Storage/media server?

[Ramshackles]

Evening all,

So I've got my client up and running in the livingroom and all is well

Currently I have all my HDDs in my main pc which is in my bedroom, not really the best solution since it's not always on and I would like my digital media (movies/music) to always be available from my livingroom.

I've looked into NAS which seems bit too expensive if you consider it cant easily be expanded.

I've looked at external eSata/USB/Firewire drives but that would leave me with a bunch of disk all around and I'd run out of connectors or need to buy a hub etc etc.

Now I'm considering getting a tower with a decent cpu/motherboard/ram preferably a motherboard with a lot of sata connectors, and using it as a fileserver, running windows home server perhaps or something along those lines.

What are you storing your digital media on? I'm hoping for a somewhat future proof solution, a standalone server seems to be able to do that best?

[Dansta]

Hi.

The setup I use is a living room PC with an 80GB drive for the OS and music and a 160GB drive for recorded stuff. I also have a second more powerful PC with 6 hard drives in my study that doubles up as media storage as well as general use, etc, etc. Although they are only communicating through a wireless G gateway, I find I can stream AVIs as well as raw DVR-MS files from one to the other with no problem.

Having the 160GB drive in the lounge PC means that the freshly recorded stuff can stay on that PC. That way it does not matter if the study PC is off as the recent recordings will be in the lounge and the study PC is on until bedtime unless I'm transcoding to AVIs (transcoding by the study PC pulling from the lounge PC using the fab Mediacoder).

Originally I had a 4 HDD setup in the lounge and a Pentium D but this got so hot that I had to use 2 case fans (an input and an exhaust). It was quite noisy! Now a humble P4 640 suffices although I plan to change to a MODT board (I have an Asus N4L-VM-DH bought on the cheap but that seems to only work with a PSU not compatible with my case).

I did consider setting up a Home Server or something like that but I decided that it was not worth the expense to setup a Troll (PC under the stairs) when a general purpose XP system in the study powerful enough would do all I needed.

Good luck, Dansta.

[Ramshackles]

Yeah, only problem here being I live in a flat, with kitchen, bedroom and livingroom with no prospects of moving anytime soon (I own the flat).

Now I could probably manage sleeping with the pc in the bedroom on, but my girlfriend would do horrible things to it So I'm trying to figure out the best way to solve the problem, since I already have quite a lot of data on the bedroom pc > 1tb and I'd love for that to be available always in the livingroom..

Without having to sacrifice sleep or the neat and tidy livingroom

Wonder how much noise a dedicated case in the closet would make

This just looks too bloody sweet in my opinion:

Maybe with caddies aswell:


Atleast that would be somewhat futureproof



But that would probably make a riot in the closet anyway, so I'm looking at NAS or eSata box with a few drives in it until I move to a bigger place

Actually thinking about buying a hp mediasmart server with windows home server preinstalled, it has room for 4 sata drives and usb2/esta connectors on it's back.

Might be worth it since they claim it's relatively silent.

[uggabugga]

Could take a look at this Synology Cube
I have a CS407e 4x750GB in RAID 5 = around 2TB.
Have a web page running on the cube as well and it has a lot of other cool functions too.
Have 2x500GB ext. USB2 HDD connected to the cube, which I backup the data that I think is the most important for me.
I see you are from Denmark so check this out: EDB Priser.
Happy storage hunting

[TomServo]

Originally Posted by Dansta

Although they are only communicating through a wireless G gateway, I find I can stream AVIs as well as raw DVR-MS files from one to the other with no problem.

Just out of curiosity, how are you handling the streaming?

I just point the movies directory to the server using an ip address, but that has been really buggy and inconsistent for me.

[Ramshackles]

Originally Posted by uggabugga

Could take a look at this Synology Cube
I have a CS407e 4x750GB in RAID 5 = around 2TB.
Have a web page running on the cube as well and it has a lot of other cool functions too.
Have 2x500GB ext. USB2 HDD connected to the cube, which I backup the data that I think is the most important for me.

Thank ugga, I reckon you can choose if you want to use any of those options aswell as RAID? I'm not too hyped about safety, I can always rerip if I should loose my movies or cd's, but the option is nice to have anyway.

Although 3.000,- dkr. seems a bit expensive for 4 harddrives in an external enclosure, one could just buy a case and a small cheap system to handle it.

[Dansta]

Originally Posted by TomServo

Just out of curiosity, how are you handling the streaming?

I just point the movies directory to the server using an ip address, but that has been really buggy and inconsistent for me.

Similar. All I have done is share relevant directories on each PC and mapped network drives from 1 to the other. I do have to make sure that I have "accessed" the directory using Explorer before I open MP or it won't find it for some reason. Apart from MP taking a few seconds to access the network drive I've found no issues.

Cheers, Dansta.

[sderuiter]

Originally Posted by Dansta

Similar. All I have done is share relevant directories on each PC and mapped network drives from 1 to the other. I do have to make sure that I have "accessed" the directory using Explorer before I open MP or it won't find it for some reason. Apart from MP taking a few seconds to access the network drive I've found no issues.

Cheers, Dansta.

Would this trick also make MP 0.2.3 record to a network share? I've every single mutation possible for the network path, but MP keeps complaining I've run out of disk space.

[Svein]

I use an old PC with an amd 2000 cpu (socket a) as a server with win xp pro. 1gig of ram and 4 HD with 320 gig each and an old 10gig HD as system disc. The pc server is in the hall under the stair and is not connected to a keyboard or screen. If I need, I connect to it as an external desktop using one of my other PC`s. This PC server is also running kai (xbox network gaming), pimpstreamer (streaming content to a PSP) and utorrent as a bittorrent client. I have been using this setup 24/7 for a couple of years now and it works without flaws and is serving two xboxes running XBMC, a PSP and 3 PC with MP.

[uggabugga]

Originally Posted by Ramshackles

Thank ugga, I reckon you can choose if you want to use any of those options aswell as RAID? I'm not too hyped about safety, I can always rerip if I should loose my movies or cd's, but the option is nice to have anyway.

Although 3.000,- dkr. seems a bit expensive for 4 harddrives in an external enclosure, one could just buy a case and a small cheap system to handle it.

Yes, of course you can!
You are right about the pricing(around 402 EUR) , but my main reason for choosing this setup was size of the unit, reliability and power consumption(as it is turned on 24/7).