Setting up a file server, need equipment/raid help

BTW, I have no idea how to set up or use a VM.

You're itching for an e-fight aren't you Okie! ;)
 
Lyle,

1) Yep, advantage WHS.
2) Yep. It is easy to build a WHS machine.
3) Yep, it is indeed easy to get a server into the house this way, especially if you can build your own or throw it on an old machine.
4) YES, and I will be picking one of those up some day soon.

And with SP1 I might even trust it. OTOH I would be keeping a close eye on the WHS forums, where there is never a lack of people telling the other side of the story. ;)
 
jcolby...

I took a bit of time to investigate who you are and what you do. I did some research on the books you wrote in and the reviews that came with them. It has become quite apparent that with all your wonderful experience you have shrunk your view of how things should be done to a very narrow view (I guess that comes with database performance tuning). It is exceedingly dangerous to be that way. We have lots of people (contractors) at our work place that argue/debate like you do. They come in "guns a blazing" and don't really seem to give a shit about integrating it into the current system or even working within the current system. They just seem to know "best" and everyone else is wrong.

But back on topic. I do agree that when you compare very large storage systems of WHS w/ duplication and RAID6 that it can tip in the favor of RAID6. However, you seem to not have talked about backups of data. Remember, RAID should NEVER be considerd a backup...EVER. Too many people in the past months here have fallen in that trap and they got burned.

Once you grow to very large systems WHS shines again. WHS allows you bascially have backup that is pretty close to a true backup with duplication. The only fault is the backups are in the "same box". However, once you graduate to massive amounts of data (like Ockie) WHS shines again. You just build a second cheap server box. You can then afford to turn off duplication on significant portions of your data since it is being backed up to the new WHS server. Therefore in the case of 20 drives versus 12 drives in RAID6, it would be better to run 2 machines having a true and seperate backup of your data.

Honestly RAID5/6 does have a few cases where it can shine above WHS...but in the total "package", WHS has a many more positives than negatives. It is a growth oriented OS which is what home enthusiasts usually need.
 
Blue Fox,

WHS and raid cards play swimmingly together. MS does not claim otherwise, they just don't want to support raid for a product aimed at grandma, which is perfectly understandable.

And it IS aimed at grandma, NOT enthusiasts. MS is trying to sell a retail product that ANYONE (thus my "grandma" references) can just plug in and use, and they have succeeded after a rocky start.

Meanwhile plenty of enthusiasts do use it and love it.

Nowhere in all of my posts have I ever said it wasn't a good product. It is a shell over Windows 2003, and Windows 2003 is probably the most stable product MS has ever produced. What I said is that as a "redundancy solution" it is much less wonderful. It does NOW appear to at least work for that without destroying your data, but file duplication is a ton of work for what attempts to handle a "raid 1" solution.

Raid 1 is a mirror. What is written here is also written over there. What do you think "file duplication" is? What is written here, is also written over there. If this is so easy to do, why isn't it a part of Windows already? In fact of course, it already is, Windows has had software raid at the OS level for years, and it works just fine. Not as fine as a hardware solution, but "fine enough"

What it doesn't do is allow yanking and adding disks of disparate sized and shapes. THAT is what "drive extender" is designed to do. In order to sell that concept (which is a WONDERFUL concept) you have to also come up with some way to make the data safe. You can't sell a system to grandma to hold the family pictures, and then destroy all of those photos when a disk dies.

So an entire, rather extensive shell was written to plunk down over Windows 2003 which implements all this stuff.

Being a programmer, I am aware of statistics that say that for every 20-30 lines of code, there is a bug. This is a statistic that has held since computers were invented. I have no idea how many lines of code are required for WHS but it is quite a few. That is the reason for the old "never buy in till SP1" thing. Needless to say, there are plenty of bugs left to be discovered.

And of course, there are "gotchas" with this whole "file duplication" thing, gotchas that just don't go away.

Take WHS and a single disk. No file duplication possible of course.

Take WHS and a single 500 g drive. Now add another 250g disk. Only 250 gigs of duplication are possible. WTFO? And does "grandma" know that?

Take WHS with a 500 gig drive and add a terabyte drive. Only 500 gigs of file duplication are possible (actually a bit less I think). Now add another terabyte drive. Now you can have a terabyte of file duplication, but you still have 500 gigs that cannot be duplicated.

So yea, file duplication kinda sorta works, and it works swimmingly IF you keep pairs of the same sized drives. However if you add a 500g and a 250g and a 300g and a tbyte, you just cannot possibly know what is going to end up duplicated and what isn't. Well, maybe you can, I don't know because I don't do that. I use real raid to handle redundancy and let WHS do what it does best.

