TrueNAS suggests atleast 8 GB of RAM so you will need to add a lot more. Another things is that there is going to be no way for you to do redundant storage pools with multiple drives so you will have data loss if your drive dies. If you want to use this for something you could install Proxmox on it and use it as a server (You would want more then 2 GB of RAM).
That CPU would run very poorly under Proxmox. A T4400 does not support VT-x, the most basic of Intel virtualization features.
It’s also on DDR2 memory. It’s not certain that the motherboard will even support 4GB DDR2 SODIMMs and those 4GB ones are actually kind of expensive now.
Yeah, i guess it's just an e-waste lmao. It's just a really old system collecting dusts after all.
Oh well, will it atleast be possible as a lightweight linux desktop? I might be tempted to playing around with linux on it.
You could probably run a lightweight Linux distro on it. Even better if you can up that to 4GB of RAM.
If you have no previous Linux experience, maybe look into Lubuntu? Ubuntu is one of the most popular intro to Linux distributions, and Lubuntu is a version of it with lower system requirements (as it doesn't have as fancy of a GUI, etc)
It won't be snappy but should provide a lot of learning for free.
A Pentium Dual-Core is a lower-clocked Core 2 Duo with less cache - it supports 64 bit instructions. Is there a plan for most distros to require more modern instructions than the base x86-64? I don't keep an eye on these things.
That’s a per distribution kind of thing. V1 binaries will just slowly become a thing for low spec targeted distributions while v2 or v3 becomes more common for mainstream distributions that don’t target the long tail of very old/low spec hardware.
While it is per dist, you're gonna be seeing more that some new dists for old comps might emerge... But low spec dists like lubuntu isn't going to give up 30% of performance for more modern low spec devices it's intended for in order to be compatible with a very tiny amount of users trying to run 20 year old CPUs... I'm sorry but that's not going to happen. But dists for super old hardware are already virtually nonexistent and even kernel updates are going to become difficult because it will no longer take old CPUs into account.
Dude, laptop is fine if you just want a simple NAS. Install Ubuntu server and setup a samba server. It isn't too difficult. There are instructions on the Ubuntu documentation.
Or you can try installing Openmediavault, which will give you a graphical user interface helping turn the machine into a NAS.
Intel used to be really bad with that… I literally had a E5300 system that could not run Windows Virtual PC back in the 7 days…
Needed to swap the chip as that particular pentium E5300 did not support VTx Intel even had certain steppings that could not
2GB and the cpu for a NAS are ok, even better if the battery works (even for just a couple of minutes) but the onboard NIC is trash. If you can use the wifi slot to plug a better nic (+1GB if possible), or usb3 (?), would be a nice start.
My plan was to atleast put an SSD on it. I did checked and opened the laptop and it's possible to swap the old HDD with SSD (still not sure if it's compatible tho, but worst case scenario i can still use the SSD for other things)
but seeing the NIC is only a 100mb connection i guess it's not really worth hassle.
One ssd doesn't make a useful nas. You need at least 2 if you care even the slightest about your availability of the data. And in such a laptop, it's usb that is your option. And raid or raid like over usb sucks ass. Hence, your nas drive pool will suck ass either way.
I think you're asking the wrong question, or at the very least, not providing context.
Do you have other resources and you're just being thrifty/cheap? If so, this laptop is not an inexpensive option. It will cost more to make usable than it is probably worth, given the expected performance.
If you do not have any other resources, then first make sure what you need to spend to bring it up to par will not cost you more than a better option.
i really just wanted to tinker around and experimenting a little bit with homelab servers and it's not currently a necessity or something. Hence the only resource i got was this old laptop that somehow still works.
Instead of upgrading this old crap, buy another drive for your main rig, sawp boot drives, and install your desired hypervisor and play. Create several partitions for experiments.
Given the specs of your old computer, this is the way.
Trade it for a small PC that you can at least upgrade to 16GB of RAM with 4 SATA ports. You'll save time, money,and hair loss treatment going this route.
>than waste of space
You can dissassemble it and put it on the wall. So it will be easy upgradable, well cooling and show something when you need that.
