HTPC Advice Needed Regarding Data Storage (2 Viewers)

[Sh4nn0w]

My storage server has a Gigabyte GA-G33-DS3R with 8 SATA ports built. Seems to give me enough room for now. Got 4x 1TB drives + 3x 500GB. You can pick up 1TB drive for around £80 in the UK now, much cheaper than the £140 I paid for the first one!

 

[milhouse]

Wimps.

My media server has 15 drives, and room for 5 more without cracking the case. I am sitting on 6 TB right now. 160GB system, 160GB for timeshifting, 8x500GB in RAID5 for TV Series and ISOs, 5x640GB RAID5 for ISOs. Just shy of 3TB free since I just added the last five drives a month or so ago.

Here's my build: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/ongoing-htpc-projects-60/milhouse-media-server-34316/ The page lists all the components, and somerationale as to why I went that route.


Seriously, though. By building out a big server with lots of open drive bays, when you run out of space you can buy whatever size you get the best $/GB. If it's just storage, it should be a long time before you need to upgrade anything but the drives.

I agree with phertiker - software RAID makes a lot of sense for a home user on a media server. Since you tend to write only once, you don't need blazing fast writes. And you can pick up the whole RAID set and move to another computer if you have to, instead of finding the "right" HW RAID card when it breaks. Not to mention that buying a SATA controller is MUCH cheaper than a hardware raid card with a lot of ports.

 

[AlienAndy]

My media server has 15 drives, and room for 5 more without cracking the case. I am sitting on 6 TB right now. 160GB system, 160GB for timeshifting, 8x500GB in RAID5 for TV Series and ISOs, 5x640GB RAID5 for ISOs. Just shy of 3TB free since I just added the last five drives a month or so ago.

Here's my build: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/ongoing-htpc-projects-60/milhouse-media-server-34316/ The page lists all the components, and somerationale as to why I went that route.


Seriously, though. By building out a big server with lots of open drive bays, when you run out of space you can buy whatever size you get the best $/GB. If it's just storage, it should be a long time before you need to upgrade anything but the drives.

I agree with phertiker - software RAID makes a lot of sense for a home user on a media server. Since you tend to write only once, you don't need blazing fast writes. And you can pick up the whole RAID set and move to another computer if you have to, instead of finding the "right" HW RAID card when it breaks. Not to mention that buying a SATA controller is MUCH cheaper than a hardware raid card with a lot of ports.

Hi Milhouse.

Just been reading through your link. What a load of rub.... only joking. AMAZING mate! WHAT A SUPERB SETUP!
What a Beast!

Mmmm... how do you fancy a swap? lol

I seriously appreciate you giving me your input, as with others on here, we can use your experience to plan our own. That is certainly some storage mate. The only thing I was wondering about looking at your system, what about the heat generated from all those hard drives close together? I assume you have some nice fans blowing through them all? Just looks like a nice 'fire hazard'? Anyway, I don't want to worry you that much that you want to swap yours for mine!

It looks like all I have to do now is get round the Mrs.
What she don't know won't hurt her ay?

Milhouse, that is truly awesome mate. I've bookmarked your link to use as a guide!

Cheers.

 

[milhouse]

The 5-in-3 hard drive racks each have a fan. So the 20 hard drives lined up the front have 4 fans pulling air through.

Not sure I would lock in in a tiny closet or anything, but down in the basement I have never noticed it to be at all warm. I've never looked at hard drive temps, though, just CPU. (Haven't yet found a hard drive monitoring utility that can actually monitor that many drives.)

Glad you found the write-up useful.

Milhouse

 

[SmokeWatcher]

I recently bought a Drobo for my ever-increasing movie storage. This has all the benefits of standard RAID but without some (not all) of the headaches.
Data Robotics, Inc.

 

[karakas]

I currently have my fileserver and TV-server in a rather small room (about 1x1.5m) and it gets too hot in the summertime so I have to leave one of the doors open. But I'm rebuilding a part of the house now, and will get a room that's much better suited, so I wouldn't stick it in a small room.

 

[Kefner]

Just my 2 cents.

I'm currently running a NAS server. I current only have some of my scrap drives in there (mix of 160 & 200+ drives). However it is a FreeBSD based server that supports many types of features. It doesn't require a lot of hardware to run. It supports WOL (as long as the hardware supports it too) and you can remote shut down. Plus you can run software RAID, and choose when then harddrives sleep. It's pretty robust.

Linky : FreeNAS

I decided to go this route to keep the heat down in my mediacenter, and not to have the drives on my mediacenter running constantly.

Also I just as much fun setting this up as the mediacenter.

-Kefner

 

[thug1690]

have a idea along the same lines have posted sepret post for some helpull advice

 

[ryan20021982]

I have messed around with this for awhile and am finishing my final setup now. I dont trust raid5 its just me, I wont trust my movies to raid at all unless there is a complete backup somewhere else which is what I am doing. The Clown used windows raid5 but you cannot expand a raid 5 array in windows you have to rebuild it over again so you would need somewhere to store the videos while you rebuild with the new hdd. So my result is 2 seperate servers.

Right now I have the main server which feeds 3 mediacenters with 9tb (6x1.5tb hdds) and am building another server just to hold the backup and maybe to feed to more clients if I make anymore in the future. But each one will be in windows raid0 but there is a complete backup on the other server so not a big deal.

I am in the process right now of building a full rack for all my components which are in the computer room of the house so no noise is in the livingroom and other rooms with htpc's in them. All the clients have silent video or onboard video with all after market fans to avoid noise.

I actually built this new server pretty cheap , here is the list of components for the server

JetWay JXBLUE-N78V AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8100 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard $59.99
LITE-ON Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model iHDP118-04 - OEM $17.99
Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory $10.99
NORCO RPC-250 Black 2U Rackmount Server Case - Retail $79.99

I had the psu, AMD 4200, and IDE laptop drive (for OS and needs ide to save the sata ports for the other hdds)

And this part is depending on your needs
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive $129.99 x 6

I am actually going to do a post on the complete setup once I get everything in
Its going to be composed of
main server
backup server
netgear 16 port Gbit switch
Tripp Lite surge protector
Aten 4 port KVM switch
norco rack mount keyboard with touchpad
Rack Solutions rack lcd mount
19" dell monitor
and some vent panels and a few other things