of old laptops for home networks

[M.Blackmore]

Further musing. I've a P233 64 or 96mb (can't remember which) spanish
keyboarded laptop with dodgy screen lying around, and was wondering
whether to use this as a fileserver/imap server for home use.

Disk internally is obviously limited. What sort of performance would a
usb external disk give - or choke off or limit - attached to this
machine?

I don't understand also what these new network drives are. How does the
processing of stuff like file read/writes, or more precisely, how would
an imap server operating on a laptop work? Would it simply write to the
network disk/s transparently as "just another directory or file" in the
nfs manner?

I'm assuming that as far as a particular machine is concerned, e.g. a
personal computer, then a network drive is simply a unix file or a
windows "z" drive or summat?

Any thoughts about pressing low energy old kit into use in these forms
mixed with modern stuff?

For backups I'd toy with the idea of having two networked drives rsynced
or similar, one at either end of the house (its long and thin). Not as
good as offsite storage, but its unlikely the whole place would burn
down all along its length... and give some security. I suppose
occassionally backing up to a big disk and giving it to a neighbour or
friend wouldn't be a bad idea to stave off utter disaster now that so
much is getting digitised like photos and videos and so forth.

I still think we will come to rue the day with the passing of paper, ink
or graphite, and silver halides for long term archiving of information
and images...

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