Tag: Saved for Later

So maybe your workspace isn’t a cluttered mess, but maybe it just isn’t the haven of productivity you wish it was. If you’re looking to upgrade from your modest laptop on a desk to something more impressive, here are 10 cheap DIY upgrades to make it a battlestation worthy of your time.

Note that you don’t need to follow all these projects to the letter. As with all DIY projects, think of them as inspiration—they may not work in your space the way someone else did them, or you may find a cheaper way to do the same thing (like getting supplies at Home Depot instead of IKEA).

10. Build a Better Desk

If the kitchen table just isn’t cutting it anymore, it might be time to get a real desk. But don’t go rushing out to the store to spend hundreds of dollars—you can save some money by building your own, not to mention craft one that fits in your space perfectly. For example, you can make a pretty awesome, large desk out of an old door. Perhaps you want to build yourself a standing desk so you aren’t sitting down all day. If you want to be really cheap, you can even build one out of wooden pallets. Or, if you’re old school, you can obviously build a custom one from scratch. Photo by verseguru.

9. Add a Whiteboard or Chalkboard to Your Workspace

A simple whiteboard can be a big boon for productivity, so while you’re building that desk, why not build in a space for scratchwork? Heck, you can even make your entire desk dry-erase friendly, so you can use whatever space you have at the ready. If you’re more of a chalkboard fan, you can add a chalkboard surface too, but the whiteboard is probably an easier, less messy way to go.

8. Raise Your Monitors to Eye Level

Staring down at your laptop or computer monitor is bad ergonomics, and if you’re sitting at that desk all day, you’re going to feel it. Instead of going out and buying an expensive monitor stand, though, just build your own—you can make one insanely cheaply with just a wooden shelf and some door stops or furniture legs. If you want more of a floating stand for a multiple-monitor setup, we’ve got options for that too. And if you’re using a laptop, one of these stands should fit the bill nicely.

7. Manage Your Cables

Getting cables under control is one of those things we’d all like to do, but never really get around to it. Well, there’s no better time than now—and it doesn’t have to cost you much. The IKEA Signum tray is a great option at only $10, but if you prefer something that hides your cables away a bit more—and requires a bit more work—store those cables in a rain gutter behind your desk. And, if you’re a laptop user, keep those cables from falling off your desk with a few binder clips. See the video above for a few of these tricks in action.

6. Add Some Power or USB Outlets to Your Desk

Occasionally, you’ll need quick access to power at your desk for something that isn’t already hooked into your (now hidden) cable management. What then? Well, you can build a few outlets into your desk, whether it’s in the form of this fancy USB hub, or a power outlet box you can move around as you need it. It’s a great way to give your phone or camera a quick charge at your desk, without creating another permanent mess of cables.

5. Give Your Webacam or Microphone a Movable Stand

If
you regularly use your webcam and/or microphone, having them in one static position isn’t ideal. So, for something a bit more versatile, grab a flexible desk lamp—like this cheap one from IKEA—and convert it into a movable stand for your webcam, microphone,
or whatever else you need. That way you can have it front and center when you need it, move it around, and get it out of the way when it isn’t being used.

4. Raise Your Speakers to Ear Level

The best way to improve your speakers—without buying a new pair, of course—is to raise them up to ear level. Not only will the music sound better, but you’ll gain a little bit of space back on your desk. Luckily, speaker stands are pretty easy to make, whether they’re floor-standing models for big speakers, on-desk models for studio monitors, or smaller ones for on-your-desk speakers. If you’re more of a headphone junkie, you can make a cheap, simple hanger out of a desk leg or one of these foldable hooks from IKEA.

3. Add Some Extra Storage

You may not use as much paper as you used to, but a good workspace still needs some storage—especially after you start running out of space on your desk! A good letter tray can give you some much-needed storage, and doubles as a stand for your laptop or other tech. Alternatively, if your desk doesn’t have drawers, build some makeshift storage under the desk for quick access.

