Re: RAID setup?
 

I'm actually in the process of doing something similar. I have a movie collection of around 7 TB. I have been using a super old PC running Windows Home Server and using there duplication feature. So I have around 16TB of drives in all different sizes. I've had a few disk failures over the years, but with the duplication, I haven't lost anything yet.

But I'm not really happy with Windows Home Server. Doesn't seem to really fit my needs. I'm building a new server that will run on freeNAS. I'm planning on using 4 x 3TB drives in a Raid 5 setup. I'm going to use the RaidZ software raid that is part of the freeNAS operating system. Once I get everything copied over (which will probably take weeks) then I'll rip apart the old server and use some of those drives to make an additional backup on.

Storing blu-ray rips can chew up a lot of space, but I'm also not happy with most of the compressed blu-ray copies I've seen. Even an 8GB compressed blu-ray movie still looks like crap to me. I want the best quality possible for my movies, so I leave them uncompressed. And hence I'm stuck dealing with all this space.

I also have about 70 HD-DVDs in my collection. I still wish they would of won the format war, but oh well. LOL As long as I can find software to run them, I'm gonna watch them.

I'm still in the early stages of building this new server, I'll report back when I'm done.

later,
Curt

Re: RAID setup?
 

What are you using to play the movies on other TV's Curt?

Re: RAID setup?
 

I have a computer in my living room that I play movies on. Its a Windows 7 machine. I use Windows Media Center on there. I have a plugin called Media Browser, which catalogs all the movies. Within Media Browser I use Media Player Classic to actually play the movies.

All of my blu rays are ripped into mkv files. With Media Player Classic configured correctly, it plays the blu rays (MKVs) better than most blu ray players. Its a pretty complicated setup, but I like it.

later,
Curt

Re: RAID setup?
 

That is the same setup I have in the living room, it works pretty slick. I love the SSD too, it took 18 seconds off the boot time.

Re: RAID setup?
 

I do have my freeNAS server up and running. I'm working on copying over my 7.1 TB of data too it.

So far I really like freeNAS. If your main function of having a server is for huge amounts of data storage, I think this is the way to go.

Re: RAID setup?
 

Speaking of drivers, I bought a couple of 3TB drives, and took all the non-OS drives out of my desktop.

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h1...psb410fa3b.jpg

I decided I'm going to go buy some cheap hardware to put in my other case to just setup a simple file server.

Re: RAID setup?
 

No no no you're doing it wrong! Upgrade your main rig and use the legacy parts for the fileserver :)

Re: RAID setup?
 

This...thats what i do.

Re: RAID setup?
 

Haha. I can't justify that, the cost to upgrade my gaming rig to use the current stuff as a server would be high.

Re: RAID setup?
 

Gigabytes and stuff

Re: RAID setup?
 

Big thanks to mikefromMN for trying to get any info off my bad HD, unfortunately he wasn't successful after a valiant effort.

I have all of my HD's now and have one of these on the way:

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/...011-TS?$S300W$

It hooks up via USB 3.0 and will dock 2 HD's as well as clone from one to another without a computer. I will leave the main HD's in the computer and then copy them on occasion to the docked HD's. This way they are only powered up when the backup is taking place and they should last for ages.

Re: RAID setup?
 

Here's an interesting DIY media player project based on raspberry pi:

http://www.raspbmc.com/about/

For about $50 you could have yourself a nice little video player streaming from nfs or cifs/samba.

Re: RAID setup?
 

If I were going to do a small set-top unit, raspberry pi wouldn't be the way I would go. It sucks. 700mhz processor (you can overclock to 1ghz) and 512 mbs of ram just doesn't cut it. I was using an xbmc build and, while it "worked", it was janky as hell; slow to respond and just very inconsistent performance over all. If anybody gets serious about this, look into a pandaboard or the beagleboard. Both have better hardware and are only marginally more expensive.

Re: RAID setup?
 

I am going to have to check in to those set top boxes soon. I have the dock and it works pretty slick. The only downside is that it is not hotswappable. It has a separate power button so that works great too.

Hit the power switch on the dock and reboot the computer. When it comes up just do a ctrl+c and ctrl+v and tell it not to copy anything that is already there. I will probably do the backup every couple of weeks. Library is being rebuilt pretty quickly now.

Re: RAID setup?
 

Buy a Roku, stream netflix, done. haha

Thats what I do. I stream movies from my computer to Roku wirelessly as well using the PLEX app. Dont have time to manage a full on server and putz with all that crap.

Re: RAID setup?
 

A boxee box is amazing as well, plays anything and everything you toss at it and still want to fuck the dog when you aren't looking.

Re: RAID setup?
 

Good to hear, thank you for the honest review! I have one on my desk at work and I was tempted to dick around with it in this arena--I will not waste my time now! :)

Indeed, very simple and it works!
Yet you digress like the rest of us :)

boxee is pretty decent too! I used to run that for a while on my appleTV.

WDTV is still the best all-around IMHO, it can be so simple and do so much more with just a little bit more effort. Roku is nice but you can't mount NFS or SAMBA shares, and that's just pewpie.

Re: RAID setup?
 

Netflix's streaming library is just way too limited, we tried that and it sucks. Maintaining the library is really easy, but I just don't have much time for researching a set top box right now.

So if I get a WDTV (the one with ethernet port) it will scroll through the movies on my server and pull them up? What type of menu system is it? We have to be about 150 movies right now and adding fast.

Re: RAID setup?
 

I did a little digging around on the WDTV. It looks like it will play most formats, but for a menu system, it would be similar to trying to play something using windows explorer. You'd have to drill down to the directory that has the movie and then start it. Sounds like the player is a little sluggish at navigating around too. Probably gets slower as your collection grows.

Its not nearly as cool as Media Browser on a Media Center PC.

later,
Curt

Re: RAID setup?
 

Yip it's a simple interface but it offers previews and with only a little effort towards organization, it's easy to browse. I'm sure there's videos of it on YouTube. For $100, it's pretty easy to just try it,,that's what I did and then was so happy I just stopped looking :)