My HTPC/NAS Mass Media Storage Extravaganza!!!

[DantheVWman]

Greetings gents, I will hopefully be completing this some time in the spring. I want to store all of my media (movies, music, pictures, etc) on a array that is attached to my network (NAS "Network Attached Storage" and then stream it to an HTPC with a blu-ray drive built in. These are the two items I am planning on using for the configuration. Please give me any input you have, and also show me what you got going on. I want it to be as small and power efficient as possible and I think this is my best option. I also want it to be easy enough to use so my girl can use it while I am not home, and also so she can access movies on her laptop, etc. This will replace my current DVD player for more then one reason. I free up an HDMI slot for the HTPC then, and I also free up space under my TV.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...scrollFullInfo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ock-_-56158014

[Stealth 993]

Do you have a Xbox or PS3?

I have a backup NAS that also has a media server built into it, & full internet access to your files. Comes in 1-10 TB. I paid like $150 for it.

[DantheVWman]

ya i have an xbox 360. does your NAS backup? i want a good raid configuration for a 4 drive array. so i want 2 drives to act as one (2-2TB) and the other 2 drives (2-2TB) to back the others up. I am HUGE on redundancy. Right now I have a dual TB harddrive that mirrors itself, but its almost full so I need mass storage quick. I am starting to pick up Hd files too so its getting out of hand quickly.

so will the xbox 360 play AVI's? what about VOB's?

[Stealth 993]

ya i have an xbox 360. does your NAS backup? i want a good raid configuration for a 4 drive array. so i want 2 drives to act as one (2-2TB) and the other 2 drives (2-2TB) to back the others up. I am HUGE on redundancy. Right now I have a dual TB harddrive that mirrors itself, but its almost full so I need mass storage quick. I am starting to pick up Hd files too so its getting out of hand quickly.

so will the xbox 360 play AVI's? what about VOB's?

I like to keep things simple, & easy. My Wife HATES wires. I was going to go your route & get a little computer to do everything. But when it came down to it, we got a PS3 (one of the best BR players on the market).

Here is what I have, it's only 1t as I don't have a ton of media (mostly camera pics) & just backup 2 laptops. It does Mac & PC backups, & has it's own backup program, you can also create accounts for everyone. Then set limits, on them. You can also access your files online.

I do like the media part, it will house all your movies, & is compatible with iTunes. You get a 1g network port, 4 USB 2, & can be a print server. It's a corporate NAS that is affordable.

The 360 plays some AVI's, some it doesn't. I will say out of about 50 movies, it will not play 5-10. The PS3 seams to be a little better with playing movies

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...al/blackarmor/

When I was looking, this was the "best" cheapest/easiest solution for me. Setting it up took about 15min.

[DantheVWman]

I think I have now moved onto this NAS. That western digital got really bad reviews.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822108050

[jerk]

Why do you plan to make two RAID1s instead of a single RAID5? With your planned setup, you'll get 4TB of storage vs 6TB with a RAID5, yet still have redundancy.

If I didn't get such a good deal on a Drobo, I'd build another FreeNAS box and do zfs.

[jerk]

I think I have now moved onto this NAS. That western digital got really bad reviews.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822108050

The Synology NAS has me intrigued because of their iOS/Android support, but I haven't used one. I got my 5-slot Drobo for less than the 4-slot Synology and, at the time, Synology didn't have the features that interested me.

[Stealth 993]

I think I have now moved onto this NAS. That western digital got really bad reviews.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822108050

?? It's a Seagate product, not WD.
Some reviews.
http://reviews.cnet.com/network-stor...-33745367.html
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/rev...karmor_nas_220

I think some of the issues might be this a corporate appliance, so if you don't have a clue about security or networking, it can be hard to setup.

[jerk]

?? It's a Seagate product

He's talking about the WD NAS he linked in the first post.

[DantheVWman]

which drobo do you have?

[jerk]

I have the Drobo S (5-slot, USB2.0/ESATA/no network.) I bought it less than a year ago and was pissed when they released the FS <6 months after I got my S (the S is incompatible with DroboShare.) The Synology stuff is interesting and I'd compare it with the Drobo before I purchased if I were buying again. I really liked my FreeNAS setup, but the computer I was using was too loud and power-hungry (as I said above.) It would have cost a bit more to make a proper low-power FreeNAS box and the Drobo was relatively new to me (and being able to grow the RAID is a nice feature.)

[Power5]

Does drobo have a streaming over the net program? I am trying to share movies with another family member in a different house. I have tried orb but it seems to degrade the quality of the movie. What makes the drobo worth so much for an empty box?

[Vision33r]

From my experience with streaming and NAS devices, all those NAS boxes running RAID x/y/z are inferior to a properly configured WHS box.

With 4x2TB HDs in a RAID 5 setup, not only performance was abysmal it is a huge waste of space.

In WHS shared folders setup, I was able to store 2x more data and have 4x the throughput over network than a RAID5 NAS device.

You can also run all types of stream apps to serve DLNA devices on the network. Name a device and I can find an app to stream from WHS to it.

[DantheVWman]

So what are you recommending? That i build a small pc and use windows home server? Id like to just have a small easy storage device that will stream my media over my network. Having another computer running constantly doesnt suite me.

[zhenya00]

I like the idea of the Synology devices. The top models are extremely fast, they have all sorts of apps available (streaming, web server, vpn, whatever) yet they consume 16w when disks are idle. This will be what I eventually replace my linux server with.

