It's not much of the hard drive strain. (even though if you're hosting a popular 24/7 serve you're going to want to keep maybe a gig or two just for player data), You're mostly wanting to go for ram , core processors, and make sure you try not to play the game on the same computer the server is running on. I reccomend 512mb ram for a player each, some faster no-lag servers use ` gig though.(unless you're a person who worries and stares at your computer alll day setting paths and compressing and all that annoying stuff.) Also, I'd reccomend atleast hosting from a quad-core processor. i5 very much reccomended, but not needed. No triple-core, dual-core, and definatly not single-core. You don't need to have a quad-core proccessor, but it is reccomended if it's going to be up for awhile or something and such and other such. And as for hosting from your laptop, it would strain the computer alot. Also connecting through the router and port-fowarding just really pisses me off.