And the old "rebalance shuffle", has that been fixed? I truly do not know because I don't participate in that shuffle but in times past there were endless complaint about the disk drives hammering away endlessly (in some cases LITERALLY working non stop for WEEKS at a time), moving those file duplicates from this disk to that, and then over there... that'll wear your disks out in a hurry.

So there are all of these issues because of a kludge "mirror" system. And "grandma" hasn't a clue that it is entirely possible that some of her precious photos STILL are not duplicated. Or can't figure out why she has 250 gigs of space left but can't use it for duplication.

You do know that you can add "volumes" residing on a raid array to WHS and it will use it's drive extender to make it into a single "drive", but redundancy is handled below the OS. So now you can have a 20 tbyte "single drive" sitting on (10) 2 gig volumes, sitting on a raid array, with WHS handling the drive extender but NOT the file duplication.

"The best of both worlds".

Anyway, enough already. WHS is wonderful and of course will promptly replace every raid system on the planet because of all of its advantages. Well... not my raid systems, but all the other raid systems of course. ;)

In the meantime I use WHS, in a VM (which is not supported) on a RAID array (which is not supported).

And I absolutely love WHS for what I use it for. It is one tool in my toolbox.
 
Nothing stops you from using RAID with WHS, it just defeats the whole purpose of the drive pooling that it does. If you have one large RAID array, it isn't happy when you want to utilize duplication. Sure, you could use 2 RAID arrays, but you might as well just not use WHS at that point.

I still love the performance I get with my Areca 1280ML though. Not everyone has $1k+ to spend on a RAID card however. I run Windows Server 2003 on my main file server and Windows Server 2008 on my video encoding machine, but they are both overkill for a file server and considerably more expensive (I got my license for both for free however). I can't actually run anything but a server OS on my video encoding machine, so I'm kinda stuck with that.

Just don't forget that RAID still has its problems (doesn't stop me from using it though) and that isn't a substitute for backups. I think that a Windows Server 2003 machine as the primary file server and a WHS machine for the backup will work well. Ockie should be proof alone that WHS scales well and isn't a niche product.
 
Trepidati0n said:
jcolby...

I took a bit of time to investigate who you are and what you do. ...snip... They come in "guns a blazing" ... snip...
Click to expand...

ROTFLMAO. Just call me John Wayne.:D

It seems I have been exposed?:eek:

I am just a little (well, a fairly large) guy who has been doing this stuff for a long time. I too am simply presenting another side of things.

It has been an interesting debate but I suppose now that I have been "outed" I had best ride off into the sunset eh? Can I stop by the general store on the way out of town to pick up some ammo for the next gunfight?

;)
 
jcolby - I see no reason for you to leave this thread unless you want to.

I still don't buy the "grandma" argument, although I see where you are going with it. But it's way beyond grandma, I've always considered myself somewhat [H]ardcore to various extremes on the PC side of things (overclocking, bleeding edge, etc at times, but I stay up on things). As experience - at work I have a couple of years of managing a Server 2003 install set up by a pro. (He still comes into our office for bigger maintenance.) I don't have any more experience beyond that on servers or know a thing about programming.

Where I'm headed is that with WHS I finally overcame my need to know where all my data was on each and every hard drive. My wife would add a new show to record and not tell me, great, now I have to find a place for this. It was tedious, and I was always running out of room on a drive - frustrated that my recorded shows had outgrown a hard drive of a certain size. Now I have to split them...sure there is RAID 5 and JBOD, and I just about went out and bought an expensive RAID controller. But at that time WHS went retail and I bought a copy. I had tried the beta but only had one spare hard drive at that time to test it out on so I didn't really get it then.

But as I set up my WHS box and got it going I also realized that another personal hang-up was being challenged - the need to have everything fast. Gigabit is the bottleneck, and I realized it was ok to accept this. The RAID 5 array didn't need to happen, it wasn't going to improve anything. I bucked this feeling by rebuilding my original WHS build (A64/3200+) and replaced it with the current E6600 (which was even overclocked to 3.3ghz initially) thinking it would improve something. It didn't, and I can't tell a bit between the two setups, maybe RDP is slightly faster but I hardly ever use it.

And I hardly ever use RDP or even the WHS console now because WHS just does its own thing. Yes, I know it's not perfect yet and about the pre-PP1 stuff. But it's taken a burden of background chatter out of my mind. It doesn't need anything except I occasionally need to plug another drive into it when it tells me to. This is different than "grandma", she doesn't know about the issues you cited. I do know, but the great part is that I don't need to worry about it.

