Operating System Suggestions for OS (1 Viewer)

[Bobb25]

Ok, heres my dilemma. I currently have a machine setup which i use to store all my TV Eps and a few movies. Then in the lounge i am running an HTPC (Mediaportal on a Core2Duo with an 8800GTS) which streams the media to my LCD TV and sound system.

At the moment i have 11 hard drives in the storage machine and i am in the process of upgrading the smaller drives (less than 500GB) to 1TB drives due to lack of space. The problem i have is that when i was setting the machine up i really couldn't decide on an OS so i just used win XP SP2. Now just over a year later its showing signs that it needs a reinstall... are there any suggestions what OS to use? The machine is an AMD 64 running at 2.7ghz with 2gigs ram.

I have also thought about a raid type solution, however due to the physical limitations, and the fact that its not exactly mission critical, i have thought about using Flexraid (OpenEgg.org - FlexRAID) and just dumping the parity files on an external HDD.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Bear in mind its not exactly doing any major work, just streaming media via gigabit lan, downloading via SABNZBD and burning dvd's via an external drive... thats it.

 

[winterescape]

I would suggest sticking with XP (pro) it is very stable. What would vista add for your described setup?, and why would you want to deal with 7 until SP1 is out..? If you feel you need to wipe the disk and reinstall than fine. When looking at your storage options, consider power. A lot of folks overlook this and the running cost can have a serious impact on the HTPC budget that is not always considered. Take a look at this review and consider the WD green 1TB drives…

1TB Hard Disk Drives Roundup: 14 Solutions Reviewed (page 22) - X-bit labs

 

[MyPVR]

Perhaps this could be a solution you should consider: MS Windows Home Server on HTPC via VM

The WHS is using something similar to FlexRAID, so you are going to get a dynamic disk management system.

 

[pilehave]

If all the storage machine does it to store your files, maybe a lightweight XP (you need some kind of OS as base, IIRC) with unRAID software on a usb-pen. Don't know if that will let your burn optical though...

 

[tourettes]

If all the storage machine does it to store your files, maybe a lightweight XP (you need some kind of OS as base, IIRC) with unRAID software on a usb-pen. Don't know if that will let your burn optical though...

And if you have 100MBit (or faster) network it is highly recommended to use some modern OS (Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2008) that have SMB 2.0 networking protocol in use.

SMB 2.0 - Copying Files Faster - Review Tom's Hardware : Windows Server 2008 Reviewed

 

[NLS]

Perhaps this could be a solution you should consider: MS Windows Home Server on HTPC via VM

The WHS is using something similar to FlexRAID, so you are going to get a dynamic disk management system.

No WHS is nothing similar to FlexRAID.
In fact many people use FlexRAID ON WHS.

 

[henning]

If you don't want to spend much time, I also would recommend WHS. It's working fine for me as a TV Server, even if it's not an offical MP supported OS. Further on, adding memory capacity (SATA, USB...) and presenting the whole disks as one storage device to the users is very easy and convenient. Double specific contents to more than one disk for security reason is very easy as well. Last but not least there is a good backup possibility for windows pcs in the network.

Regs

Henning

 

[NLS]

Bob I currently use unRAID for my storage. Uninstalling it in a few days (even though I use it for years and have paid for it)... I decided than an always-on machine should be able to do more than just serve/store files.

You should go to WHS + FlexRAID. In fact this machine will do for you much more for you than expected.

Mine among other things (*), will ALSO have an analog TV card ("also" because my HTPC has 2 analog + 1 DVB+T + 1 DVB-S) and will stream it (either with another MP TV-Server, or just the very nice Orb). So my HTPC doesn't need to be an always-on machine even when something needs to be recorded (that is on analog).

(*) Other things that this machine will do: torrent client, backup my other systems, handle them based on UPS commands, mail aggregator (not mail server, I need a plain old Outlook, to collect everything in a PST), webcam based security, virtual machine host, server+client uptime manager etc.

 

[kiwijunglist]

I still like XP Pro SP3 for my HTPC, but will upgrade to Win7 when it's matured.
You could stick with XP and try the below suggestion

I have my movies on a server that currently has 4 different harddrives. 2x500GB, 1x1TB and 1x1,5TB. Not in a raid setup. My movie files are scattered throughout these discs, in a fashion that is based more on "oh, I have a little space left here, lets put a couple of movies in here" than on general convenience. The great thing is, that MovingPictures doesn't care about this. Nor does it care about me moving these files arounds when the need for space rises on a specific harddrive.

I know, this is a fucked up system and I am better off getting some big drives and putting them in RAID - but for now I don't have the option to do this and so far this system is working great.

We have the same issue, files scattered over 4 different HD's. My solution was to create a small 'Media' partition (or dir), then using the 'Hardlink shell extension' Link Shell Extension I added all the movie directories and tv series etc all into the Media dir with this tool (I used 'junction')

So now I have a media dir with tv series dir, with dir's for each series, a movies dir with dir's for each genre, comedy, action, horror etc, then just point mediaportal to the 'media directory. This way I can move directories around, from HD to HD, add a new HD and as long as I update the junctions, then mediaportal see's no difference

Just remember to maintain and add/update junctions