My Storage/Backup/Server Woes

[vexion]

[H] has been very kind to me in the past on the computer-building education front, so I thought I could toss you guys a rather open-ended question and ask for your input.

I'm going to law school in August and am toying with the idea of reworking my current home computer situation. Right now my "equipment" includes:

• A gaming desktop with 1TB of storage (almost full)
• A new Lenovo Thinkpad
• A 1TB external HDD

I've never owned a home NAS, or an HTPC, or synced files between PCs or through the cloud. So bear with me here. My goals include:

• More storage for my growing media collection
• Being able to sync documents between my laptop and desktop

Basically, I've never had a laptop before. I'm going to be carrying it with me back and forth to the law school every day, and I want the capacity to take notes in class/outline in the library, then go home in the afternoon and continue outlining/writing memos/whatever on my desktop.

As well, as my current media collection is currently bulging out of the 1TB on my desktop, and I have it backed up on the 1TB external, I'm looking for expansion options.

Somehow, though, this has become a (way) more complicated question then it seemed at first. I could just sync law school docs through Skydrive, Dropbox, or Mozy, and auto-backup. I could buy a new hard drive to chuck into my desktop for more media. I could build a home NAS to which I could back up docs on both PCs AND store media for streaming to my desktop and remote access purposes. I could build an HTPC (I currently have a plasma TV with a WD TV and a DVD player. If I want to watch video files on the big screen I'm just dropping them onto a thumb drive and plugging them into the WD TV. If I want to watch DVDs, I drop them in the DVD player.)

What would you guys suggest? What's the optimal (best combination of cheap, understandable, expandable, whatever criteria you want) solution here? I want to keep my electric bill down, so I'm concerned about the power draw if I built a media server or HTPC to run 24/7. I would also be building a silent one, not a screaming-fan 20-HDD-bay monster.

 

[tonyyy]

So you have the following

Laptop
Desktop(gaming)
WDTV - USB only

Cheapest/easiest solution would be to just pick up one of those

HP Mediasmart WHS Servers that has 4 hard drive bays.

You can install drop box and configure your My Documents on your laptop/desktop to save your sync your documents to drop box and also available on the HP Mediasmart WHS Server.

You can configure WHS to back up whatever files you deem important.

Also I dont know if you have a XBOX 360 or PS3 but you can stream videos from the WHS.

I assume your WDTV only does USB? So it really does not much save you time from having to put media on a usb hard drive and then hook it up to the HDTV.

 

[vexion]

I assume your WDTV only does USB? So it really does not much save you time from having to put media on a usb hard drive and then hook it up to the HDTV.

Yeah, I got it before the WD TV Live came out. And when I hook up my 1TB external, it takes hours to index the files on there. So I usually just drop the movie(s) I want to watch onto a 16GB thumb drive.

Any reason you recommend an HP MediaSmart in particular? It just seems to be on the expensive side. This 1TB Acer server is $300, compared to this 1TB MediaSmart at $500.

 

[vexion]

Also (and here's where my complete incompetence in home servers comes out,) Newegg separates the "Server Systems" category, including the MediaSmart series, from "NAS." Is an HP MediaSmart not a NAS? What are the differences?

 

[vexion]

Bump

 

[smblues]

Im currently reworking my WHS system but it can be a really nice backup/storage solution, though depending on your needs a simpler NAS might be a more economical solution.

What I can say with certainty is that Dropbox works incredibly well keeping my school docs synced between my tablet laptop and my main desktop machine.

Dropbox really is a nice seamless free (for under 2GB) solution.

 

[Dangman]

Any reason you recommend an HP MediaSmart in particular? It just seems to be on the expensive side. This 1TB Acer server is $300, compared to this 1TB MediaSmart at $500.

Personally I'd go with the Acer unless you need the additional multimedia server options and probably better customer support found in the HP Mediasmart. Up to you if the extra $100 is worth it.

Also (and here's where my complete incompetence in home servers comes out,) Newegg separates the "Server Systems" category, including the MediaSmart series, from "NAS." Is an HP MediaSmart not a NAS? What are the differences?

Yeah WHS is technically not a NAS in the sense that you can use WHS for multiple uses such as web serving, transcoding, etc and comes with a fully featured OS whereas a NAS is more or less totally dedicated towards file serving and comes with a stripped down OS. In addition, NASes tends to use lower or lesser hardware such as the ARM CPU. File servers such as WHS tends to use PC or higher performing parts.

 

[vexion]

Thanks! I've got my eyes on building a server, then. I'd rather have the more fleshed-out OS, with the add-ins and everything, and even though I don't currently do any web hosting or transcoding, I'd like to branch out in the future without upgrading hardware.

A couple of quick questions, then:

Is it fairly easy to build a WHS system for noise reduction and low power consumption? This is going to sound dumb, but I'm kind of behind the times on the computer components on the market. I never reeducated myself after the Core i3-7 platforms came out, or the Atom, or anything. Should I hunt around blogs and forums for low-power options that will work well in a home server? Any outright suggestions?

Also, I don't know much about RAID. Is it worth RAIDing a home server? Should I invest in a PCI RAID controller? How do I know which one is best for me?

Thanks again!

 

[Dangman]

Yeah it's pretty easy to build a very quiet and low power WHS setup. However you have to pay more money and be ok with not having much room for HDD expansion (ranges from a max of 1 to 4 drives).

There's tons of links and sites out there for a low power WHS. With that said, the Acer WHS server is a pretty good deal for WHS server. To build a PC server with similar performance and features, you'd have to have to go with pretty shitty parts (mainly the PSU) or live near a Fry's when they have their cheap CPU/mobo combos.

Anyway, here's a quick and easy low cost WHS server:
$106 - AMD Athlon X2 245 CPU + Biostar A785G3 AM3 AMD 785G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
$55 - Patriot 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$50 - Corsair 400CX 400W PSU
$43 - Cooler Master Elite 335 RC-335-KKN1-GP ATX Case
---
Total: $254 plus tax

Choose whatever drive has the best $ per gig ratio.

Not worth using RAID with WHS. Maybe RAID 1 for the OS drive but that's pretty much it. No PCI RAID controller is worth buying. Better go with a PCI-E card. In addition, you have to make sure that the RAID controller has a dedicated XOR engine. True hardware RAID cards tends to cost around $300 to $350 for the lowest end. For RAID 1, no need whatsoever for a RAID card. The onboard RAID of many mobos would be OK for RAID 1.

 

[vexion]

Appreciate all the help! You're making it harder for me to talk myself out of building a home server/buying a sound system instead of saving for law school. :/

 

[blargsauce]

Is it fairly easy to build a WHS system for noise reduction and low power consumption?

Choose whatever drive has the best $ per gig ratio.

WD greens are slightly higher $/GB but will save more power, and if you keep them running long enough, they should also save you money in the long run