HTPC storage capability

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doormat

Supreme [H]ardness
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Mar 18, 2000
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I've built my first semblance of an HTPC. The server (also my workstation) has 2x250GB in Raid 1 and some other HDs for system stuff, and my client is a shuttle SFF w/ a GF 4mx with TV out. I'm still working on getting a better TV at this point (right now its a 20" TV, I cant get a bigger one til I move out).

So my goal is to get all my DVDs onto the HD, but its going to take me a whole lot more disk space than I first estimated. Anyone have suggestions on RAID 5 cards? Its not like I need performance, I just need reliability and online capacity expansion (OCE) since I wont have all of my HDs in the beginning, I'll buy more as I need more space.
 
SATA. I saw the 3ware card at newegg, but the 8x sata raid controller is $500, whereas the highpoint is $200. Is it really worth the price delta?
 
Yea, I saw the Toms article but I dont trust it much.

Over at AVS there has been a group of people who noticed problems with the RAIDCore cards, I was originally planning to go with them, but now that they've exposed the problems with it, I'm going to stay away from that for now.

I might just go with the LSI 6x SATA card, it seems to have good performance and it doesnt look like bottom-of-the-barrell type stuff. Having only 6 ports sucks though... I wanted 1.75TB of space at maximum, but with 250GB SATA drives I'm only going to get to 1.25TB. At 8GB per DVD, thats only 150 discs.
 
You could always go with two seperate smaller arrays on, say, 2 4-port cards.
 
Hitachi was said to have released 400GB drives.... maybe they will hit the stores sometime soon? I've been watching those for six months now... about when I can afford them, I'll be ready to stack 6 or 8 in an htpc
 
doormat said:
Yea, I saw the Toms article but I dont trust it much.

Over at AVS there has been a group of people who noticed problems with the RAIDCore cards, I was originally planning to go with them, but now that they've exposed the problems with it, I'm going to stay away from that for now.

I might just go with the LSI 6x SATA card, it seems to have good performance and it doesnt look like bottom-of-the-barrell type stuff. Having only 6 ports sucks though... I wanted 1.75TB of space at maximum, but with 250GB SATA drives I'm only going to get to 1.25TB. At 8GB per DVD, thats only 150 discs.
Click to expand...

you can do less then 8GB per DVD. Study up on it, there are ways to save alot of space and not compramise the quality of the movie itself. Doing away with all the "extras" and storing just the movie on the HD is a start. converting to XviD or DivX is another. Check out HTPCnews forums, there are people getting great quality at only 3-6GB per movie,,,,,,
 
How many dvds are you up to? My current collection is almost at 450. Thats alot of space :eek:
 
Like 25 discs perhaps? Doing my TV seasons slows me down, beecause I scan each of the indv. slim-dvd case covers in.

I have like 75 total.

I'm thinking about compressing.. but I'm lazy.
 
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