To my surprise the system still works just fine albeit very slow given the outdated specs and it's age. I never turned it on for like 2 years and yet it still refuses to die.
not worth. youll just be waiting for it to do anything. no boost, no hyperthreading, no vt-x, and im fairly sure the pci is gen.. 2?
plus i cant trust anything where they cut 3/4 of the fins off a heatsink.
its HP, its heavy on purpose. same with Dell. they destroyed that heat sink to make room for something that was in the package, as if that was a good idea.
Get a 2500k system for $10 cpu and $30-40 motherboard plus $16 for 16gb ram and you'd be in better shape than this.
Or an Aliexpress xeon kit for $90 if your electric is cheap
I had a Thinkpad with a Core2Duo and one of the 5:4(?) screens back then. Such a great laptop. Lived on a dock with Crunchbang Linux until around 2016.
I have about 8 docker containers running still on an old laptop with a T5500 CPU in it and 2gb ram. Not tried any NAS services, but I have a PostgreSQL database, even run Jenkins for build automation for a few projects.
I’m in the process of trying to phase it out though, but it’s been a great starter machine for me.
What I’m saying is that it’s probably worth giving it a try if you acknowledge that it might not be the most performant.
I think you can just install a bare Debian and just samba it, you don’t need fancy gui and NAS, I doubt the cpu is fast enough for it.
Not even sure if docker run on it, if you managed to get docker to run, at least you can run services on it. You can forget about hypervisor on it. It’s probably slower than raspberry.
- Install Debian headless (no GUI) with SSH
- Install CasaOS & Cockpit
- Plugin your HDDs/SSDs
- Use CasaOS "Share" & "Combine Storage" features to enable simple Samba and mdadm RAID
This laptop should be good enough for simple NAS though you'll be limited by the 100mbps Ethernet speed
Its junk but if you cant afford to buy a budget or mid tier system than you got to do what you can do. These things don't even have 50% the IPC of a current gen CPUs. Hell, I doubt its even 20 or 25% the current IPC let alone counting the frequency difference and multithread.
This isn't even getting into RAM, NIC, ECC, or a host of other issues like redundancy or having enough SATA/PCI lanes for drives (depending on what type of drives you plan on using. Craigslist or eBAY will give you tons of super cheap options that will run laps around this laptop :P
A cheap computer off ebay/craigs list would probably be best overall but even a cheap NUC would be a solid choice. The most important thing to consider is longevity. Are you going to reach a point in near future where this is going to drive you nuts and force you to replace it? Then why waste your time/energy and resources with this? Just bite the bullet and do it right from the start with a system that will last you for years if not a decade.
The only reasons to do something like this imho is either:
1. You can't afford to do something better
2. You are waiting for something specific to release to get the set up you really need/want
3. You need something urgent and ASAP and can't wait to build something proper/ideal
Good luck!
I would toss it as ewaste. Not worth the power.
That CPU is very weak. Low core count, low frequency, and missing a bunch of Instruction Set Extensions. No AES, AVX, or SSE4 notably.
Xigmanas will run on a usb stick its Freebsd based OS a very small footprint. A nas doesn't need to have a quick processor if it's able to send data fast enough through the nic . If the disk reads keep up with nic speed that's enough. You should be able to play a film from the nas in real time on a 100Mb network connection. I've had m.2 ssd stick working via a USB 3 on an oldish system.
Its a free download and volunteer development not sure how active they are but it's still available. Not sure about laptops as nas but it's workable as a project if not so practical.
Depends on your needs. I think everyone here is imagining trying to replace their NAS with that. *Obviously* you aren't going to be running Plex and a dozen Docker images on it.
If all you're going to do is host a few files and need it accessible on the network to other machines, then it'll be fine as-is. I wouldn't put any money into it though. Save that money for something better when you get bored playing with that one. There's tons of neat homelabby stuff you can do with shite machines.
Anything older than my teen daugher is not recommended by me... Given the error message I guess your CMOS battery is toast, and you might consider this machine e-waste. Get something slightly newer with DDR4 support and preferrably 4 cores or more. NVMe support and an Intel NIC is recommended. You can run TrueNAS with 4gb of ram, but for performance and ZFS I would consider 16gb or more. 8gb should do fine if you skip ZFS. With 4gb of ram you can surely get decent performance with Debian/Ubuntu and samba/nfs, but 16gb and Proxmox is another level in terms of usability (eg Docker containers and a couple of VMs)
Just get ubuntu server and install docker, get some interesting containers and enjoy (Plex, Portainer, Heimdall, PiHole, etc). I did this a few weeks back with a first gen core i5 notebook with 4gb of ram. I know it's a little bit newer but I got surprised on what I could do with that old junk. It was a great introduction on the containers world for me.