So - some of us get it, we just don't want to have to think about it in our spare time. The OS can be busy thinking about where my files are. I know I sound like a Mac user here, but WHS has been a freeing experience.
 
this has been a fast moving thread with lots of good info and good opinions...

too many times these debates get out of hand, you all did a good job not letting that happen...


this is what makes [H]ardforum [H]ard

oh p.s. i love my WHS and want to build on for my parents, inlaws and such

i hate fixing their computers with out any real backups....
 
Adidas4275 said:
...snip..

oh p.s. i love my WHS and want to build on for my parents, inlaws and such

i hate fixing their computers with out any real backups....
Click to expand...

And that is where remote desktop comes in. You can set up VNC or RD on not only the WHS but each of their desktops. Then (assuming that the computer boots) you can remote right in to manage things for them.

I do this every day for my clients. I live in NC but my clients are in PA and CT. I use remote desktop, VNC and GoToMyPC to actually see what is happening on computers in another state. I used to have to actually go to their offices, but with the internet and high speed access at both ends, I now live where I choose and still can do my work in their systems.

You can do the same for your parents and siblings.

One key to making this all painless is Hamachi, which is a VPN (virtual private network). That allows you to establish an encrypted channel between your desktop and almost any other computer. Hamachi is very simple to set up, and "punches through" firewalls without you having to know how to do that stuff.

Over that channel you can use RD if the remote system can host the server, or VNC if it can't.

This too is a little scary the first time but it, like WHS, can empower you to do things right from home that you would never be able to do otherwise.

Cool stuff, highly recommended.

Oh, and BTW, if you are going to handle the relative's maintenance, MAKE them get a router if they don't have one already. That places a hardware firewall between them and the wild west internet. Makes your job much easier.

Oh, and I was kidding about riding off into the sunset. John Wayne would not approve.
 
jcolby said:
Fascinating, why? I normally use Raid 6 because of something I read somewhere about the failings of RAID 5. I have never found RAID of any sort to be a PITA, so I am curious as to why you find these two modes to be so? It has always "just worked" for me. I am using Raid 5 on one of my servers only until I can get another disk to bring it up to RAID 6 (next month probably). I bought 6 drives, using them raid 5 ATM, and will add two more to make them Raid 6 and a hot spare.

True RAID with hot spare is truly "set and forget" though of course at the expense of additional drives. My controller even sends me an email if there are any problems. That has only ever happened once however. One drive died, the RAID 6 continued on (I did not have a hot spare), and I ordered another drive. Two days later I popped it in, the controller rebuilt the array and I went back to work. Total time to fix about 30 minutes to order the drive and another 30 minutes to remove the dead / insert the new.

I have had my two RAID servers for almost 6 years and spent a total of 1 hour on maintenance of the RAID itself. Works for me.
Click to expand...

I prefer RAID 10 over RAID 5 or 6 for VMs and server applications for the performance, the degraded performance, and the fast rebuild time. It's a PITA when your array is degraded, you're running three to five VMs, and your performance is through the floor. Degraded RAID10 still gives me great performance, and doesn't cause any such hit to productivity. I prefer RAID 10 for low end business storage as well, but serious storage gets 50 or 60. Don't get me wrong, I like RAID. I just prefer different levels.

If you're going back to RAID 5/6 vs WHS, then you already know from my first post I don't trust array expansion enough to use it 2-4 times a year regardless of controller. It's just the same as the trust issue you have with WHS' duplication. For personal file storage, it's all personal preference based on the feature set.
 
jcolby said:
It has been an interesting debate but I suppose now that I have been "outed" I had best ride off into the sunset eh? Can I stop by the general store on the way out of town to pick up some ammo for the next gunfight?

;)
Click to expand...

You might want to skip that store, I bought all the ammo on the last fire sale :p

MrMike said:
If you're going back to RAID 5/6 vs WHS, then you already know from my first post I don't trust array expansion enough to use it 2-4 times a year regardless of controller. It's just the same as the trust issue you have with WHS' duplication. For personal file storage, it's all personal preference based on the feature set.
Click to expand...

You said it. Raid is not the end all solution and never has been. I am a big fan of raid but it's never to be trusted as a secure data solution, raid arrays do fail and will fail more in the future with incompatible drive types due to the nature of the latest controllers and will also fail with the increasing of storage medium capacities. I had a 24tb array freeze up on me during my 6-8th expansion, that was when I threw in the towel and moved over to WHS where I can control my environment better. I didn't give up on the first try, this is one of the dozen times that I've come across a RAID array that corrupts or terminates upon expansions. This is why companies such as mine do full backups before you do any raid modifications or expansions, it's also a reason why we have tape libraries to back up these arrays.