2. Hang Your Hardware

All that technology can add up fast, especially when you include things like routers, modems, power bricks, and other heavy things. Remember the cardinal rule of space-saving: build vertically. If you need somewhere to store all that hardware, try hanging it on the wall with a few hooks, or—if you have a lot—with a pegboard organizer. You can put it on the wall or behind your desk, if you have the room, so it stays out of sight.

1. Build a Real Office Anywhere

So you’re all excited to build yourself a kick-butt workspace, but you don’t exactly have an extra room in the house for your battlestation. Fret not: you can build an office just about anywhere, even if it’s in a closet, tiny nook, or that shed out back. Heck, even a garage can work (if you have somewhere else to put the cars, of course). With a little outside-the-box thinking, you can get a real workspace just about anywhere you want, even if you aren’t living in a multi-room mansion.

via Lifehacker
Top 10 DIY Office Upgrades

Here it is. Mike Judge’s long-awaited and irreverent take on the tech scene in Silicon Valley — creatively titled Silicon Valley — debuts April 6 on HBO. And we’ve got your first look at the show’s trailer, which debuts on the premium cable channel this weekend.
via TechCrunch
Here’s A First Look At Mike Judge’s Hilarious Take On Silicon Valley

Adding a solid-state drive (SSD) to your computer is simply the best upgrade at your disposal, capable of speeding up your computer in ways you hadn’t thought possible. But as with any new technology, there’s plenty to learn. Here’s everything you should know about your SSD, whether you’re interested in upgrading or just like to know the ins and outs of your hardware.

Blast from the past
is a new weekly feature at Lifehacker, in which we revive old, but still relevant, posts for your reading and hacking pleasure. This week, we’re updating our complete guide to solid-state drives, making it easier than ever to find everything you need to know about the best upgrade you can make.

What Is a Solid-State Drive (SSD)?

A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device for your computer. In everyday use, it provides the same functionality as a traditional hard disk drive (HDD)—the standard for computer storage for many years. In fact, you wouldn’t even know whether you’re using an SSD or HDD if it wasn’t for the differences in how they operate. HDDs store their data on spinning metal platters, and whenever your computer wants to access some of that data a little needle-like component (called the "head") moves to the data’s position and provides it to the computer. Writing data to a HDD works in a similar fashion, where parts are constantly moving. SSDs, on the other hand, don’t move at all. They store their data in blocks. When the computer wants some of that data, the SSD just says "okay, here it is." This is a simplified explanation, of course, but you might have noticed that the SSD’s process seems a bit more direct and efficient. It is, and speed is the primary advantage of an SSD over a traditional HDD. This makes an SSD the single best upgrade for your computer if you’re looking for a way to make it operate faster.

A new SSD can speed up your computer in several ways:

• Boot times will be significantly reduced.
• Launching applications will occur in a near-instant.
• Saving and opening documents won’t lag.
• File copying and duplication speeds will improve.
• Overall, your system will feel much snappier.

SSDs have their downsides, however. For starters, an SSD won’t hold as much data per dollar as an HDD. For the same $100, you could buy either a 120GB SSD or a 2TB HDD. That means you’re paying around 83 cents for every gigabyte on an SSD versus five cents for every gigabyte on your HDD. That’s a huge difference in cost, and the gap only grows as you compare larger drives. Luckily, it’s not an all or nothing proposition. In the days of cloud storage and streaming media, SSDs provide plenty of space for most people. For those who need more storage than is affordable with an SSD, SSDs and HDDs can coexist on the same system (and we’ll discuss those in depth a bit later), so you can enjoy the speed benefits of an SSD without sacrificing on storage.

In this post, we’re going to walk you through everything you need to know about getting started with your first solid-state drive, from buying the one that suits you best to getting it set up and running most efficiently in your computer. We’ll even take a look at a few advanced techniques for those of you who are ready to do even more with your super-fast storage device.

How to Choose the Right SSD

Choosing the right solid-state drive for you isn’t difficult, but the process can be a little overwhelming with so many brands available. In this section, we’ll show you what you want to look for when choosing a drive and offer up a few recommendations that have worked well for us.