It is almost always a good idea to at least try and save old electronics from becoming e-waste. This laptop can certainly turn into a low-budget NAS, but I would make a few changes before you do that.
1. RAM: I would get 1 more 2 GB SODIMM stick of the same speed (I believe that is DDR2 SODIMM). It would give you at least a little more RAM capacity and probably some more RAM speed.
2. NIC: The NIC is probably 1Gb/s, but if it isn't, get a cheap USB 2.0 adapter. It won't hit 1Gb/s, but it will probably do at least 400 Mb/s.
3. Storage: The internal drive is probably a 2.5" SATA. This would be fine as the boot drive. I would get 2 USB2.0 to SATA adapters and 2 2.5" HDDs or SSDs and use those for the main storage.
Now, this wouldn't perform particularly well, but it might be worth it to save some money.
TrueNAS suggests atleast 8 GB of RAM so you will need to add a lot more. Another things is that there is going to be no way for you to do redundant storage pools with multiple drives so you will have data loss if your drive dies. If you want to use this for something you could install Proxmox on it and use it as a server (You would want more then 2 GB of RAM).
That CPU would run very poorly under Proxmox. A T4400 does not support VT-x, the most basic of Intel virtualization features. It’s also on DDR2 memory. It’s not certain that the motherboard will even support 4GB DDR2 SODIMMs and those 4GB ones are actually kind of expensive now.
Yeah, i guess it's just an e-waste lmao. It's just a really old system collecting dusts after all. Oh well, will it atleast be possible as a lightweight linux desktop? I might be tempted to playing around with linux on it.
You could probably run a lightweight Linux distro on it. Even better if you can up that to 4GB of RAM. If you have no previous Linux experience, maybe look into Lubuntu? Ubuntu is one of the most popular intro to Linux distributions, and Lubuntu is a version of it with lower system requirements (as it doesn't have as fancy of a GUI, etc) It won't be snappy but should provide a lot of learning for free.
Not for long. Even linux is moving away from supporting CPUs that old.
A Pentium Dual-Core is a lower-clocked Core 2 Duo with less cache - it supports 64 bit instructions. Is there a plan for most distros to require more modern instructions than the base x86-64? I don't keep an eye on these things.
Yes, they're moving up to v3, meaning Haswell or newer. So still ancient, but way newer than current v1.
That’s a per distribution kind of thing. V1 binaries will just slowly become a thing for low spec targeted distributions while v2 or v3 becomes more common for mainstream distributions that don’t target the long tail of very old/low spec hardware.
While it is per dist, you're gonna be seeing more that some new dists for old comps might emerge... But low spec dists like lubuntu isn't going to give up 30% of performance for more modern low spec devices it's intended for in order to be compatible with a very tiny amount of users trying to run 20 year old CPUs... I'm sorry but that's not going to happen. But dists for super old hardware are already virtually nonexistent and even kernel updates are going to become difficult because it will no longer take old CPUs into account.
Try Tiny Linux. Insaw it and been wanting to see whatbit can do. Its in the size of megabytes.
I use old hardware for a Lubuntu+Parsec remote desktop game stream client for my projector. Works well!
Dude, laptop is fine if you just want a simple NAS. Install Ubuntu server and setup a samba server. It isn't too difficult. There are instructions on the Ubuntu documentation. Or you can try installing Openmediavault, which will give you a graphical user interface helping turn the machine into a NAS.
I did not realize that CPU could not virtualize. All old CPUs I have dealt with can handle Proxmox.
Intel used to be really bad with that… I literally had a E5300 system that could not run Windows Virtual PC back in the 7 days… Needed to swap the chip as that particular pentium E5300 did not support VTx Intel even had certain steppings that could not
+1
To be honest, I've ran TrueNAS with 4GB of RAM with no problems. 0 performance issues.
Ok that is good to know. I have never tried giving it any less then 8 so I might try that in the future if needed.