I recommend raid to all my clients and I am a big fan of raid, however, once you have experienced storage matrixes (whs barely touches the tip of the ice berg of this technology), you will know its the wave of the future. Think of it more like cloud computing for drive storage systems, distributed computing is now only starting to play with this concept and the results are amazing.

jcolby said:
Blue Fox,

And it IS aimed at grandma, NOT enthusiasts. MS is trying to sell a retail product that ANYONE (thus my "grandma" references) can just plug in and use, and they have succeeded after a rocky start.
Click to expand...

I disagree, in fact, I would say CentOS or even some of the latest versions of Linux is even easier to install than WHS or Windows based operating systems.

If you are limiting your experience to WHS appliances, I can agree, but the buck stops when it comes to a customized system with full user based install.

Hell, you might just as well say that windows 2003 is aimed at grandma then while you are at it. If you can install an operating system, you can configure raid... going back to what I said about linux flavors, most of them have the raid drivers integrated, so thats a step you can even skip.

jcolby said:
Raid 1 is a mirror. What is written here is also written over there. What do you think "file duplication" is? What is written here, is also written over there. If this is so easy to do, why isn't it a part of Windows already? In fact of course, it already is, Windows has had software raid at the OS level for years, and it works just fine. Not as fine as a hardware solution, but "fine enough"
Click to expand...

I think the one thing you are too fixed on is that you keep calling this raid. It is in no way shape or form raid or any function of raid. Yes, it does make two copies, no, i does not make two copies on the same target as always. Your argument could be said that raid 1 is the same as a user copying and pasting a file... thats about the effect WHS is.


jcolby said:
Being a programmer, I am aware of statistics that say that for every 20-30 lines of code, there is a bug. This is a statistic that has held since computers were invented. I have no idea how many lines of code are required for WHS but it is quite a few. That is the reason for the old "never buy in till SP1" thing. Needless to say, there are plenty of bugs left to be discovered.
Click to expand...

Same can be said for raid controllers and raid drivers, keep that in mind. If you don't believe me, just search for compatibility on these forums. You seem to only focus narrowly minded on one area rather than looking at your own product you are arguing for.

jcolby said:
Take WHS and a single disk. No file duplication possible of course.

Take WHS and a single 500 g drive. Now add another 250g disk. Only 250 gigs of duplication are possible. WTFO? And does "grandma" know that?

Take WHS with a 500 gig drive and add a terabyte drive. Only 500 gigs of file duplication are possible (actually a bit less I think). Now add another terabyte drive. Now you can have a terabyte of file duplication, but you still have 500 gigs that cannot be duplicated.
Click to expand...

Lets use your own ammunition on your own argument.

Take RAID and a single disk. No raid possible.

Take RAID and a single 500g drive. Now add another 250g disk. Only 250 gigs of RAID1 is possible. WTF?

Take RAID with a 500 gig drive and add a terabyte drive. Only 500 gigs of duplication is possible (actually a bit less) RAID1. Now add another terabyte drive. Now you can have still only 500gigs of duplication or if you run RAID 5, you can have 1tb. But you still have 500-1000 gigs that can not be duplicated.

jcolby said:
So yea, file duplication kinda sorta works, and it works swimmingly IF you keep pairs of the same sized drives.
Click to expand...

So yeah, RAID duplication kinda sorta works, and it works swimmingly IF you keep pairs of the same sized drives.

jcolby said:
However if you add a 500g and a 250g and a 300g and a tbyte, you just cannot possibly know what is going to end up duplicated and what isn't. Well, maybe you can, I don't know because I don't do that. I use real raid to handle redundancy and let WHS do what it does best.
Click to expand...

If you added a 500gb, 250, 300, and a 1tb, under raid you will have either several segmented arrays or you can enjoy 1tb of storage depending which array format you choose. You still will not know what is going to be duplicated other than a segment of each drive for size matching will be used in duplication.

jcolby said:
And the old "rebalance shuffle", has that been fixed? I truly do not know because I don't participate in that shuffle but in times past there were endless complaint about the disk drives hammering away endlessly (in some cases LITERALLY working non stop for WEEKS at a time), moving those file duplicates from this disk to that, and then over there... that'll wear your disks out in a hurry.
Click to expand...

This is my point, most of the users making these WHS comments aren't even aware of the fixes or the solutions to the problems they briefly experienced or heard about.

jcolby said:
So there are all of these issues because of a kludge "mirror" system. And "grandma" hasn't a clue that it is entirely possible that some of her precious photos STILL are not duplicated. Or can't figure out why she has 250 gigs of space left but can't use it for duplication.
Click to expand...

