Ultimate Home server Part 2 – Operating System + Remote Access
Posted inBlog How-To Linux

Ultimate Home server Part 2 – Operating System + Remote Access

In Part 1 of this guide I showed you one way to put together a home server using off-the-shelf PC hardware.

In this part I’m going to discuss the various options for operating systems before making a recommendation and then taking you through the installation.

Because most home servers will operate “headless” (with no monitor or input devices attached) I’ll also take you through the process of accessing your server from another device on your network so that you can make changes to it.

Ultimate Home Server Part 3 – RAID Arrays
Posted inBlog How-To Linux

Ultimate Home Server Part 3 – RAID Arrays

Setting up a RAID array is an important step in setting up any home server. Doing so will ensure that your data is protected if one (or more, in some circumstances) of your hard disks fails.

What’s more there are usually some performance benefits to a RAID setup as data can be sourced from multiple drives, effectively increasing performance beyond that of a single drives normal read speed.

Ultimate Home Server Part 1 – Hardware
Posted inBlog How-To Linux

Ultimate Home Server Part 1 – Hardware

Many modern homes could benefit from having some sort of personal server to house files and run things like a media server, private cloud, IP CCTV or download server.

For a long time I would have suggested using a pre-built NAS system from the likes of Synology. I reviewed an awful lot of their devices on the old Tech Made Easy site and I still think they make some of the best NAS devices on the market.

Review: RaspyPlay4 Board
Posted inBlog How-To Raspberry Pi

Review: RaspyPlay4 Board

I am a huge, huge lover of the Raspberry Pi platform and have used them all over the house for years now, but even I would have to admit that the built in audio capabilities are pretty dire.

That’s not really surprising, the Raspberry Pi was designed as an educational tool, it just happens to have been taken on by the hacking/modding community.

Why Your Home WiFi Sucks
Posted inBlog How-To

Why Your Home WiFi Sucks

WiFi has achieved the status of being pretty much ubiquitous with modern life.  Yet you only have to go back a few years and the majority of devices used in the home still had a wired network connection to transmit and receive data.  Unfortunately the truth about WiFi is that it simply can’t offer the performance, range and reliability of a wired network, and there are plenty of reasons why.  Here are a few of them.

Why Your Commercial VPN Solution Sucks For Streaming Video
Posted inBlog How-To

Why Your Commercial VPN Solution Sucks For Streaming Video

A Virtual Private Network is a great tool that was originally developed to allow remote workers to access their employers IT systems as if they were sitting in their office.  The idea is that through some clever trickery your PC actually appears, for all intents and purposes, to be connected to your office network directly even though you could be literally anywhere else in the world.

Posted inBlog How-To Mac

Why All of The Photos on Your iPhone Don’t Show up on Your PC or Mac

Damn you Apple and your voodoo magic!

So a friend of my wife asked me why the 13,000 or so photos on her iPhone 5S didn’t all show up when she connected her phone to her computer.  In looking into the problem I actually found I suffered from a similar issue; my phone says that I have 505 photos stored but when I connect it to my PC and try and transfer them over only about 35 photos were showing in the Photos app on my Mac.

After a bit of a search online I found some forum posts that described this actual problem and it turns out there are two seperate issues that can cause this.