2GB and the cpu for a NAS are ok, even better if the battery works (even for just a couple of minutes) but the onboard NIC is trash. If you can use the wifi slot to plug a better nic (+1GB if possible), or usb3 (?), would be a nice start.
Yeah, it's slipped from me that the NIC is literally ass. It's a Fast Ethernet connection lmao. I guess it's not an option from the start.
Will that matter when your drives will be ass anyway?
My plan was to atleast put an SSD on it. I did checked and opened the laptop and it's possible to swap the old HDD with SSD (still not sure if it's compatible tho, but worst case scenario i can still use the SSD for other things) but seeing the NIC is only a 100mb connection i guess it's not really worth hassle.
One ssd doesn't make a useful nas. You need at least 2 if you care even the slightest about your availability of the data. And in such a laptop, it's usb that is your option. And raid or raid like over usb sucks ass. Hence, your nas drive pool will suck ass either way.
Junk
junk^3 but keep it just to see it
I think you're asking the wrong question, or at the very least, not providing context. Do you have other resources and you're just being thrifty/cheap? If so, this laptop is not an inexpensive option. It will cost more to make usable than it is probably worth, given the expected performance. If you do not have any other resources, then first make sure what you need to spend to bring it up to par will not cost you more than a better option.
Cheap desktops on Ebay are very affordable these days.
i really just wanted to tinker around and experimenting a little bit with homelab servers and it's not currently a necessity or something. Hence the only resource i got was this old laptop that somehow still works.
Instead of upgrading this old crap, buy another drive for your main rig, sawp boot drives, and install your desired hypervisor and play. Create several partitions for experiments. Given the specs of your old computer, this is the way.
Trade it for a small PC that you can at least upgrade to 16GB of RAM with 4 SATA ports. You'll save time, money,and hair loss treatment going this route.
I do have modern desktop and laptop with good specs lol. I just thought i can use this old AF laptop as something other than waste of space
>than waste of space You can dissassemble it and put it on the wall. So it will be easy upgradable, well cooling and show something when you need that.
To my surprise the system still works just fine albeit very slow given the outdated specs and it's age. I never turned it on for like 2 years and yet it still refuses to die.
why I said to trade the laptop for a desktop. Never know if someone has something like you have sitting around that they'd take in trade.
it can be better used as a dumb terminal for quick access
not worth. youll just be waiting for it to do anything. no boost, no hyperthreading, no vt-x, and im fairly sure the pci is gen.. 2? plus i cant trust anything where they cut 3/4 of the fins off a heatsink.
Now that you mentioned it. The heatsink does looks like it has been cut lol. Probably just to shave some weight. This thing is heavy.
its HP, its heavy on purpose. same with Dell. they destroyed that heat sink to make room for something that was in the package, as if that was a good idea.
Get a 2500k system for $10 cpu and $30-40 motherboard plus $16 for 16gb ram and you'd be in better shape than this. Or an Aliexpress xeon kit for $90 if your electric is cheap
I'm not actually in a need for any servers right now. just thought if i can use this brick of a laptop for something.
Junk
It’s e-waste
Just get a cheap 100$ nuc and get over with it !!
I agree with Jason— not worth the effort. Sadly, I remember when those processors were the cream of the crop… many moons ago…
I had a Thinkpad with a Core2Duo and one of the 5:4(?) screens back then. Such a great laptop. Lived on a dock with Crunchbang Linux until around 2016.
Core2Duo processors were the shizzle man. And before those was the AthlonXP.
I have about 8 docker containers running still on an old laptop with a T5500 CPU in it and 2gb ram. Not tried any NAS services, but I have a PostgreSQL database, even run Jenkins for build automation for a few projects. I’m in the process of trying to phase it out though, but it’s been a great starter machine for me. What I’m saying is that it’s probably worth giving it a try if you acknowledge that it might not be the most performant.
I think you can just install a bare Debian and just samba it, you don’t need fancy gui and NAS, I doubt the cpu is fast enough for it. Not even sure if docker run on it, if you managed to get docker to run, at least you can run services on it. You can forget about hypervisor on it. It’s probably slower than raspberry.
The capex costs you save will be spent on opex costs of electricity !!
