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

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

schindyguy — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:14:17 -0800

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?

By: Effigy2000

Effigy2000 — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:01:18 -0800

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.

By: Xhris

Xhris — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:40:49 -0800

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.

By: strangecargo

strangecargo — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:02:41 -0800

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.

By: ijoyner

ijoyner — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:19:00 -0800

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?

By: Arthur Dent

Arthur Dent — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:19:37 -0800

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.

By: PueExMachina

PueExMachina — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:51:41 -0800

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

By: PueExMachina

PueExMachina — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:57:28 -0800

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.

By: schindyguy

schindyguy — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:43:43 -0800

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?