Actually, this is a wrong assertion, when you enable file duplication, you would enable it on a share, which would duplicate all the files within that share. It's not a drag and drop and pray it gets there or gets duplicated as you so like to comment that it is.

jcolby said:
You do know that you can add "volumes" residing on a raid array to WHS and it will use it's drive extender to make it into a single "drive", but redundancy is handled below the OS. So now you can have a 20 tbyte "single drive" sitting on (10) 2 gig volumes, sitting on a raid array, with WHS handling the drive extender but NOT the file duplication.

"The best of both worlds".
Click to expand...

And this is why I don't understand the bashing, a few of use are adding raid arrays to storage pools and have had great results, which is why we enjoy WHS so much, it gives us even more flexibility.

jcolby said:
Anyway, enough already. WHS is wonderful and of course will promptly replace every raid system on the planet because of all of its advantages. Well... not my raid systems, but all the other raid systems of course. ;)
Click to expand...

WHS isn't a business system replacement, this is where storage server will evolve and enterprise matrixes will take place.
 
Okie,

I am not bashing anything. I have said over and over and OVER (and over) that WHS is a good product that does some things very well, and other things not so well. Data duplication IMHO is one of the "not so well" things it tries to do. Saying that is not "bashing", it is simply accepting that it does some particular thing poorly.

That's about like saying I am "bashing" the old VW bug when I say it doesn't go over a hundred miles an hour easily if at all. I am just pointing out a fact.

WHS TRIES to accomplish data duplication, and it succeeds. It is just not particularly good at it. Saying that is NOT bashing.

And you are correct, WHS is not a business storage replacement, but TONS of small businesses are trying to figure out how to make it one. "Raid underneath" can go a long way towards actually making WHS a very useful, and much more robust small business tool. Of course it not a "grandma" system anymore, I understand and acknowledge that, but it is taking two tools and using them together to create "more".
 
I have got to say that I have learned quite a lot here :). I want to thank everyone that has responded so far, your help is very very much appreciated. I live in a tiny tiny apt (335 Sq Ft) and have an absolute ton of DVD's, just shy of 600 that are all sitting in a huge Rubbermade tub. My main goal is to get them all ripped so I can get the discs put into storage and out of my tiny living room :p.

I have quite a few that are ripped right now (365GB's worth) and the average size is between 3.8 - 4.4GB's (I strip them down to just video and menu) so I figure I'm going to need around 2.5TB's right off the bat. I currently have what I have ripped on an external 750 that makes me a little nervous as there is no backup which is the 2nd reason I want to build this media server. I just want to note that I will not have anything on this media server that is earthshakingly vital to me. If I loose a drive or 6, I will just have to re-rip the discs and go through the RMA process for the dead drives.

I just bought an Antec 900 case from NewEgg which has placement for 9 drives which is what I am looking at using, 8 new WD 1TB green drives and 1 old Samsung 500GB drive. I figure that this case will allow for adequate cooling and the price was right at $60 shipped. For additional cooling the thought of putting the drives in Vantec swap cages has crossed my mind but that’d be an additional $360 so it’s just a thought.

As I said before I currently have a P4 2.8 system that uses an Abit IC7-G board that uses PCI and has no PCI-E. I am a bit embarrassed to ask this but is this card both a PCI and PCI-E card?

If the above card is PCI and gets approval from the rest of you this is what I am looking at for the final product.

Antec 900 case
Corsair CMPSU-620HX PSU
Abit IC7-G
Intel P4 2.8C
1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
(1) 500GB Samsung HD (OS)
(8) 1TB WD Green HDD’s*
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (8 port SATA card)
Windows Home Server
Some random optical drive that I'll only have installed for the OS installation

*Possibility of placing drives in Vantec swap cages.

The total cost of this little adventure is going to be right around $1,300 wo/ the swap cages, $1,700 w/ the cages.

Any additional thoughts?
 
daphatgrant said:
I have got to say that I have learned quite a lot here :). I want to thank everyone that has responded so far, your help is very very much appreciated. I live in a tiny tiny apt (335 Sq Ft) and have an absolute ton of DVD's, just shy of 600 that are all sitting in a huge Rubbermade tub. My main goal is to get them all ripped so I can get the discs put into storage and out of my tiny living room :p.

I have quite a few that are ripped right now (365GB's worth) and the average size is between 3.8 - 4.4GB's (I strip them down to just video and menu) so I figure I'm going to need around 2.5TB's right off the bat. I currently have what I have ripped on an external 750 that makes me a little nervous as there is no backup which is the 2nd reason I want to build this media server. I just want to note that I will not have anything on this media server that is earthshakingly vital to me. If I loose a drive or 6, I will just have to re-rip the discs and go through the RMA process for the dead drives.