All SSDs are fast, and will feel like a great upgrade from a HDD, but when you’re spending significantly more money on a drive that provides less storage you want it to be one of the best. You also want a reliably piece of hardware, and these are both fairly hard to gauge if you have little experience with the technology. Here are the qualities you want to look for in an SSD when you’re shopping around:

• High maximum speeds: Max read speeds are around 400MB/second, and max write speeds are around 300MB/sec (note: that’s megabytes per second). These numbers do not have to be exact. A little faster or slower won’t make a significant difference.
• Good real-world speeds: The SSD manufacturers generally will not provide real-world read and write speeds, as they’re guaranteed to be slower than the maximums. Fortunately, many online reviews contain speed test results. On Amazon, you can often find users who’ve posted screenshots of their test results (here’s an example). Seeing this data can often be discouraging because the real-world rates are quite a bit lower. If the test results reveal read and write speeds of about 2/3 of the maximum (in the sequential and 512KB block tests) you’re good to go. If you apply this to our maximum speeds above, that comes out to read speeds of about 265MB/sec and write speeds of about 200MB/sec. If you want to figure out if a more expensive SSD is worth the money, its real-world test speeds will be higher than 2/3 of its reported maximum capabilities.
• Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash memory: When shopping for SSDs, you’ll run into two kind of memory: multi-level cell (MLC) and single-level cell (SLC). The primary difference is that MLC memory can store more information on each cell. The advantage here is that it is cheaper to produce, and SLC is often cost-prohibitive for the average consumer. The downside is a higher rate of error, but an SSD with error-correcting code (we’ll discuss this momentarily) can help prevent these problems. (You can read more about MLC here.)
• SATA III Support: Most SSDs use the Serial ATA (SATA) interface, but not all use the latest version and this can limit the performance of your SSD. This is because SATA I can transfer data at 1.5 Gbps, SATA II at 3.0 Gbps, and SATA III at 6 Gbps. To ensure your SSD has enough bandwidth to transfer data as quickly as possible, you want it to be compatible with SATA III. You’ll also want to make sure your computer is SATA III compatible as well. If not, SATA III-capable drives will still work as all versions of SATA are backwards-compatible. Just know that you may not get the most out of your SSD if your computer doesn’t support the most recent SATA specification.
• ECC memory: Error-correcting code (ECC) memory does what the name implies: it provides your SSD with the ability to detect and correct common types of data corruption so you don’t end up with unusable data on your drive. An SSD with ECC memory is more reliable. (You can read more about ECC memory here.)
• A history of reliability: Reliability is a very hard thing to gauge, but there are a few tricks you can employ to get a good idea. First, look for an SSD that is made by a manufacturer who has been in the business for a while (I like OCZ and Crucial). The technology is fairly new, so you don’t want to go with just any company who has recently decided to jump on the solid-state bandwagon. Additionally, look at the rating each SSD receives in online shopping reviews. If it is rated a 3.5 out of 5.0 or higher, this is often points to a reliable drive. When the ratings are lower, you may want to look elsewhere. Even reliable companies make unreliable SSDs sometimes, so keep an eye on reviews to avoid buying a lemon.

Which SSDs meet these criteria? This changes over time, so we’re going to defer to our friends at the Wirecutter, who will keep their SSD buying guide up to date as things change. It’s not an end-all-be-all suggestion, so if you want to shop around and weigh your options, keeping the criteria mentioned in this section in mind will help you find a good, reliable drive.

How to Install Your SSD

Installing your SSD will be different depending on your computer, so we highly recommend looking up a guide for your specific model of laptop or desktop. That said, if you have a desktop, our guide on building a computer should at least steer you in the right direction.

More important is figuring out where all your data will go. Most HDD owners are accustomed to having at least 500GB of storage, if not upwards of 2TB. Downsizing to 120GB or 240GB—the most affordable and popular SSD sizes—can be a tough job. If you’re using a desktop, you can use your SSD for your operating system and another hard drive for your data. If you’re using a laptop, you can either try to fit everything on the SSD, or use an external drive for the data that won’t fit (like music and movies).

