Best external multi-drive solution for media storage

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soxfandoug

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 10, 2005
Messages
92
Hey guys,

I'm finally going to bite the bullet and build/purchase a media server. I want something that can accomodate at least 4 hard drives, with data redundancy. If a hard drive dies, I want to be able to swap in a new one and have it automatically rebuild itself.

It will be storing uncompressed DVD Shrink rips, as well as uncompressed Blu-Ray ISO rips. At most 2 PCs would be accessing the data at one time. I don't need it to be "always on", but that wouldn't be a problem either.

5-6 terabytes of storage space is what I'm shooting for. Ease of use is very important.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Doug
 
i would look at windows home server.....

the HP mediasmart server has almost everything your looking for.

there is a guy on the FS thread selling one,.......

on HPs website you can get it for under $400 w 1TB, i would add 4 1.5tb drives to get your storage...

http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/mediasmart-server/
images
 
Thanks for the response Adidas4275. I read some reviews of the HP Mediasmart and I have a couple of questions.

Does the drive that comes with the machine count as one of the four hard drive bays, or are there four additional bays. Can I replace the one that comes with the machine? How does the redundancy work... is it more like RAID 1 or RAID 5? Obviously, I'd prefer it be similar to RAID 5, as I don't want to lose half of my storage space.

If a drive goes out, I can simply take out the drive, plug in a new one, and it will rebuild itself? And I can do this while the machine is turned on?

Thank you,
Doug
 
I'd really like to know if you buy the mediasmart if you can migrate everything off the 500gig drive and put in 4 1TB drives instead.

soxfan- you MIGHT want to look into something like the Drobo becuase you mentioned you wanted something that was easy to use and I don't think it gets much easier then the Drobo. I have heard transfer speeds aren't anything to write home about though. That's all that's held me back from getting one to replace my hardware raid setup I'm using now.

Zack
 
CarlsonCustoms said:
I'd really like to know if you buy the mediasmart if you can migrate everything off the 500gig drive and put in 4 1TB drives instead.

soxfan- you MIGHT want to look into something like the Drobo becuase you mentioned you wanted something that was easy to use and I don't think it gets much easier then the Drobo. I have heard transfer speeds aren't anything to write home about though. That's all that's held me back from getting one to replace my hardware raid setup I'm using now.

Zack
Click to expand...

Yes you can change drives with WHS

Drobo is an expensive proprietary piece of junk IMO
I had one for about 1 month....I threw it in the trash instead of selling it because i didnt want other people using something so crappy.
I then built a Server2K3 box with a massive RAID5
Now I run WHS.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Yes you can change drives with WHS

Drobo is an expensive proprietary piece of junk IMO
I had one for about 1 month....I threw it in the trash instead of selling it because i didnt want other people using something so crappy.
I then built a Server2K3 box with a massive RAID5
Now I run WHS.
Click to expand...

Fair enough on the drobo, I have no FIRST hand experience with it but it looked good on paper.

With the data migration would you just pull the 500gig and replace it with the 1TB drive and just run the software restore disc and have it reinstall everything on the new drive? I'd do this while it was brand new btw so no data commited yet.

Zack
 
Well since its the only drive in there and there is no data you would have to do the full install option, a reinstall is for when you lose your OS/boot Drive and you have data on the other drives.
 
Does anybody know what the ratio of redundancy is with WHS? If I choose to have ALL data made redundant, will I lose half of my "storage pool", like Raid0? Or would I only lose 1/4 (if I had 4 drives) of my "storage pool", like Raid5?
 
If you duplicate everything, it require twice the space. The folder duplication function is true backup, i.e. 2 copies stored on separate physical drives. Now WHS does manage backups of other computers intelligently. If there are identical clusters on two of the computers WHS is backing up, it only keeps one copy of that cluster. Microsoft has some excellent technical briefs on WHS. I'm not sure if I saw the link on this forum or Wegotserved, but you can probably find them pretty easily on Microsoft's website.
 
If you duplicate everything it is like RAID1 and have half of advertised storage
 
yes but you dont have to duplicate everything, its not RAID1 but rather selective data redundancy.

you setup shares and you can tell WHS to duplicate that share or not....

i have my documents duplicated but not movies that are archived to the server....
 
I'm starting to wonder if the Mediasmart would be overkill for me. The ONLY thing that will be stored on this device is movies. I would like some form of duplication/redundancy, preferably of the RAID5 variety so I don't lose so much space.
 
soxfandoug said:
I'm starting to wonder if the Mediasmart would be overkill for me. The ONLY thing that will be stored on this device is movies. I would like some form of duplication/redundancy, preferably of the RAID5 variety so I don't lose so much space.
Click to expand...

You dont want to do raid-5 with 1.5Tb drives...you may as well just make weekly/daily backups to another source that is not always powered on...Its MUCH safter than Raid-5, esp with 1.5TB drives where raid-5 can have issues.
 
Justintoxicated said:
You dont want to do raid-5 with 1.5Tb drives...you may as well just make weekly/daily backups to another source that is not always powered on...Its MUCH safter than Raid-5, esp with 1.5TB drives where raid-5 can have issues.
Click to expand...

You know, a lot of people don't care so much about the movies that they'll keep a full offline backup of them. Reripping would suck, but if I get multiple simultaneous drive failures on my 5 disk RAID-5 movie storage share it wouldn't be the end of the world. Everything else though that is important is on another share, raid-1 with backups on an external drive at a bank across town, and one set of DVD's at home and another with family several states away.
 
novadude said:
You know, a lot of people don't care so much about the movies that they'll keep a full offline backup of them. Reripping would suck, but if I get multiple simultaneous drive failures on my 5 disk RAID-5 movie storage share it wouldn't be the end of the world. Everything else though that is important is on another share, raid-1 with backups on an external drive at a bank across town, and one set of DVD's at home and another with family several states away.
Click to expand...

Well when you have a shit ton of movies say 7tb the thought of reripping, remuxing streams, and encoding my movies to WMP/MCE friendly formats becomes a little more than an inconvenience, its a major PITA so having that redundancy is well worth it.
 
RAID5 with big HDDs is just silly... there's a really big chance you'll get an error during rebuilding, resulting in total data loss. Not all RAID controllers deal with those sector read errors equally well, so you need to be really careful there.

Also, Seagate 1.5 TB HDDs are having massive issues, even outside RAID arrays ATM. Best stay away from them for now.
 
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