I just bought an Antec 900 case from NewEgg which has placement for 9 drives which is what I am looking at using, 8 new WD 1TB green drives and 1 old Samsung 500GB drive. I figure that this case will allow for adequate cooling and the price was right at $60 shipped. For additional cooling the thought of putting the drives in Vantec swap cages has crossed my mind but that’d be an additional $360 so it’s just a thought.

As I said before I currently have a P4 2.8 system that uses an Abit IC7-G board that uses PCI and has no PCI-E. I am a bit embarrassed to ask this but is this card both a PCI and PCI-E card?

If the above card is PCI and gets approval from the rest of you this is what I am looking at for the final product.

Antec 900 case
Corsair CMPSU-620HX PSU
Abit IC7-G
Intel P4 2.8C
1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
(1) 500GB Samsung HD (OS)
(8) 1TB WD Green HDD’s*
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (8 port SATA card)
Windows Home Server
Some random optical drive that I'll only have installed for the OS installation

*Possibility of placing drives in Vantec swap cages.

The total cost of this little adventure is going to be right around $1,300 wo/ the swap cages, $1,700 w/ the cages.

Any additional thoughts?
Click to expand...


You can save yourself time on re-ripping by uploading all those videos to me and I'll "store" them for you :p

Your configuration looks good, but my recomendation would be to use the largest hard drive possible for the OS drive.
 
daphatgrant said:
My main goal is to get them all ripped so I can get the discs put into storage and out of my tiny living room :p.
Click to expand...

Let's back up a bit and stop discussing specifics and discuss strategy. Everyone who has a lot of DVDs has the same problem. I solved mine by using MyMovies.

MyMovies is a two part system, where the first part is a database application that stores the information about the movie being ripped, as well as the storage locations of the movies. MyMovies also provides a tool for doing the ripping itself (with the help of AnyDVD). It is a tad klunky but it works. the nice part about it is that you just tell it where to rip to and it does so. It creates the directory, does the ripping, looks up information (cover art, actors etc) in it's proprietary database out on the internet and downloads it into its local database. I can't discuss the "movie only" part because I actually rip the whole thing. We like to use the subtitles (getting old and hard of hearing ;)

The second part of MyMovies is an "add-in" to Media Center that allows you to see and play the movies inside of Media Center.

I am NOT pushing MyMovies, I am just noting a "solution" for this rather generic problem. There are other very similar solutions out there.

What MyMovies does (and the others as well I suppose) is record WHERE on your system each movie is stored, i.e. the share and the subdirectory. MyMovies CREATES the subdirectory as it rips the movies, so it "knows" where to go to get it.

What this means is that you do not need a single large storage pool, you can simply throw a bunch of disks on ANY system, share them, then start ripping your movies using MyMovies. As the disk fills up, tell MyMovies to use the next share.

It is slightly, but ONLY slightly less convenient than something like WHS where there is a single large share that keeps growing.

This is in fact the system that I use. I have a large RAID server (PLEASE DO NOT START RAID BASHING AGAIN) up in my office. It serves up shares which I point MyMovies to as I am ripping. I only have to tell MyMovies where to Rip to the first time and from that point (until I tell it a new location) it puts all the movies it is ripping on that share.

So basically, RAID or no RAID, WHS or no WHS, a solution like MyMovies allows you to do the ripping and place them out on ANY SHARE.

Note that I am not discussing the pros and cons of WHS or RAID, I am simply discussing a solution for the ripping, storage and playing of DVDs. This type of solution really doesn't care where the storage is, but it has to be one or more shares that MyMovies can see.

So, if you love WHS, by all means use that. If you love raid, then do that and share volumes on a raid platform somewhere.

This thread has had a lot of "pros and cons" of using WHS and / or RAID to make the storage of the movies (and other files) more reliable. I have no interest in what any individual out there does in that regard, I do what I know and trust.

Using an application like MyMovies you can build RAID 1 arrays and share the entire thing, then fill it up. Build another, rinse and repeat.

Or you can use WHS and let it do the file duplication.

Or you could build RAID1 volumes, feed them to WHS and not use WHS file duplication.

Or you could build RAID 5 storage, feed it to WHS. Etc. Etc.

There are many paths to making the storage "redundant". In the end, NONE of that is true backup (as has been stated here so vociferously. However a true backup of DVDs if you have any form of redundancy is probably not such a pressing issue.

I hope this has helped, and I hope this will not start the WHS / RAID "debate" all over again.
 