Once you’ve figured out a plan, it’s time to actually switch to the SSD. Here are your two options for doing so:

Option One: Start Fresh and Copy the Essentials

When upgrading to an SSD, the most obvious option is starting fresh with a new install of your operating system. While this might require a little more of your time, you’ll have everything configured perfectly when you’re done. Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Install your operating system of choice on the new SSD.
2. Copy the contents of your home folder from your previous HDD to your new SSD. If you can’t fit everything, start with the essential system files and settings, then migrate the media you have room for.
3. Go through the list of applications on your old HDD and install them on your new SSD. Run any updates, or save yourself some time by downloading the latest versions from their respective sources. Windows and Linux users can employ Ninite to get the latest versions of popular free software titles for their machines. OS X users can head to the Mac App Store to download the latest versions of their previous purchases.
4. Copy any important documents (or other files) you have room for on your SSD.
5. Put the old HDD in an external enclosure (like these), if you haven’t already, and keep it handy for a month or two. This will help you see what files you use often and which ones you don’t. If you find you’re using something often, copy it to the SSD. If not, leave it on the external HDD for occasional access.

Again, this method requires more work but also handles the task of cleaning up your system at the same time. It may be more tedious, but it is an efficient way to solve two problems at once.

Option Two: Migrate Your Data from Your Old Hard Drive

If you don’t want to start with a fresh installation of your operating system, you can always migrate your OS (and other data) to your new SSD. Chances are, however, that you’re not going to be able to fit everything. That means you’re going to have to start deleting files on your main drive until it is small enough to fit on your SSD. Because you don’t want to lose that data forever, start by making a backup of your drive. Once you have a complete backup, you’re ready to get started.

Windows users can follow our SSD migration guide for the complete instructions. It comes across as a complex process, but shouldn’t take too much time. You also won’t have to reinstall Windows. Mac users can follow our MacBook SSD installation guide. While the guide focuses on installing an SSD in a MacBook Pro’s optical disc drive bay, if you skip to the second half you’ll find instructions on performing a data migration as well.

If You Don’t Have a Second Hard Drive: Use an External Drive and the Cloud to Combat Storage Constraints

Regardless of the size of your SSD, it’s never going to beat the storage capacity of a HDD. If you don’t have a secondary hard drive installed in your computer, you’re going to need to store your excess data elsewhere. An external HDD and the cloud are two of the best ways to get around the storage limitations of your SSD.

Unless you have enormous collections, an SSD with a 240GB (or higher) capacity should be able house your operating system, documents, music, and photos without issue. It’s when you get into the business of music creation, video editing, professional photography, and other work that produces large files will you regularly run into a storage ceiling. An external drive is often the easiest solution, so you’ll want to pick up one with a large-enough capacity to suit your needs. If you’re looking for a portable drive, the Seagate GoFlex series is worth a look as it not only works with USB 3.0, but can be connected to other ports like Firewire 800 and Thunderbolt by way of adapter. This also provides you with some assurance of compatibility with future technology.

When an external drive won’t do the trick, and you really need to downsize your space-hungry media collection, the cloud can come to the rescue. Most of the best solutions come from Google because they’re both simple and free. Google Play Music allows you to upload your entire audio collection, and doing so will allow you to delete any songs you rarely listen to (or at least move them to an archival hard drive) while still maintaining direct access to them from anywhere you have an internet connection. Picasa can do the same thing for your photos. (Personally, I prefer Flickr, but it isn’t free.) When it comes to other data, you have plenty of options. Google Drive is great for various files, Simplenote for text, and Evernote for rich text and PDFs. It doesn’t matter so much which services you use, but rather that you start making regular use of the cloud if you have heavy data needs that can’t be adequately served by an external or secondary internal drive.

