Complete Computer Idiot looking for detailed advice/help how-to

[Kemccloskey]

So I was reading on Lifehacker about how you can turn an old Turn an Old Computer into a Networked Backup, Streaming, or Torrenting Machine with FreeNAS. The link is here, in case anyone is interested http://lifehacker.com/5822590/turn-...-streaming-or-torrenting-machine-with-freenas

My question is going to be simple, yet complex. I have an old laptop that I no longer need use. I have a PlayStation 3. I would love to be able to set up my laptop, using FreeNAS to be able to act as a backup and act as a Streaming/Torrents machine for my PlayStation 3. however, I am NOT a huge computer person. I can follow simple instructions, but I'm essentially a noob.

I would greatly appreciate it (and maybe trade professional services) if someone could really talk me through the ins & outs of setting up my systems like what was described in the Lifehacker article.

Thanks in advance.

 

[xbmcg]

I have just looked at the article. It is very straight forward - so what exactly do you not understand?

First of all, a notebook usually contains a single disk only. If you want to turn it in a freeNAS- you cannot use it for any other purposes, and
you will not benefit from any high-availability etc, because it requires at least 2 drives, the more the better.

Installing is easy. Burn a Boot-CD from the Image, drop it in you notebook, attach a USB stick and make it bootable (Bios Settings). Boot from CD and choose the USB drive as Target, freeNAS will install itself on that device. Reboot, connect to the Notebook using a web browser and format the harddisk / create the zpool and configure the desired services (Set up users, groups, permissions, set up file sharing / streaming / torrent). That's all.

By the way, there are a lot of youtube videos out there, where you can watch the set up step by step...