What are you guys storing your media on?

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Drawmonster

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I've got a 2TB drive in my HTPC that my media is stored on. I'm thinking that eventually that's going to fill up, and I'll be stuck adding another drive. I'm also thinking about putting together another HTPC for our bedroom. So some sort of network storage would probably come in handy eventually.

I know absolutely nothing about file servers and stuff. So what would be a good option for storing all my media, and making it accessible to multiple HTPC computers? I would need to be able to have media downloaded directly to the storage device, then accessed by multiple HTPC's and streamed either wireless or by a wired connection. Eventually wired I hope, as wireless tends to be a pain in the ass for me most of the time.

I'm about to upgrade my HTPC, so would have some decent older hardware laying around for use if needed. I've looked around a bit, and I see people either using some sort of NAS device, or building a "file server". I like the idea of a central "server" for storing files, and hope to one day have every room in my house wired for direct connection to the network. And I'm thinking of running a hardwire connection to my living room HTPC today or tomorrow.

What's the best option for a network noob who wants a lot of storage on a centralized and network accessible device/server?
 
Best options for dedicated media storage are a custom linux OS called Unraid Server, or running Windows and using Flexraid.

Both are similar to RAID but more specialized for write-once, read-many data--they have parity protection (using one of your drives to protect all the others from 1 HDD failure) and don't stripe the data (reduces the loss you would suffer if multiple hard drives fail and allows you to pop the HDD into a machine and read the contents). If you don't want to build your own box, probably best alternative is buying a Synology machine. It's a pre-built NAS enclosure running its own OS that is user-friendly and can handle your tasks. Cons are it'll be a bit more expensive, and be made of slower parts, and you'll have to work within its OS system for plug-ins (although you shouldn't have a problem with that).
 
Valaire said:
Best options for dedicated media storage are a custom linux OS called Unraid Server, or running Windows and using Flexraid.

Both are similar to RAID but more specialized for write-once, read-many data--they have parity protection (using one of your drives to protect all the others from 1 HDD failure) and don't stripe the data (reduces the loss you would suffer if multiple hard drives fail and allows you to pop the HDD into a machine and read the contents). If you don't want to build your own box, probably best alternative is buying a Synology machine. It's a pre-built NAS enclosure running its own OS that is user-friendly and can handle your tasks.
Click to expand...

I've build a ton of custom PC's and can put together a box pretty easily, but never anything setup for file storage with multiple HD's or running anything other than Windows. I like the idea of building the server though. What extra hardware are we talking to setup a file server running Unraid server, and say 10TB of storage? I've got all the hardware for the PC itself, just nothing related to RAID or server side of it.
 
i would recommend building a file server. i have 4 drives in my itx htpc/server, currently modding it to have 6 drives. i mention this because most NAS enclosures are 2-bay, and run $150+. if you want more than 2 bays then youre looking at significantly pricier than even that. if you build your own server then it will be cheaper and you can use MANY more drives. it will also be a more flexible machine (can do htpc or be a work computer etc if you want) and upgradeable.

to answer your question above, i just bought an IBM M1015 raid card and a sata breakout cable. this was recommended to me when i wanted to move from 4 drives (max number of sata ports on my mobo) to 6. you can find the card for about $70 on ebay and the cables for about $15. this will allow you 8 drives at sata3 speeds. the card came very highly recommended by a few users, so although i havent used it myself yet, it seems to be pretty generally accepted as a great raid card.
 
No additional hardware if you are not using a hardware RAID server. I do not recommend going with this as it is not ideal for a media server for the mentioned reasons.

If you were running an Unraid server, for example, only thing you'd need is a USB stick to run the OS off of. Some versions of Unraid do not work well with Realtek network devices, so you'll most likely want to run the latest beta.

Don't need a server motherboard, can just get a desktop one that has a lot of SATA ports, and/or expansion to add SATA PCI-E cards from Monoprice.
 
This is what I'll have for the server:

AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition Kuma 2.8GHz
Foxconn A74ML-K AM2+/AM3
4Gb DDR2
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6450 1GB
2TB WD Green storage drive <- Full of media right now
24" Dell FP

So I'd need a case, power supply, and some more harddrives. That mobo has 4 x Sata on it, so I could do 8Tb with additional cards if I bought more of the same 2Tb harddrives.

Any recommendations on a case that offers room to grow?
Will I lose the media on the 2TB drive I already have?
Any other tips before I get started on all this?
 
5-bay Synology NAS currently a 10TB RAID5 array but will be moving to a 8-bay NAS soon with a 16TB RAID6 array.
 
WHS 2011 Box with a bunch of 2TB drives. I also recently installed StableBit's DrivePool. Works great, and now I have a dump site for all my rips I can just keep feeding drives.
 
+1 on WHS. I use v1, and it works great, if you get a good drive pool program v2 is even better. Both are geared toward HTPC integration, with lots of plug-ins. For example I use a plug-in for my Squeezebox that works great.
Plus any idiot can set one up. I had no server experience and still found it easy and painless.
 
