If you have found this article then there are high chances that you have heard a lot about media server at home. As we know that media servers have many functions and it depends on the users to decide for which task they want to use the media server for. If you are a movie enthusiast and have an entire family of different genres of movies scattered all over the place. The media server provides a central location and stores all your media files ranging from games, movies, songs, photos, and videos. Moreover, you do not need to worry about the size of the files too as if you have a media server at home, everything will be stored in one place with an abundance of storage for more data. Therefore, it is very necessary to have a setup media server at home.
What Are The Advantages Of Having A Media Server At Home?
Now before we get on to how to setup media server at home, let us first have a glance at the benefits of having a media server at home. Here is why you should have a 24/7 media server at home:
- Gives a central location to all your media files
If you are someone who likes to hoard movies, songs, photos and videos from the different days on your computer, then you would be surprised to know that media servers are made for you. Not only this, the problem for storage of all this data that usually goes into the hard drive and other times into the laptop or your phone could be stored in just one place. The storing of your media files on the central home server provides you with the media still kept on an individual device.
- It is available 24/7
Yes, it is rightly called a 24/7 media server at home as it is always switched on and always available. You do not need to switch it on or install an antivirus on it and that is the biggest benefit of having a home server.
- There is no load on your main PC
As everything is stored in the central location in the media server, this thereby helps is taking all the load and freeing up a great amount of space on the main PC. Therefore, this is not perfect not just for your data but also for your computer.
How To Setup Media Server At Home?
After having a look and learning about the major benefits of the media server at home, let us learn about how to setup media server at home. Here is how you can setup media server at home with the easy and quick steps in short:
- You need to buy a NAS or set up a computer dedicated to the media server.
- Install any hard drive to save all your media files on the media server.
- With the help of an ethernet cable connect it to the media server.
- Now you can transfer every media file you wish to move to the media server and also install any applications if you want with the server.
- Finally, you can now use your media server as a streaming service, backup storage solution, and many other functions etc.
Let us have a detailed look over how to setup media server at home:
- Get a NAS media enclosure or setup your computer as a media server
You can do either of these things depending on your budget or whether or not you are tech-savvy and how much work you want to get done. If you use NAS as the media server then it should have a decent processor and a high memory. It has its pros and cons. If you are using the computer as the media server then make sure you don’t boggle your everyday tasks and come with a ton of flexibility.
- Getting a hard drive
The NAS enclosures and computers use a 3.5-inch internal hard disk. Two raid configurations apply to the NAS media server that uses the same hard disk.
- Set up the connection and collect your media
Once you are done with the hard drive, then connect the media server with the ethernet cable and start with setup. Install applications that you want on your media server. You can even set up a dedicated server system to run the server.
This is how you can set up a media server 24/7 at your home and store your essential data in it. The only thing where you need to make the decision is whether you want to convert the computer into the media server or do you need a plex server.
Latest Articles