How to Turn Old Computers Into a Home Data Center

Old computers have some problems. They may not meet your current needs or have become generally obsolete. Yet, it does not mean they are without their uses. I had always wondered how to turn old computers into a home data center. From terminals to cup holders, old computers have their uses, in their current form or another.

Remote Desktop Connections

The first method about how to turn old computers into a home data center is to set up remote desktop connections. This is one of my favorite uses for old computer hardware. With little effort, you can turn your computer into a small server. Better yet, make it accessible by another device. This will allow you to leverage the power of your old machine without using the resources of your current device. You may be asking why you would ever want to do this. The answer is quite simple, legacy and incompatible software.

For example, you splurged and bought a brand new MacBook after using a Windows PC for years. You are happy with your decision, but realize that the programs you had bought before are not compatible. You have only a couple of options. The first is buying a compatible version of the software. The other option is to use your PC’s resources to emulate Windows in a virtual machine. The former option could cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. The later could slow your laptop down to a crawl due to the heft of running two full operating systems. This is where turning the old PC into a terminal comes in.

It is quite easy to install remote desktop software. By connecting the old PC to the internet, you can use a remote desktop client on your new computer to access the old PC. This allow you to offload system demand from your current PC onto the old. It allows you to operate off-site as long as you have the internet. Even better, you can now use a tablet to access and use the more powerful device. This allows you to take the full power of a PC or Mac wherever you go in smaller and smaller packages.

Media Servers

The second method about how to turn old computers into a home data center is to turn them into media servers. Setting up a media server is more advanced, but incredibly useful. Converting an old computer into a media server yields many benefits. First, you can have your own dedicated cloud backup system. This lets you worry less about your precious photos and videos. Furthermore, you can have your own organized media library. A program called Plex allows you to easily organize TV shows and movies in a neat Netflix like interface. Furthermore, you can stream the media either locally or over the internet to your devices. The best part is it will also pull down the posters and descriptions of the media from the internet. All these factors allow for a clean viewing experience. But that’s not all you can do with a media server. If you read comics and magazines there are programs for that as well. By making your own server, you are in control of an ever expandable system which you can make meet your needs.

All these tasks don’t need much processing power and can leverage over a decade old hardware. Yet, if the hardware is too old, installing a lightweight distribution of Linux would be best. Linux will help protect your files from viruses. Linux as an operating system uses a different base architecture than Windows. Thus, virus makers don’t make compatible viruses as often. Also, Linux uses less of your computer’s resources. This makes it great for older machines with dated hardware. Overall, a media server opens many different possible use cases.

Scrap Parts?

Yes, the computer can be junk enough that it is not worth the time and effort to do either of the above options. It comes down to the hardware being so underpowered and obsolete that it is not capable of what you want. Sometimes even the most lightweight of Linux operating systems can’t work well. At this point, you could throw it away or you could have a little fun and make a little money.

Old PC cases are in high demand in the custom PC building space. Many users love the idea of sleeper builds. These are builds where the computer appears to be old and useless. Yet, when you open it up, it is an overbuilt modern-day behemoth. Your PC could also be in high demand. There are many old PCs which are collectibles. Some people pay good money on auction sites like eBay for vintage technology. If everything else fails, then the ram in the PC is worth trying to sell. Computer ram contains a bit of gold, which is always in demand. This is in part why ram prices have increased over the years.

Is it Worth the Effort?

Whether you would have any use for old computers depends on your personal preferences and necessary use cases. In no way are the above all the potential things you can do with old hardware, but they are some of our favorites.