Out Of Space....

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bkershaw

n00b
Joined
Dec 16, 2009
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I currently have a HTPC with 4 TB (2x2tb drives) a old Dell media server 4TB (2x2 TB) Both of which are maxed out space wise my media files seem to be getting bigger and bigger i am going through about 6 TB a year of media. What are my solutions do I begin making a rack server (seems crazy I don't have space for all this) I was looking into this http://www.livedrive.com/features/packages But still not sure what direction to head in. I currently have in my home

Gaming machine (sandy bridge i7 build)
HTPC for living room
Media Server
MacBook
and in the process of building a budget for a 2nd HTPC for my bedroom
 
What's stopping you from building a low energy networked file server with a case capable of holding several (more than four) hard drives and picking up two or three more 2TB drives for storage?
 
I would invest in a blueray burner, or even tape. I'm sure 90% of that data is what the industry considers "stale" and can be moved off-server.

I pay around $550 for 20 LTO3 tapes from CDW a month for my backups at work. LTO3 tapes are 800GB/1,400GB, and you can get a cheap drive off of ebay that will work fine for you.

If you're mister moneybags, you can do another option that I did at work, which is set up a teir 2 storage server. Check out a device called POGO running openE and ext3. 24 2TB drives = nice storage, if you really need to keep all that data online.

Another option (cheaper option, also did this at my work) is look up a device called a DROBO. They have an 8 bay unit that you can throw 2TB drives into, and has NFS, USB 2.0, and iSCSI interfaced on the back of the unit. It just doesn't have NAS capabilities, so you need to actually hook it to a computer and run their software to share it out.
 
I dont want media laying around and every time i want to find a specific song, movie, pic than I need to go hunting through them looking for it. I want it all digital on a machine. Im not mr money bags lol I have some spending money but I just see a home server project costing about a grand and being full in about 2-3yrs and than having to build more where a off site storage network with unlimited space seems cheaper for me in the long run. What would be a draw back to that site i listed?
 
Stay away from Drobo. It's dreadfully slow and expensive for what you get. It has some cool features, but it's not worth the cost to headache ratio.
 
sounds to me like you should just build yourself a WHS and toss in a bunch of 2TB drives. right off the bat alot of motherboards can handle 6 sata ports. if you need more you can add a few sata cards later on. even with 6 port motherboard you can have a 10tb server (1 os drive + 5 pool drives). most full tower cases will hold more than 10 drives.
 
bkershaw said:
What would be a draw back to that site i listed?
Click to expand...

I'm always skeptical about unlimited services. Shoot them an email and ask if your account would be flagged, limited, or shut-down if you uploaded an additional 6TB of unique data per year, so 12TB total after year 2, 18TB total after year 3, etc. Don't be surprised if they say they're sorry, and that their service isn't suited for customers with such large storage requirements. These are businesses that need to turn a profit after all.

If you do email them, post their response here.
 
Tape is not the answer for adding to this kind of storage as it is far too expensive to implement and the OP's data is not mission critical.

Get a rackmount-style server case capable of handling 10+ 3.5" drives and start investing in some more 2TB WD Green drives, do some RAID 5/6, set up samba on windows (NFS is only handy for non-windows systems and is not as quick to setup) and you'll be on your way!
 
If you don't go overboard with the server hardware, the most expensive position will be the harddrives.

I really doubt that a cloud storage service will be less expensive per GiB than consumer harddrives.
 
Are you willing to lose data if (when) a drive fails?
If not, are you willing to go to the trouble/expense of RAID?
I have seen 2TB drives for $80.
3TB drives are starting to arrive in the marketplace, but still more $/TB than 2TB drives.
 
Supermicro do a LGA1156 board with 6 SATA and 8 SAS ports and remote management capability, X8SI6-F it's a bit expensive but IMO a good choice for a storage server.

Pair that up with a case with lots of drive bays and you have a storage server that should serve you for years to come.
 
bkershaw said:
I dont want media laying around and every time i want to find a specific song, movie, pic than I need to go hunting through them looking for it. I want it all digital on a machine. Im not mr money bags lol I have some spending money but I just see a home server project costing about a grand and being full in about 2-3yrs and than having to build more where a off site storage network with unlimited space seems cheaper for me in the long run. What would be a draw back to that site i listed?
Click to expand...

roll your own server and use unRAID for the OS. I love mine. currently moving more stuff onto it, unfortunately I had an external backup HD die on me before I could offload it's contents to my unRAID server:mad:

PS if you decide to go with unRAID PM me and I'll sell you the pro license cheap(er), I got two on a special deal back when and just have never built the second server. So the USB key just collects dust.
 
You could also use Fedora (12 or 14) and Amahi for the server. Uses Greyhole as its storage pooling engine and working fine for me. Granted I only have 3.75TB of pooled drive space but still.
 
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