Now, before your knee jerks and you stub your toe, I'm well aware that the general consensus is that an HTPC and NAS should be in their own disparate systems. I understand (generally) the arguments against doing it, however I feel that in my circumstance combining the two into a single system can be done successfully. I would appreciate any comments, for or against, as well as recommendations on hardware. Thanks to the [H] forum's search feature I have a very good idea of what I would like to do, but I'm a little leery of picking the correct hardware and operating system for the job at hand, as current technology seems to have outpaced recommendations here and elsewhere.
Main Goal: HTPC, capable of playing up to 1080P and audio over HDMI to a 55" LED LCD. A nod towards energy efficiency and quiet operation would be nice, however it is not completely necessary.
Sub Goal: NAS, using green drives in RAID. Streaming will be virtually non-existent.
General Concept - HTPC: As outlined above, I am mainly focused on building an HTPC to play video and audio on a 55" LED LCD. All files that the HTPC will play will be on the HTPC's internal hard drives, and will NOT be streamed from elsewhere on the network. Audio will RARELY be streamed from the HTPC to another PC on the network, and never when the HTPC is playing video or experiencing a significant read/write. Torrents would be downloaded to a local folder on the downloading system, then transfered directly to HTPC when the download completes, potentially at any time, day or night.
General Concept - NAS: I would like to use two green 2Tb drives in a RAID1 configuration within the HTPC. The only purpose for RAID is hard drive redundancy. Roughly 1.5 Tb would be used for media storage, and the remaining space would be used for occasional backups of other systems (~200 Gigs worth). The purpose of the backups is to help alleviate some pain in the event of a system HD failure, unintended file deletion, or virus. The backed up data is not critically important, so this is mainly to help prevent some heart burn in the event of data loss, but is not intended to be a complete backup scheme. Backups would take place sporadically (weekly or biweekly), and would take place during early morning hours when no other file serving or file playback was taking place.
This is what I have been considering, hardware wise:
CPU/MOBO: ASUS E35M1-M PRO or ASUS E35M1-I DELUXE. Other recommendations welcome.
MEMORY: 4 gig target, but will increase/decrease depending on OS needs
MAIN SYSTEM DRIVE: SSD, would appreciate recommendations on size, make, and model
MEDIA DRIVES IN RAID1: 2 x 2Tb Samsung Spinpoint F4 5400 RPM (These are the only parts I currently have)
Optical Drive: BR-DVD-R or no drive at all. Drive recommendations appreciated.
CASE: Partial to this Silverstone, recommendations welcome
PSU: Recommendations welcome
VIDEO CARD: Needed at all? I'm hoping the ASUS board is capable enough
OS: Recommendations appreciated. I have experience with Windows (not server), Linux (Ubuntu/Fedora), some Solaris. I have an unused Vista license, but would need to purchase any other MS product. I have zero FreeBSD experience, but love to try new things.
Some additional thoughts:
-- I read the ZFS primer in the data storage forum, and I'm quite intrigued. As it is a little out of date, are there any distroes that exist with ZFS built in that can be used as an HTPC? Probably unlikely, but worth asking.
-- Can the two Asus MOBO's listed above handle RAID 1 well? I haven't seen any good information either way.
-- Is a dedicated RAID card needed for any reason?
-- I use the Verizon remote that came with my set top box. Is there any way to program the auxilary control on the remote to control an HTPC front end? Perhaps a USB gizmo of some to detect the IR?
-- I don't really require that much storage, hince the 2 drives in RAID1. Any compelling reasons to use a different RAID configuration with more drives?
Thanks for reading all that. Any and all comments are appreciated.
Main Goal: HTPC, capable of playing up to 1080P and audio over HDMI to a 55" LED LCD. A nod towards energy efficiency and quiet operation would be nice, however it is not completely necessary.
Sub Goal: NAS, using green drives in RAID. Streaming will be virtually non-existent.
General Concept - HTPC: As outlined above, I am mainly focused on building an HTPC to play video and audio on a 55" LED LCD. All files that the HTPC will play will be on the HTPC's internal hard drives, and will NOT be streamed from elsewhere on the network. Audio will RARELY be streamed from the HTPC to another PC on the network, and never when the HTPC is playing video or experiencing a significant read/write. Torrents would be downloaded to a local folder on the downloading system, then transfered directly to HTPC when the download completes, potentially at any time, day or night.
General Concept - NAS: I would like to use two green 2Tb drives in a RAID1 configuration within the HTPC. The only purpose for RAID is hard drive redundancy. Roughly 1.5 Tb would be used for media storage, and the remaining space would be used for occasional backups of other systems (~200 Gigs worth). The purpose of the backups is to help alleviate some pain in the event of a system HD failure, unintended file deletion, or virus. The backed up data is not critically important, so this is mainly to help prevent some heart burn in the event of data loss, but is not intended to be a complete backup scheme. Backups would take place sporadically (weekly or biweekly), and would take place during early morning hours when no other file serving or file playback was taking place.
This is what I have been considering, hardware wise:
CPU/MOBO: ASUS E35M1-M PRO or ASUS E35M1-I DELUXE. Other recommendations welcome.
MEMORY: 4 gig target, but will increase/decrease depending on OS needs
MAIN SYSTEM DRIVE: SSD, would appreciate recommendations on size, make, and model
MEDIA DRIVES IN RAID1: 2 x 2Tb Samsung Spinpoint F4 5400 RPM (These are the only parts I currently have)
Optical Drive: BR-DVD-R or no drive at all. Drive recommendations appreciated.
CASE: Partial to this Silverstone, recommendations welcome
PSU: Recommendations welcome
VIDEO CARD: Needed at all? I'm hoping the ASUS board is capable enough
OS: Recommendations appreciated. I have experience with Windows (not server), Linux (Ubuntu/Fedora), some Solaris. I have an unused Vista license, but would need to purchase any other MS product. I have zero FreeBSD experience, but love to try new things.
Some additional thoughts:
-- I read the ZFS primer in the data storage forum, and I'm quite intrigued. As it is a little out of date, are there any distroes that exist with ZFS built in that can be used as an HTPC? Probably unlikely, but worth asking.
-- Can the two Asus MOBO's listed above handle RAID 1 well? I haven't seen any good information either way.
-- Is a dedicated RAID card needed for any reason?
-- I use the Verizon remote that came with my set top box. Is there any way to program the auxilary control on the remote to control an HTPC front end? Perhaps a USB gizmo of some to detect the IR?
-- I don't really require that much storage, hince the 2 drives in RAID1. Any compelling reasons to use a different RAID configuration with more drives?
Thanks for reading all that. Any and all comments are appreciated.