Whats the best Media Center setup for a lot of data?

January 8, 2009 5:14 PM

Whats the best Media Center setup for a lot of data?

I have music (mp3, wav); videos (divx, wmv, mp4, mkv, etc); photos that I would like to aggregate into one place: a vista media center. A major chunk of data will be in the form of unedited hd videos downloaded from a sony hdr camera. I have a home theatre with components and networking stored in a closet. I have a couple other locations (on my network) that I possibly would like to serve the content to around my house (which could be done using extenders like xboxs or dlink/netgear extenders).

I am looking for a storage capacity of around 5-8 TB

I have thought about a few setups:

1. Use a frontend computer like a dell studio hybrid (via hdmi) to connect to my main home theatre screen. Storage would come in the form of a RAID WHS (windows home server). I dont know how to configure RAID or the WHS so I would have to be very motivated to take this route (unless there is an out of the box solution). This is probably the cheapest option I think.

2. Use a frontend computer like a dell studio hybrid (via hdmi) to connect to my main home theatre screen. Storage would come in the form of a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+. The largest version they have is $2400 and will only give me 3tb of storage after RAID. I would need 2 of them.

3. Use a top of line XPS studio desktop loaded with a 2 tb without RAID (configured one for $2100) and have storage in the form of Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ (once again though I would be spending $4800 for 6tb of storage capacity).

I would also like backing up the 5-8tb of data to something (I was thinking mozy unlimited at $6/mo but thought it might be slow to transfer all that data). Are there any other options?

Which option 1, 2, 3, or something I havent thought about would be the best option?

posted by schindyguy to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Have you considered a PS3 as the system to connect to your home theatre? It can act as a wireless media server, streaming files directly from your PC or your NAS. it'd be cheaper than a Vista system and lets you play Blurays and upscales your DVDs as well. Plus you can play games on it as an added bonus.
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:01 PM on January 8

Not your main point, but about mozy.
I love it, but:
My initial 150Gb upload took 7 weeks
seven freaking weeks

Goodness know how long 6TB would take (ok I can work it out ... 5 years 4 months v. approx)

Past performance may not be an indicator of ... etc etc.
posted by Xhris at 6:40 PM on January 8

The cheapest solution to your problem would probably be to build your own RAID server to use in option #1.

The key parts (with Newegg links):
$349.99 A chassis that has enough drive bays
$519.99 RAID controller
$799.94 6 x 1.5TB disk drives
~$300 Processor, memory, graphics card, and ATX motherboard with PCI Express, gigabit ethernet (specifics not really that important).

Total: $1969.92.

That's the bare bones hardware you need to build a 7.5TB RAID 5 server, with two drive bays open to allow you to add another couple 1.5TB drives. You can find cheaper 8-port RAID cards, but I like 3ware because of the company's stellar customer service and history of care taken to ensure that upgrading arrays or cards is easy (or even possible). I left only $300 for the motherboard, RAM, CPU, and graphics because none of those things need to be particularly top-end to push files over a network. Windows Home Server is another $170.
posted by strangecargo at 4:02 AM on January 9 [1 favorite has favorites]

XP Pro may be sufficient for a server OS as well, or even Ubuntu (if there is driver support for the RAID card).

Is Windows Home Server compatible with all the hardware that XP is?
posted by ijoyner at 8:19 AM on January 9

Seconding strangecargo.
Only change I would make would be to ditch the raid controller and use software raid (either with slackware or your choice of linux).

Rebuilding a raid array when the controller has failed may not always work if you don't have another one of the exact same make/model of controller.
posted by Arthur Dent at 9:19 AM on January 9

You can get more storage than 3TB from a consumer NAS. The ReadyNAS Pro, for instance, accepts 6 SATA drives. You can buy 1.5 TB drives. The capacity with RAID 5 is (6-1) * 1.5, or 7.5 TB. I don't know if you can buy a ReadyNAS Pro barebones, but you can probably find another 6-drive NAS that is.

It sounds like you could use more drives than 6 though. Take a look at Promise's Vtrak line of direct attached storage devices. They sell a variety of 8, 12, and 15-disk models. The Vtrak's all accept SATA disks but connect to the host system in different ways. When interpreting their product names, p=scsi, f=fibre, i=iscsi, s=sas. Here are the models that connect with SCSI or iSCSI, these connect with SAS or FC
posted by PueExMachina at 11:51 AM on January 9

If my math is right, assuming you have a consistent 1 megabit a second upload speed to a backup provider like Mozy uploading 8 terabytes would take a little over 2 years. I'm sure either your ISP or backup provider would terminate your account long before this completed.
posted by PueExMachina at 11:57 AM on January 9

So I think my setup is going to be this:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/yYhNfeONJsAPYtcnIHQ2kQ?authkey=6ctDVXlU7Eg&feat=directlink


The only thing i dont know about is if I can use those Sans Digital 5 bay enclosures without RAID (so they act just like external usb drives)? In the diagram they are in the bottom right corner. Ive never done RAID before and I know that there is software that should make setting it up easy, but Im not sure I should take the plunge. And because I am going to be backing up a mirror image of the drive every week, whats the point of RAID anyway?
posted by schindyguy at 2:43 PM on January 14