Optimize Your SSD for Optimal Performance

For the most part, there isn’t much you have to do to optimize your SSD. It’s already really fast and should do it’s job without any adjustment. That said, you can achieve better performance and longevity with a few adjustments.

Enable TRIM

The very first thing you should do after installing and setting up your SSD is enable TRIM. What is TRIM, exactly? Wikipedia offers a concise explanation:

TRIM is a command [that] allows an operating system to inform a solid-state drive (SSD) which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally.

Basically, it prevents your SSD from being overused. Just like any component, SSDs have limited lifespans. TRIM helps keep your solid-state disk alive a bit longer, so you want to have it enabled if your drive supports it. Here are instructions on how to find out and enable TRIM in Windows and OS X.

Don’t Defragment Your SSD

When data is stored on a drive, it often ends up in various parts that aren’t all in the same place. This is called data fragmentation. It slows down HDDs because the drive’s head needs to move from place to place to read all the little bits of information. This can be fixed using a process called defragmentation, which is built into recent versions of Windows (7 and higher) and OS X. Because the location of data on an SSD is pretty much irrelevant, as it can quickly access any of it regardless of where it is, defragging a SSD is not only unnecessary but bad for the drive as well. SSDs have a limited lifespan that’s determined by how much they’re used. While most will last as long as you’d ever need, defragmenting the disk involves reading and writing data unnecessarily and those actions will shorten your SSD’s lifespan. OS X and Windows should know when you’re using an SSD and turn off defragmenation automatically. That said, it’s important to remember not to defragment your solid-state drive. It provides no real benefit and can shorten its life.

For more tricks on getting the most from your SSD, check out our guide to taking full advantage of its speed. Now that you have an SSD, certain things—like Hibernation—are much faster than they once were, and are really worth using.

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You should now be well on your way to a better, faster computer with your solid-state drive. Most of us here at Lifehacker have been enjoying
the benefits of SSDs for a few years now and can’t imagine going back to a traditional hard drive. Despite the limitations and the cost, they’re one of the best investments you can make. We hope you enjoy your
SSD as much as we’re enjoying ours!

Photos by Z-River (Shutterstock), Friedrichan (Shutterstock), and Amazon.

via Lifehacker
The Complete Guide to Solid-State Drives

Christians have taken different approaches to Genesis throughout history.

via Ars Technica
How did we get here? A brief history of the evolution vs. creationism debate

The well-publicized debate at the Creation Museum was not about two minds sparring.

via Ars Technica
Ham on Nye: The high cost of “winning” an evolution/creation debate

iPhoto and iCloud, despite being the default photo application and accompanying syncing service that much of the Apple universe uses regularly, are actually kind of awful. iPhoto is slow and bulky. iCloud is limited, and more expensive than many competitors’ cloud storage services when you need to upgrade. And yet, we’re stuck with them…or are we? Fortunately, there are few applications from independent developers that can either improve Apple’s out-of-the-box experience by filling in the gaps its software overlooks, or lets you bypass using Apple’s products altogether. You may think that having so many one-off solutions for iPhoto highlights the problems with Apple’s own software. Or you can instead believe that these kinds of augmentations and improvements are the benefits of the wide-reaching app ecosystem Apple has enabled. It depends on if you’re a “glass half empty/glass half full” person, I suppose. This is not a comprehensive list, to be clear. It’s just a few tools I’ve found to help me survive which you might like, too. Obviously, there are plenty of cloud storage services you can use to workaround having to use iPhoto + iCloud (think Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, Amazon Cloud Drive, etc.). But these apps below are crafted with photos, not just files, in mind. Loom (10 GB free / pricing varies after) We’ve covered Loom here before on TechCrunch, and like many of the apps I turn to, the best thing about Loom is its simplicity. The service, available for Mac, iOS and web, is the Apple Photo Stream you should have had. The Mac app connects with iPhoto on your desktop or any folders you specify, while the iOS app will upload your photos and videos to the cloud. (Not iCloud, Loom’s cloud.) From there, you have an infinite “Camera Roll” of sorts where you can perform some basic organization and sharing, if you choose. Apple’s Photo Stream, for comparison, only displays your last 1,000 photos. With Apple’s service, if you want to keep your photos saved forever, you have to back them up yourself using iPhoto or iCloud storage when syncing your devices, or use some other manual backup method. After your photos are uploaded to Loom, you can also save space on your mobile device by clearing out your Camera Roll. Though Loom will display all your photos, it doesn’t actually cache your entire collection on your iPhone or iPad. And for those it does cache
via TechCrunch
Four Handy Tools To Workaround – Or Ditch! – Apple’s iPhoto