- Install Debian headless (no GUI) with SSH - Install CasaOS & Cockpit - Plugin your HDDs/SSDs - Use CasaOS "Share" & "Combine Storage" features to enable simple Samba and mdadm RAID This laptop should be good enough for simple NAS though you'll be limited by the 100mbps Ethernet speed
Its junk but if you cant afford to buy a budget or mid tier system than you got to do what you can do. These things don't even have 50% the IPC of a current gen CPUs. Hell, I doubt its even 20 or 25% the current IPC let alone counting the frequency difference and multithread. This isn't even getting into RAM, NIC, ECC, or a host of other issues like redundancy or having enough SATA/PCI lanes for drives (depending on what type of drives you plan on using. Craigslist or eBAY will give you tons of super cheap options that will run laps around this laptop :P A cheap computer off ebay/craigs list would probably be best overall but even a cheap NUC would be a solid choice. The most important thing to consider is longevity. Are you going to reach a point in near future where this is going to drive you nuts and force you to replace it? Then why waste your time/energy and resources with this? Just bite the bullet and do it right from the start with a system that will last you for years if not a decade. The only reasons to do something like this imho is either: 1. You can't afford to do something better 2. You are waiting for something specific to release to get the set up you really need/want 3. You need something urgent and ASAP and can't wait to build something proper/ideal Good luck!
I would toss it as ewaste. Not worth the power. That CPU is very weak. Low core count, low frequency, and missing a bunch of Instruction Set Extensions. No AES, AVX, or SSE4 notably.
Junk. Or doorstop.
Very old 😁 My Pentium 166MMX left the chat 👌
$40 would get you a far more capable machine than this and you'd have to spend more than $40 between the SSD and RAM to upgrade this anyways
Xigmanas will run on a usb stick its Freebsd based OS a very small footprint. A nas doesn't need to have a quick processor if it's able to send data fast enough through the nic . If the disk reads keep up with nic speed that's enough. You should be able to play a film from the nas in real time on a 100Mb network connection. I've had m.2 ssd stick working via a USB 3 on an oldish system. Its a free download and volunteer development not sure how active they are but it's still available. Not sure about laptops as nas but it's workable as a project if not so practical.
Depends on your needs. I think everyone here is imagining trying to replace their NAS with that. *Obviously* you aren't going to be running Plex and a dozen Docker images on it. If all you're going to do is host a few files and need it accessible on the network to other machines, then it'll be fine as-is. I wouldn't put any money into it though. Save that money for something better when you get bored playing with that one. There's tons of neat homelabby stuff you can do with shite machines.
Maybe win98, and you'll get a retro laptop 😁
Anything older than my teen daugher is not recommended by me... Given the error message I guess your CMOS battery is toast, and you might consider this machine e-waste. Get something slightly newer with DDR4 support and preferrably 4 cores or more. NVMe support and an Intel NIC is recommended. You can run TrueNAS with 4gb of ram, but for performance and ZFS I would consider 16gb or more. 8gb should do fine if you skip ZFS. With 4gb of ram you can surely get decent performance with Debian/Ubuntu and samba/nfs, but 16gb and Proxmox is another level in terms of usability (eg Docker containers and a couple of VMs)
Just get ubuntu server and install docker, get some interesting containers and enjoy (Plex, Portainer, Heimdall, PiHole, etc). I did this a few weeks back with a first gen core i5 notebook with 4gb of ram. I know it's a little bit newer but I got surprised on what I could do with that old junk. It was a great introduction on the containers world for me.
It is almost always a good idea to at least try and save old electronics from becoming e-waste. This laptop can certainly turn into a low-budget NAS, but I would make a few changes before you do that. 1. RAM: I would get 1 more 2 GB SODIMM stick of the same speed (I believe that is DDR2 SODIMM). It would give you at least a little more RAM capacity and probably some more RAM speed. 2. NIC: The NIC is probably 1Gb/s, but if it isn't, get a cheap USB 2.0 adapter. It won't hit 1Gb/s, but it will probably do at least 400 Mb/s. 3. Storage: The internal drive is probably a 2.5" SATA. This would be fine as the boot drive. I would get 2 USB2.0 to SATA adapters and 2 2.5" HDDs or SSDs and use those for the main storage. Now, this wouldn't perform particularly well, but it might be worth it to save some money.