External HD as a Server? Bum-Cased Server?

[kurushio95]

i recently had the thought of running a server from an external hard drive. would that be possible? i.e., loading windows onto the HD, loading my programs and the like. possible?

also, i saw on Attack of the Show a while back (when it was still The Screen Savers) where they had a server so small they ran a website out of someone's bum. anyone know what that's called?

 

[-Job-]

Are you talking about running a server exclusively from a HD (without a processor or network card) or loading the server OS from an external drive into a machine? The first one is clearly not possible.

 

[kdinser]

I've seen chips for sale with 10 megs of flash ram that could function as web servers if installed on a board with a network connector. I think they ran a version of linux. I have a friend that tried to hook one up in his house connected to a USB 300 GB drive to save the power needed to run a whole computer, I don't know if he ever got it working. (note to self, call Adam this weekend).

 

[-Job-]

Pretty much any machine with a processor, memory and network interface can be a web server. If you have a portable device with these capabilities, as long as you can reach it through the network, you can have it serve web pages.

 

[kurushio95]

i was going to use it to run a dedicated Teamspeak and game server