Ockie said:
You can save yourself time on re-ripping by uploading all those videos to me and I'll "store" them for you :p
Click to expand...
I'd love to but I'd probably get smacked by Time Warner Cable for ganking bandwidth :p.

Ockie said:
Your configuration looks good, but my recomendation would be to use the largest hard drive possible for the OS drive.
Click to expand...
I'll add another 1TB drive for the OS then for a total of (9) 1TB drives.

Any thoughts on the Vantec swap cages? Kyle seems to love them which is one of the reasons I thought of them.
 
daphatgrant said:
Any thoughts on the Vantec swap cages? Kyle seems to love them which is one of the reasons I thought of them.
Click to expand...

How much are eight or nine of those cages going to run? Wouldn't it be more economical to join the Norco 4020 club? :p

Although the one I got shipped with jet engine delta fans, but it's not too bad getting it from mwave on ebay with cashback. I had six quiet 80mm fans sitting around.
 
jcolby said:
Let's back up a bit and stop discussing specifics and discuss strategy...
Click to expand...

I appreciate the info that you have provided an absolute ton. Like I said I have learned quite a bit regarding data storage in the last few days :p. I will absolutely look into MyMovies, so far everything I have has been ripped using Clone DVD and turned into .ISO's
 
MrMike said:
How much are eight or nine of those cages going to run? Wouldn't it be more economical to join the Norco 4020 club? :p

Although the one I got shipped with jet engine delta fans, but it's not too bad getting it from mwave on ebay with cashback. I had six quiet 80mm fans sitting around.
Click to expand...

I think right around $360 for 9 swap cages.

<goes to find out what a Norco 4020 is> :p

... ... ...

<comes back from looking up Norco 4020>

DAMN IT! :mad: :p

That is a pretty cool device... might have to find another use for the Antec 900.
 
daphatgrant said:
I think right around $360 for 9 swap cages.

<goes to find out what a Norco 4020 is> :p
Click to expand...

Wow, yeah, you should get a Norco 4020 dude. Mine was $311 from mwave/techtreasure on ebay, shipped. Before 25% cashback.
 
One other thing I just wanted to confirm is that that SATA card is indeed a PCI card not a PCI express card and that sending data from 8 SATA2 drives through that PCI slot isn't going to cause issues.
 
daphatgrant said:
I have got to say that I have learned quite a lot here :). I want to thank everyone that has responded so far, your help is very very much appreciated. I live in a tiny tiny apt (335 Sq Ft) and have an absolute ton of DVD's, just shy of 600 that are all sitting in a huge Rubbermade tub. My main goal is to get them all ripped so I can get the discs put into storage and out of my tiny living room :p.

I have quite a few that are ripped right now (365GB's worth) and the average size is between 3.8 - 4.4GB's (I strip them down to just video and menu) so I figure I'm going to need around 2.5TB's right off the bat. I currently have what I have ripped on an external 750 that makes me a little nervous as there is no backup which is the 2nd reason I want to build this media server. I just want to note that I will not have anything on this media server that is earthshakingly vital to me. If I loose a drive or 6, I will just have to re-rip the discs and go through the RMA process for the dead drives.

I just bought an Antec 900 case from NewEgg which has placement for 9 drives which is what I am looking at using, 8 new WD 1TB green drives and 1 old Samsung 500GB drive. I figure that this case will allow for adequate cooling and the price was right at $60 shipped. For additional cooling the thought of putting the drives in Vantec swap cages has crossed my mind but that’d be an additional $360 so it’s just a thought.

As I said before I currently have a P4 2.8 system that uses an Abit IC7-G board that uses PCI and has no PCI-E. I am a bit embarrassed to ask this but is this card both a PCI and PCI-E card?

If the above card is PCI and gets approval from the rest of you this is what I am looking at for the final product.

Antec 900 case
Corsair CMPSU-620HX PSU
Abit IC7-G
Intel P4 2.8C
1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
(1) 500GB Samsung HD (OS)
(8) 1TB WD Green HDD’s*
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (8 port SATA card)
Windows Home Server
Some random optical drive that I'll only have installed for the OS installation

*Possibility of placing drives in Vantec swap cages.

The total cost of this little adventure is going to be right around $1,300 wo/ the swap cages, $1,700 w/ the cages.

Any additional thoughts?
Click to expand...

That supermicro card is a PCI-X not PCI-express....that said it will run in a PCI slot which myself and others here do, and it works quite well.
 
daphatgrant said:
One other thing I just wanted to confirm is that that SATA card is indeed a PCI card not a PCI express card and that sending data from 8 SATA2 drives through that PCI slot isn't going to cause issues.
Click to expand...

The easiest wat to do this is to look closely at the photos. Notice that this specific card has a VERY long back plane connector. That is a 64 bit PCIX, definitely not PCI.