[DantheVWman]

Im swaying towards synology too. Drobo has gotten some bad reviews from what i am reading. all these devices have really, but im trying to see which has recovered from failure the best. i want to protect my data as well as possible.

drobo vs synology is about the same price. drobo comes with the western digital green hard drives i speced for the synology that comes with none, and they price out identically.

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

[zhenya00]

The Drobo is considerably slower than the better Synology devices, and it has far fewer options for running additional services. It is perhaps somewhat easier to add a drive to increase space down the road, although Synology has a similar ability now.

[jerk]

The Drobo is considerably slower than the better Synology devices, and it has far fewer options for running additional services. It is perhaps somewhat easier to add a drive to increase space down the road, although Synology has a similar ability now.

This is good info and, as I said above, I would definitely compare the Synology with the Drobo. The Synology products do have much more interesting add-ons (apps) than the Drobo, for sure. I can't attest to the speeds of the Synology, but I don't have enterprise-level needs for my home storage, so I haven't even tested my Drobo (it's attached via eSATA to my HTPC).

I've always been a fan of Seagate drives over WD, but I do have two or three 1TB WD drives in my Drobo.

[devnull]

Im selling my old second gen Drobo. Way too slow.

Picked up a ReadyNas Ultra6 and loaded it with 2TB Barracuda LP's

Seeing ~ 80MB/sec reads, 55-60MB/sec writes over hardwire GigE (self crimped even!). Highly recommended.

[DantheVWman]

Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 6 is real nice, but out of my price range.

[jerk]

ReadyNAS products must have improved very recently. Pre (and even post) Netgear ReadyNAS products were very underperforming and left a lot to be desired....and this is coming from a Drobo user!

[devnull]

Yeah, sparc based ReadyNas stuff was mediocre at best. Think the ultras are dualcore atom setups and they just fly. Proper AFP (with TimeMachine sparse image support), iSCSI , etc ..

[MGB_]

I'd look into UnRaid.

[az__quattro]

i've been using the same WD 4TB unit for almost 3 years now and had absolutely no problems with it. write performance to it is quite slow (~8-9MB/s over a 100base-T LAN), it's been sufficient but sometimes i wish it was faster. RAID 5 might seem like a waste of space (my 4x1TB array is 2.68TB formatted) but it's still the most efficient redundancy setup esp. compared to the 2xRAID1 someone else was contemplating. the WD unit has some sort of media server built in (never used it) and a FTP server (can be quite handy).

[DantheVWman]

a guy at work said i can RAID the 4 drives like so:

2TB + 2TB (RAIDED AS 1 DRIVE)

then mirror that onto the other 2 2TB drives.

[az__quattro]

a guy at work said i can RAID the 4 drives like so:

2TB + 2TB (RAIDED AS 1 DRIVE)

then mirror that onto the other 2 2TB drives.

the problem with that is that you're using 2 drives for redundancy. with RAID5 you would get the same sort of redundancy while using only one drive for it, hence having higher storage capacity. not to mention the backup system that would keep your main drives backed up to the other ones. RAID5 does that sort of automatically if you want to call it that

[Slayer]

I ran all kinds of setups, but finally settled on a WHS install. I've had no trouble with it, and I use it to store all my files and to play files over the network to my XBMC box downstairs.

I have it setup running Sabnzbd, Sickbeard, and Couchpotato, so I just hop on the web interface and tell it what tv show or movie I want it to check for, and it keeps looking until it finds it in the quality that I wanted (720p/1080p) and then it downloads, extracts, renames, downloads thumbnails and info, and then moves it to the correct folder on the server.

Downstairs, I just open XBMC and it checks the server upstairs for new content, autoupdates, and then I have new movies / tv to watch. I'm loving it so far, It's about as automated as its ever gonna get, and it streams HD content without issues

[Vision33r]

the problem with that is that you're using 2 drives for redundancy. with RAID5 you would get the same sort of redundancy while using only one drive for it, hence having higher storage capacity. not to mention the backup system that would keep your main drives backed up to the other ones. RAID5 does that sort of automatically if you want to call it that

RAID5 does not give you 100% data redundancy. I bet I'm one of the few folks here that actually has experience with repairing a bad disk in a RAID5 set. Depending on which disk has the failure, it is not 100% recovery. Either a mirror or good backup.

[1stRabbit]

RAID5 does not give you 100% data redundancy. I bet I'm one of the few folks here that actually has experience with repairing a bad disk in a RAID5 set. Depending on which disk has the failure, it is not 100% recovery. Either a mirror or good backup.

Rebuilding a bad drive can also take light years.

[Vision33r]

Rebuilding a bad drive can also take light years.

I've rebuilt a dead one in a bad RAID5 set, it took a whole weekend to finish repairing and that was on an enterprise Compaq Proliant server with a dedicated controller. If the bad drive was the parity drive it would take much much longer.

[teriba]

RAID5 does not give you 100% data redundancy.

lolwut

[1stRabbit]

Just to add to this thread: RAID is not a backup solution.

[jerk]

lolwut

I was thinking the same thing. I bet I've replaced more bad disks in RAID5 sets than he's replaced disks in his life. In fact, I get to do one tomorrow. The hot spare for a RAID5 has been throwing errors for over a week, and yesterday, a disk in the RAID5 failed. I'll be replacing both disks tomorrow and the customer will be very upset that Vision33r has decided that not all of their data will be there after it rebuilds.

[jerk]

Just to add to this thread: RAID is not a backup solution.

True, but it's a great step toward data-loss prevention

[Slayer]

lolwut

exactly what I was thinking too.