+1 for the unraid server. I was in a similar situation as you a couple years back having a simple htpc with the media stored locally. As things expanded, I wanted a little built in redundancy as well as the ability to network easily, have always on capability, and potentially have some minor services reside non-client side so that they'd be always on as well. Farming it out to a separate server that could be tucked away seemed to be the solution. At this point, I actually still use unraid because of many of its conveniences, but its running in a vm, which is a whole different story.

As far as hardware raids or other solutions, the thing is that for a media server you're not looking for enterprise level performance with striping etc., b/c even streaming multiple blu-ray quality videos out of and ripping other things to your box doesn't require that level. For the type of use that you're talking, the concepts like unraid or flexraid offer some nice features like being able to add in a new disk at any point and just expand your pool of storage, something you simply can't do in a striped array.

Unraid vs flexraid: there's plenty of people that will argue both ways. When I looked at flexraid, I wasn't thrilled with some of the support and at the time it was limited to snapshot raid as opposed to realtime. Supposedly now it has a realtime version up and working, but to me it hasn't had much time in the field. That and a smaller community had me kind of shy away from it. Unraid has an actually terrific community where you can expect to be able to post and get support on a wide number of topics, from basic issues to plug-ins to use with it. And quite frankly, for a server I was somewhat happy to move away from a Win OS (the advantage of flexraid being that it overlays windows), as unraid is pretty lightweight, doesn't require a separate HD for the OS, and doesn't consume very much resource wise by itself.

As to your questions in the last post, I'll try and answer as best I can...

officer921 said:
This is what I'll have for the server:

AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition Kuma 2.8GHz
Foxconn A74ML-K AM2+/AM3
4Gb DDR2
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6450 1GB
2TB WD Green storage drive <- Full of media right now
24" Dell FP

So I'd need a case, power supply, and some more harddrives. That mobo has 4 x Sata on it, so I could do 8Tb with additional cards if I bought more of the same 2Tb harddrives.

Any recommendations on a case that offers room to grow?
Will I lose the media on the 2TB drive I already have?
Any other tips before I get started on all this?
Click to expand...

You don't actually need a screen or even a video card. You'd probably leave the card in just b/c, but once the system is setup you could arguably remove it as long as your motherboard doesn't hard halt without one. All of the administration is done via network - mostly by web browser, but potentially by ssh if you're doing anything "advanced."

For the case: Unless you have a need for hotswap bays, don't necessary buy a case with them as you'll spend a good deal extra. They're convenient, but quickly add up. There's a couple users on the unraid forums that have put together a business selling pre-built servers - while I don't think you need to buy a pre-built by any means, they also post a lot of the configurations that they've tested and some suggestions. Worth looking at - (this used to be hosted on the forums, but since have been moved to a separate site I guess - I apologize, and this is not me trying to sell anything, I promise!) http://www.greenleaf-technology.com/blogs/prototypes/index.php - if you look at some of their "prototypes" for various number of drive configurations, it may give you some good ideas for cases. In the end, it's honestly not much different than picking out a case for any other build - a lot of its preference, and especially when you're not dealing with upwards of 20 drives, you can get away with a lot more in your choice.

PSU: for only a few drives, you could probably easily use one of the corsair ~430W ones that pop up for $15 after rebate very happily. Power draw isn't going to be anything horrendous, so just make sure to get a decent quality psu that won't crap out on you.

Hard drives: I'm sorry to say that in this market, you're stuck hunting around for what you can find, as the prices are generally terrible. Only suggestion I can make is definitely look at some of the external drives that pop up for good deals often, as its usually not much work to pop out the internal drive and use it, and it ironically works out cheaper than buying the bare drive many times. Only caveat there is that you need to know if the drive's warranty is serial based or if you'd have to rma it with the enclosure - so as to know whether you need to keep the enclosure in a closet.

For the current media you have, you're going to have to transfer it over to the unraid array once you initialize it, assuming you have other disks. You can't simply plug your current NTFS formatted drive into unraid, as it uses a different fs. This is the point that the flexraid users cite as a big plus, as flexraid allows you to do just that. However, once you have set the server up, its pretty much a non-issue. So, to clarify, you'd take your new, blank drive(s) and initially set unraid up with those, transfer your data over to the new array, and once you've confirmed your data is up and running, have any back-ups that you may keep, etc. etc., you format that drive and it gets added to your unraid array.

Finally, if your mb only supports 4 sata ports and you're looking at buying an expansion card, definitely consider getting a SAS pci-e card rather than some of the simpler cards with just a few sata ports on them. While it may cost a little extra, you can actually find some great deals, and that opens up expansion doors considerably for the future.

edit: about WHS, while there are some good features, the sticking point for me was always that the redundancy was limited to straight mirroring (at least as far as I know). So either you have drive redundancy at the cost of 2:1 for your drives, or you don't have any redundancy under WHS. Someone is more than welcome to correct me of course.
 
