Looking for cool and silent storage solution (1 Viewer)

[Kian]

hi guys,
i currently own a big HTPC case (silverstone grandia) running 5 HDD, 1TB each.

as my 5TB are reaching their limits i would need to think about more HDDs. so i was hoping to that you could give me some advice for alternative storage.

My dream scenario would be to have a storage case which can store up to 10 HDDs and only run those HDDs that are needed for running the files i select in mediaportal.

Is there such kind of on demand solution available? The point is that i do not want my HDDs run 24x7 but only when requested.

any solutions you have to offer?

thanks in advance and greetz,
k

 

[drealit]

Yes, build an UnRaid server (Digital Media Storage Solutions). It would serve your exact needs: cheap, streaming media, many storage devices, low low power depending on hardware selection, ability to have drives spun down until needed.

UnRaid lets you build a cheap affordable server with no serious hardware constraints (no need for expensive hardware raid cards) or forcing you to have the exact same drive for all your storage. You can expand whenever you want up to 20 drives (currently) and use whatever kind of hard drive you'd like: SATA, IDE, 200GB, 2TB, whatever mix and match all you want and whenever you want. Your drives will spin down when not in use so they will use barely any power (the western digital GP series drives use a little over 1W of power when idle I believe). The biggest benefit is parity protection for your array of hard drives... no worries about losing data anymore unless there is more than 1 simultaneous hard drive failure.

Look into the product because I firmly stand behind it. It enables people who don't want to throw around a lot of money to have a nice cheap FULLY FUNCTIONAL media server that is amazingly easy to setup and configure.

I personally have one based off an older Abit AB9 Pro motherboard (many many onboard SATA connectors) but my friend just built a nice low power ATOM based system based on this: SuperBiiz.com - Supermicro X7SLA-H-O Atom 330/ Intel 945GC/ RAID/ V&2GbE/ Flex ATX Motherboard, Retail motherboard and plans on dropping in a few SATA controller cards.

If you go this route I highly recommend using the user released add-on called cache_dir... what it does is it caches the data in the user shares on the server so that you can read the data without spinning up the drives. You can browse your entire media catalog without spinning up any drives until you actually play something... and even then it will only spin up the drive/drives it needs in order to playback whatever it was.

 

[moab]

Out of curiousity I looked at the UnRAID.
Sadly it has no striping ability.
For me this is a deal breaker.
With striping each drive I add improves the data speeds by a factor of 1/n (where n=number of drives in the striped array). Data is transfered in parallel to all drives concurrently. I tested my system with a HDD benchmark tool to verify the performance gains as I added drives. Note that I rebuilt the array from scratch when adding drives to ensure striping was physically done, instead of relying on some software algorithm to hot add a drive. Incidently I use a SSD for my C: (OS + apps) which is much faster than even the striped array.

UnRaid is a good product as far as it goes and it has some very strong power management and caching features.

What are the disadvantages of unRAID compared to similar products?
No striping. So, although it performs well, and better than many NAS solutions, is generally slower than a RAID 0, RAID 5, RAID 6, or RAID 10, etc. If performance is very important for an array you may be building, then one of the 4 RAID types just mentioned will be a better choice than unRAID.

 

[NLS]

I wouldn't suggest unRAID (been unRAID user for years).

Works fine (more or less and if your chosen hardware is within the drivers implemented), but there are other things that make me run away.

Take a look at alternatives.

 

[Kian]

sorry for coming back so late.
thanks for the posts. i will look into unraid and determine whether it actually serves my needs. till now i read a lot about raid controllers, sata controllers. what i do not get yet is when i would need those. i have a simple mATX motherboard with 5 SATA ports on board. would i need to buy sata controllers if i would like to add additional SATA HDDs? and why would i need to buy RAID controllers? is RAID only realized via pci cards?

NLS
what are other alternatives?

 

[moab]

i have a simple mATX motherboard with 5 SATA ports on board. would i need to buy sata controllers if i would like to add additional SATA HDDs?
Yes. External drives can utilize USB2.0 but data transfer is very slow.

...and why would i need to buy RAID controllers?
To add redundancy, performance gains.

...is RAID only realized via pci cards?
sometimes included in the motherboard, also pci-e cards.



NLS
what are other alternatives?

 

[NLS]

Windows (exp. Windows Home Server) and FlexRAID...
or Linux with FlexRAID
...I prefer Windows since I make my 24/7 machine do soooo many additional things (torrents, streaming from TV or from my MP3/video collection etc.)

the things that made me run away from unRAID don't necessarily mean they should drive away other people too

you can try both easily as FlexRAID is freeware and unRAID up to 3 disks is also free