Noob storage question

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Creepingdeath1977

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Feb 23, 2006
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I hope someone can help me with some ideas for a solution to my problem..

I duel boot with vista (300gbHD) and WinXP (250gbHD) and I have a 360 and I have started backing up my movies to my hard drive on Vista and watch them on my 65inch dlp through the media center extender on the 360. Now my problem, I have a little over 800 movies and I'm not sure if I would be better served to build a file server or by some stackable external drives.

Of coarse future expandability is priority and I have a dedicated pc input on my Tv and my Tv supports 1080p. And if I go with a file server what OS do I go with? Vista32 or XP mediacenter. All movies are mpeg 2 and run and aveage of 4-5 gigs and any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
So you post in one of the slower moving forums at 10pm EST and complain not even two hours later about the lack of replies? I find that following this rule helps me get decent responses from other forum members.

Anyhow, I guess your question is: ``Should I build a file server or buy some external drives in order to watch movies on my xBox?''

Depending on the speed at which your storage requirements grow, a file server can be more expensive or cheaper than external drives. With a file server, you have a larger up-front investment, but adding storage is cheaper until you reach the maximum number of drives for the setup you chose in the beginning. External drives are cheaper up-front, but as your storage requirement increases, they get quite a bit more expensive than the file-server option. At the same time, I am unsure if a `stack' of external drives is a visually pleasing setup, much less energy efficient, since most brick-type AC/DC converters are not very efficient.

If you do not need instant access to all your movies, external drives may be a better choice, since you could selectively power them up when needed. Booting a file server can take quite a bit longer. However, with external drives, it may be a little annoying having to remember which drive contains which movie, most file servers offer some form of storage space abstraction that removes that burden from you.

File servers can fold while they are idle, but may consume quite a bit more power than external drives, since you have a `full-blown' PC running.

I would recommend Linux or Solaris as a file server OS, since both offer quite a few neat storage management options, in addition to diversifying your infrastructure, making you a little less vulnerable to virii etc., provided you set it up correctly. Additionally, I think that learning a new OS requires some mental exercise, which is never a bad thing. However, given your rather lax problem definition, it does not seem that you want any `special' features, so any consumer Windows OS should be able to fill your need as well.
 
What drizzt81 said.

Now you should ask yourself , and answer for us, how much money are you willing to spend on this file server? How much storage do you think you'll need? And whether or not you'll want to go through the experience of setting up a file server.
 
Ok first off, sorry for not being patient, I appologize. I after reading the very informative post's I don't think I quiet understand what a file server really is, I mean I thought it was a pc with a bunch of drives but I am a noob when it comes to this area on the pc. But the things I want from this setup are ....
1. I want it on 24/7(so power efficincy and low noise are a must)
2. Drive space (I am looking at starting with a 500hd and after it's full, start adding T drives as I run out of space)

I guess when it comes down to it, I need a HTPC with low power consumption,thats quiet and has room for a shit load of drives.
 
Creepingdeath1977 said:
Ok first off, sorry for not being patient, I appologize. I after reading the very informative post's I don't think I quiet understand what a file server really is, I mean I thought it was a pc with a bunch of drives but I am a noob when it comes to this area on the pc. But the things I want from this setup are ....
1. I want it on 24/7(so power efficincy and low noise are a must)
2. Drive space (I am looking at starting with a 500hd and after it's full, start adding T drives as I run out of space)

I guess when it comes down to it, I need a HTPC with low power consumption,thats quiet and has room for a shit load of drives.
Click to expand...

Well that's what a file server basically is: a PC with a lot of hard drives in it that stores files.

Now you have to answer a few more questions:
- What's your budget?
- Which OS are you planning to use? Does your budget include the OS?
- Is this file server strictly for file serving or will you be doing more with it? Like music streaming? TV recording?
 
Well right now vista premium with media center is what I'm running and media center recognizes my dvd files right off the bat with no plugins needed and I like that, not sure if xp mediacenter is the same. But if xp mc would play the mpeg2 files with no plugins that would be the way to go for the OS cause it's cheaper than vista premium.

So I guess I would like my music on there also but thats it, no TV tuner, notta.

As far as budget, I want quality components but not extreme.
 
well with an htpc you can have large drives but you wouldn't want to keep your whole collection on there, depending on how large you think it will grow

depending on what you are looking to spend i would say build an htpc to view your movies and play music, you can use mc, i don't know the difference between xp version and vista then you want to build a file server they have cases that can allow you to put in quite a few drives so you can expand your system
 
AMD Athlon64 BE-2350 CPU - $95
Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H AMD 690G mATX Motherboard - $80
G.SKILL F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 RAM - $70
Corsair HX520 520W PSU - $105
SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - $113
----
Total: $433 Plus tax and shipping.

I didn't include a HSF or a case because cases are a personal choice item and depending on which case you choose, the HSF may not fit inside. So find a case you like, post it here, and I'll recommend a HSF for it.

I went with the BE2350 because it's one of the most energy efficient CPU out there. At most, the CPU will only draw 45W of power. The GA-MA69GM-S2H comes with everything you need for a media center rig: HDMI, DVI, VGA, and firewire ports. It also has onboard video so no need for a video card that'll use up more power.

RAM is cheap these days, so why not 2GB of RAM for $70 while you can get it? Also, Vista uses a ton of RAM so 2GB is recommended. The Cosair 520HX is a pretty efficient PSU and should be plenty of power for a simple media center rig with room for more hard drives.

Now if you're planning to watch HD content in the future, you may want to invest in a video card to offload some of the CPU power as well as provide better picture quality. With that said, I recommend this card for HD viewing:
Gigabyte GV-NX86T256H GeForce 8600GT 256MB PCI-E HDCP Ready Video Card

It's passively cooled so no extra source of noise.
 
so is that gskill memory good? some of those products look good, keeping those to mind for more then just an htpc
 
Yes, G.Skill RAM is good. If you check my sig, I'm using a pair of G.Skill RAM myself. That particular set of G.Skill RAM has been recommended all over the General Hardware forum.
 
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