If you are truly looking for PCI then you need to look here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...escription=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=
 
Wow, I didn't know PCIX could runin a PCI slot. Learn something new every day.
 
daphatgrant said:
I appreciate the info that you have provided an absolute ton. Like I said I have learned quite a bit regarding data storage in the last few days :p. I will absolutely look into MyMovies, so far everything I have has been ripped using Clone DVD and turned into .ISO's
Click to expand...

I would reccomend either putting the movies into video_ts folders or remuxing to mkv/avi's
That will make it much easier to play back on HTPC's and other computers, and allows for Placeshifting.
Mymovies can handle ISO's by mounting them with Daemon Tools...however I have never had good luck with that. So I remux all my DVD's/BluRay to MKV files.

daphatgrant said:
I think right around $360 for 9 swap cages.

<goes to find out what a Norco 4020 is> :p

... ... ...

<comes back from looking up Norco 4020>

DAMN IT! :mad: :p

That is a pretty cool device... might have to find another use for the Antec 900.
Click to expand...

Norco 4020 FTW
get one seriously its kick ass.

daphatgrant said:
One other thing I just wanted to confirm is that that SATA card is indeed a PCI card not a PCI express card and that sending data from 8 SATA2 drives through that PCI slot isn't going to cause issues.
Click to expand...

It will work in a PCI slot....only sata card I would buy for WHS
Yes it is fine for this type of application because you are essentially limited to jbod disk speeds.
 
On the MyMovie note

I would definately reccomend it to anyone looking to use their dvd library on a VMC HTPC. It is just simply awesome.

That said the WHS version Suck ASS. It only works if you have DVD's in video_ts folders. It claims to work with iso's and daemon tools but I F8xked around with it for a week and could not get it to mount iso's and play them in Media Center.
It also will not play video files:mkv, avi, etc. or do BluRay

So I installed the standard Server/Client Version on WHS and the Client Version on my HTPC and it works swimmingly...just awesome.
So if your going to use MyMovies use the original, because the WHS version is just not up to snuff yet.
 
What does MyMovies do that just mounting an ISO with Daemon Tools over the network doesn't? Does it have something like DVD Shrink built in?
 
It is a meta-data provider as well so in VMC it will show all your movies with the cover and it gives all the imdb data
Check it out its sweet

www.mymovies.dk
 
Another vote for a Norco 4020 and making the OS drive a 1tb.

Has anyone run into a clearance issue with the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 card (the extra length hitting a northbridge heatsink or onboard SATA ports)? Something to check out.
 
nitrobass24 said:
It is a meta-data provider as well so in VMC it will show all your movies with the cover and it gives all the imdb data
Click to expand...

Not quite correct but close. MyMovies has its own movie database (online). As of the version that I use (downloaded last year) it depends on users copying the data out of imdb and putting it into the online MyMovies database, for which the users are compensated with "privileges". As a result, some movie meta-data might not be there yet.

But it is sweet!
 
One more final parts check/review before I commit :p.

Norco RPC-4020 server case
PSU*
Abit IC7-G
P4 2.8C
1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
(1) 1TB WD green HDD (OS)
(8) 1TB WD green (storage)
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (SATA x 8 card)
LITE-ON Slim 8X DVD Burner
Microsoft Windows Home Server

*I have not yet decided on a PSU, I was leaning towards the corsair HX620 PSU, not that this would cause any real issues but I'd have to use a bunch of 4-pin molex to SATA gender changers. Any thoughts on going to the 750TX? or should I stay with the HX620 and just use the adapters. Do you have any other PSU recommendations? I usually stick to Antec, OCZ, Enermax, or Corsair but am happy to try PCP&C if it is recommended.
 
Why would you need molex --> SATA adapters? The backplane in the case takes 10 molex connectors. You don't even need the HX620. I would get a 450VX (or 550VX) instead mainly because it is single rail. You'll overload the HX620 with more than about a dozen drives, so stick with single rail power supplies. In my experience, you'll need about 1.4A per drive on the 12v line for them to spin-up if you don't use staggered startup.
 
daphatgrant said:
Do you have any other PSU recommendations? I usually stick to Antec, OCZ, Enermax, or Corsair but am happy to try PCP&C if it is recommended.
Click to expand...

Considering that the Norco case has room for 21 drives and since you are probably planning to use all 21 drives, just go with a larger PSU now like the Corsair 750TX or PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750.

@ Bluefox
The Corsair 620HX is a single rail PSU. The multiple rail listing is false and was a mistake that was too costly to fix, according to Corsair's rep here on the forum.
 
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