Storage+Media home server for less than $300

Background

I have been researched and watched many NAS options to setup a home storage+media server during the past year, and so far there was no perfect answer, either lacking features/performance, or way too expensive… An Intel Celeron CPU + 1GB mem with a customized Linux (in other words: closed source )running Plex or something else, and the cost is like $400 (terrible hardware performance), or $800+/$1000+, way too expensive, examples:

I didn’t miss awesome Free NAS, but the hardware to run it costs $999, OMG…

The $2XX solution

I bought this just right Dell Poweredge T20 for $267, it has an Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz CPU, 4GB memory and 1TB hard drive, much more powerful than 90% NAS machines, and with 1TB drive built-in, which saves approximate another $50, i installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on it, so that it has tons of customizing ways and I can do all sorts of crazy things on it :) By installing the awesome Emby Media Server, my home thearter finished with last piece, all my movies/videos/photos got stored inside it, I configured it to be auto wake/sleep by adding the following line into crontab:

0 22 * * * rtcwake -m disk -s 39600

Dell Poweredge T20

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