Just a brief interim report of cameras clogging the queue at Chez TOP: I failed to return the Panasonic GX7 in time, so I bought it [unsmiley face]. I guess that means I was intended by the Fates and their…
via The Online Photographer
The Little Olympus That Could

If you have an old computer with some life left in it, or you’re building a do-it-all home server that can store your backups, music, movies, and everything else you need backed up and secure, Amahi is the perfect utility for the job. Amahi can turn any PC into an at-home VPN, a NAS for all of your files, and more. Here’s how.

What Is Amahi?

Amahi is free, open-source home server software that’s based on Fedora Linux. It’s flexible and customizable, easy to install, and has tons of plug-ins, extensions, and other add-on software that can extend its features to suit your needs. If you need media streaming to your mobile devices, Amahi can do that. If you’re just looking for a simple file server or want to pool a bunch of hard drives into a NAS, Amahi can do that too. If you want a VPN you can use to securely connect to your home network while you’re away, Amahi has you covered there too. You can read more about its features here, or take a quick product tour here.

We mentioned Amahi a long time ago, but it’s grown a lot since then, and is even easier to install than it used to be. It takes moments to get up and running, and while some of the configuration can be tricky, once it’s working, it pretty much takes care of itself, and you’ll never really need to log in to the server itself—everything can be managed from its dashboard, which you can log in to from any other computer on your network.

We’ve shown you some other great uses for an old PC, like using FreeNAS 8 to build a home NAS or using Ubuntu to build a fully-featured home server, and Amahi takes a similar approach. If you’re an advanced user looking to set up the perfect NAS, and you need tons of drive configuration and access options, FreeNAS is the way to go. If you want your home server to do lots of things, like serve as a VPN, a media server, a web server, and so on, Amahi is a better option—not just because it’s easier to install, but because it supports plug-ins that do all of those things (and we’ll highlight some of them later.)

What You’ll Need to Get Started

Before we begin, you’ll need a few basics:

• A computer that meets the minimum system requirements. Any system with relatively modern components should work.
• The Amahi installation media, which you can download here.
• An Amahi install code, which you get by signing up for an account at Amahi.org. The install code is the key that will link your Amahi sever (called an HDA) to Amahi’s own centralized web services. It’s also the key to generating your dynamic hostname (so you can connect to your server even if your ISP changes your home IP address) and the feature that makes Amahi’s one-click plug-in installs (more on that later) work.

When you sign up for an Amahi account, the control panel will ask you for the IP address of your Amahi server on your home network (usually 192.168.x.x). It’s a little odd, since you haven’t even installed it yet, but don’t worry about it. Choose something high on your home network that’s not used by another device, and write it down. If you already know the IP address of the computer you want to install Amahi on, use that. Just keep in mind that it’s associated with your install code, and you can’t change your install code. If there’s an error here and you have to change IP addresses or install codes, you may have to reinstall Amahi.

In this guide, I’m using the Amahi Express installer, which is designed for clean installs—it’ll wipe your drives before installing itself. If you want to keep your data intact or install on a partition, you can use the advanced install options below, or disconnect the drives with data that you want to preserve and add them back to the system later once Amahi is up and running.

How to Install Amahi

Installing Amahi is pretty easy. Here’s how to do it:

1. Download the ISO from the link above, then burn it to a DVD or drop it onto a USB flash drive.
2. Boot from the CD or the flash drive to start the install.
3. You’ll be asked to select your time zone, language, and check off a few other system requirements (this is where you can select some of the advanced setup options if you need to, but we left everything at its defaults.
4. Click to install, and you’re off and away. While Amahi is installing, you can set a root password for the system, and create a user with permissions to log in to the system when the installation is complete. Go ahead and set these up while the install is running in the background.
5. When the installation is finished, you’ll be prompted for your Amahi Install Code, which will bind your installation to your Amahi account on the web. The software will connect to the internet in the background to do this, and once it’s verified, you’ll be prompted to reboot.
6. Once you’ve rebooted, you’ll be presented with a console login screen. Don’t do anything here. Amahi will continue to configuring itself in the background and reboot itself. When it comes back up, you’re all finished.

You can log directly into the console using the username and password you set up earlier, but you’ll be dropped at a command line. Instead, access your Amahi server from any other computer on your network by opening a web browser and going to http://hda/. That should take you to a welcome screen where you can set up your user account. Once it’s created, you’ll land at the Amahi Dashboard. Going forward, this is how you’ll access your Amahi server—you should only have to log in to the console for troubleshooting and any system tweaking you need to do.

Once you’re logged in, you’ll be dropped at the Users tab on the Dashboard. Here, you can add any additional users who’ll need to log in to the server, or access any of the shared files or applications on your HDA. Here’s a video guide from the Amahi team on how to set up and manage user accounts:

Before we move on, head over to your Amahi control panel to make sure your server shows up there. You should also get an email congratulating you on a successful install, if everything went well and you typed in your install code correctly. The control panel is where you can get your install code if you ever need it again, and where you’ll find your Amahi server’s dynamic hostname—which you’ll need for remote access.

Set Up Your Shared Folders and Drives

From here, you can log in to the dashboard and start customizing your Amahi install. If you installed on a single drive, you don’t have to do anything else. If you have multiple drives, you’ll have to add shared folders to them, or move your existing shares to those drives. We’ll get to that in a moment. First, here’s a video from the Amahi team on setting up shared folders:

By default, Amahi creates a bunch of shared folders (books, movies, music, pictures, and so on) that are accessible to all users. Here’s how to get to them:

1. Click the Shares tab at the top of the dashboard. You should see a list of all of the available shared folders, including the ones Amahi created for you.
2. Click any of them reset their permissions, delete them entirely, or change who has access. By default, all shares are available to all users. To specify users, uncheck "All Users." A user list will appear, and you can select which Amahi users have read and write access to each folder.
3. To create a new share, scroll down to "Create a New Share." Give it a name, set it to visible, and wait for it to be created. When it’s finished, repeat the process above to specify which users have access to it, or leave it set to "All Users" to make it available to everyone.
4. For more granular controls, click the Settings tab at the top of the Dashboard page and enable "advanced settings." Afterward, go back to the Shares tab. You’ll see new options to specify which drive a shared folder is located on and tags for each share.

If you run into trouble, there are some useful video tutorials on the Amahi website to help you through the process of adding users and managing shares.

If you’re a bit more advanced and have multiple hard drives in your server, you might want to set up disk "pooling" so they look like one large volume. There are detailed instructions on how to do this on the Amahi wiki, and How-To Geek has a great writeup on the process here, too. It’s definitely for advanced users though, so we won’t get into it in this guide.

Three Cool Things You Can Do With Your New Amahi Server

Once you have your file and folder shares set up, the world is your oyster. We’re going to show you how to turn your Amahi server into a media streamer, a VPN server you can connect to when you’re away from home for secure browsing, or access your files on your phone or tablet. It all starts with the dozens of Amahi apps that you can download and install right from the dashboard.

Set Up a Personal VPN

One of the nice things about running your own Amahi server is that you can set it up to be your own personal VPN. Unlike some VPNs, which route your traffic through another country to hide your location or give you access to location-restricted content, this VPN will route your traffic back to your home network when you’re away. It won’t get you around location blocks, but it will keep you safe on public Wi-Fi and give you access to your files at home no matter where you are. You’ll be able to work from coffee shop or hotel Wi-Fi without worrying someone may be eavesdropping on your connection or stealing your data. Plus, you’ll always be connected to your home network, which means all of the data on your Amahi server or other home computers are available to you.

Amahi supports three VPN options out of the box: OpenVPN, Cisco’s IPSec VPN, and OpenVPN ALS. Since the apps are paid ($5, $5, and $4 respectively), you’ll have to load up your account with Amahi Credit before you can buy them. Once you have some credits on your account, just click the green button to install directly to your Amahi server. We should note that you don’t have to use the paid installers, they just make it super easy. You can always download the packages and install them yourself on your Amahi server, but the one-click installers are much less of a hassle.

In this case, we suggest OpenVPN. You won’t be restricted to a single VPN client to connect to your Amahi server, since you can use any OpenVPN-supported app for iOS, Android, Windows, OS X, or Linux to connect. All you’ll need is your server’s hostname (available in your Amahi control panel), and it’ll keep working even if your home IP address changes. If you choose to use the official OpenVPN client to connect, you can use their documentation to set everything up.

Stream Your Media Anywhere

There are several apps in the Amahi catalog to help you share music, movies, and photos with the world, or with your own devices. For example, Amahi fully supports Gallery2, one of our favorite ways to host and share your own photos online. There’s no one-click installer for it, so you’ll have to do the dirty work yourself, but it’s not that difficult to set up (there’s documentation to help). Once you do, you can use the Gallery mobile apps to view your photo galleries on your smartphone or tablet, or just visit them on the web.

If music and movies are more your style, $4 will get you a one-click install of Subsonic, one of our favorite media servers. Once it’s installed, you can access it from the Dashboard, add media and set up users, choose to stream your media over the internet or just locally on your home network, and make the whole thing web accessible so you don’t have to log in to the Dashboard.

Finally, $5 gets you a one-click install of Amahi DLNA Server, which turns your Amahi HDA into a home streaming powerhouse that any internet connected TV, Blu-ray player, Xbox, PlayStation, or A/V receiver on your network can talk to.

Roll Your Own Cloud Storage

If Amahi’s interface isn’t to your liking, or you just want an easier way to share, sync, and manage all of those files we set up earlier, you’ll be happy to hear that Amahi supports OwnCloud. The setup process is much like our own OwnCloud setup guide. There’s no one-click install this time, but once you have OwnCloud up and running, you can install the clients on your desktops and mobile devices, configure them to sync with your Amahi server, and never pay for or worry about space constraints on someone else’s cloud service again.

Plus, once it’s installed, you can leverage OwnCloud’s own dashboard and interface to share files with other people, sync your calendars and contacts, use it as a streaming music server, or extend it with OwnCloud’s own database of plug-ins and extensions.

Bonus: Access Everything On Your Amahi Server from Anywhere

If all you want is access to your Amahi HDA and all of its files and folders on the go, the Amahi iPhone and iPad apps will give you just that, for free. There’s no Android app just yet, although according to a tweet from the Amahi team in December, they’re beta testing it right now. Still, since most of Amahi’s features are available via the Dashboard, you may not even need a specific mobile app to get access to your files and folders. You can always log in as long as you have your dynamic hostname bookmarked. Once you’re logged in, click the "HDA" button at the top of the screen, or use the search bar to find what you’re looking for. You’ll see all of your shared files, folders, and media, and you can download or stream it to your mobile device.

We’ve really only scratched the surface here. Amahi also supports iCal or Outlook calendar sharing, browser-based file search, and more. The beauty of Amahi is that it’s so easy to get installed and running, and you can tweak it just the way you want it without installing a ton of cruft you don’t need. While it has its drawbacks, it’s worth a look if you’re thinking about building a do-it-all home server. This is about as fire-and-forget as building a home server gets.

Title image made using OZaiachin (Shutterstock).

via Lifehacker
Turn an Old PC Into a NAS, VPN, Media Streamer, and More with Amahi