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Since 2004 I have have an htpc setup. This has evolved over the years from only a few TB to 12+ TB. At the moment I store my HTPC data on individual non raided 2TB 5400 RPM drives (WDC, samsung and hitachi). I purchased the bulk of these 6 or so of these when 2TB drives were under $70US last summer. My HTPC software (linux based mythtv) allows me to add as many storage pools as I want and it will automatically find the media on pools so I can easily move data from one drive / pool to another. I have the drives spin down after 2 hours of inactivity.
 
Flexraid will allow you to bring your 2 TB hard drive into the pool without erasing it. Unraid won't. Unraid is more polished but both have the disadvantage of being run by one guy whom has disappeared for lengths of time over the course of the project.

Windows 8 Storage Spaces would have been a really nice option that would have killed Unraid/Flexraid had it not decided to use striping. For many people this is a dealbreaker for this use.
 
Valaire said:
Flexraid will allow you to bring your 2 TB hard drive into the pool without erasing it. Unraid won't. Unraid is more polished but both have the disadvantage of being run by one guy whom has disappeared for lengths of time over the course of the project.

Windows 8 Storage Spaces would have been a really nice option that would have killed Unraid/Flexraid had it not decided to use striping. For many people this is a dealbreaker for this use.
Click to expand...

So what's the best option for a server noob?

WHS 2011 vs. Flexraid vs. Unraid?
 
In terms of simplest management, assuming comfort in the Windows operating system, Windows 7 + Flexraid is probably easiest as you can install any manner of Windows apps for it without worrying about getting a Slackware Linux version of that app (Unraid) or being compatible with WHS.

They're all viable options for a tech person though even if new to servers. Personally, I'll probably go with Flexraid on my new server because I use a lot of Windows server apps (Sabnzbd, Couchpotato, Headphones, Sickbeard, Air Video, Subsonic, DynDns, etc.) and it's easier to maintain these in a Windows environment than on Unraid with less overhead.
 
officer921 said:
Any recommendations on a case that offers room to grow?
Click to expand...
I would start off with this:
$50 - NZXT Source 210 Elite Black ATX Case

Eight hard drive capability right off the bat. Should you need more than that, get this module which lets you add an additional 4 drives:
$24 - Cooler Master STB-3T4-E3-GP 4 in 3 Device Module w/ 120mm Fan

So for a total of $74, you're getting a case with 12 drive capability.
officer921 said:
Will I lose the media on the 2TB drive I already have?
Click to expand...
Depends on the OS. A lot of the server OSes will end up formatting the drive for use. As such, you're gonna want to buy an extra drive or two. Though as mentioned earlier, FlexRAID doesn't format your drive.

officer921 said:
Any other tips before I get started on all this?
Click to expand...
Do your research. There's dozens of different server OSes out there. Some are good for noobs and some aren't. Some are really good if you put the time in and some are just a PITA sometimes.

If anything, buy two spare drives, try out all the free file serving OSes out there and then extensively test them with test data and such till you find the one you're most comfortable with. There's usually a guide for those free file serving OSes. Then add in that 2TB drive full of your data once you've found the OS of choice.

Some of the better free server OSes are:
Amahi Home Server
FreeNAS
OpenSolaris derived ZFS NAS/ SAN (Nexenta*, OpenIndiana, Solaris Express, napp-it)
Some variant of Linux + Webmin
officer921 said:
So what's the best option for a server noob?

WHS 2011 vs. Flexraid vs. Unraid?
Click to expand...
Personally I'd drop UnRAID since its performance is kind of lacking for the money you pay for. Not to mention the hard drive limitations and the missing developer. For someone who is new, I'd look at WHS 2011 or FreeNAS if you don't have a spare legit Windows 7 key for FlexRAID. With the right hard drive combo, I've seen WHS 2011 for as low as $13.
 
I have a Windows 7 server that serves many purposes; file server; Skype (with attached wireless Skype phone); torrent downloads; etc.

It currently has 2x 2TB and 2x 1.5TB drives in it. Rather than raiding/jbod or anything I've kept them as individual drives, and used NTFS junctions and volume mountpoints to have them all accessible from a single shared folder.

The reason I don't have them in any form of raid/jbod (which I've used in the past) is the difficulty in upgrading/replacing. With my current setup I can just add in one more larger drive, copy everything to it, fix up drive letters and volume mountpoints, then remove the old drive.
 
Danny Bui said:
Personally I'd drop UnRAID since its performance is kind of lacking for the money you pay for. Not to mention the hard drive limitations and the missing developer. For someone who is new, I'd look at WHS 2011 or FreeNAS if you don't have a spare legit Windows 7 key for FlexRAID. With the right hard drive combo, I've seen WHS 2011 for as low as $13.
Click to expand...

I've been reading up on Unraid and Flexraid, but haven't heard a lot about WHS 2011. Are there major negatives to it, as I don't see a lot of threads with people using it. Does it allow you to install programs, like Sabnzbd or Sickbeard, on the server itself?

I've pretty much figured out the hardware side of this, but I keep reading conflicting data on what software to use. So I need the easiest to use that has the best feature set. :confused:
 
officer921 said:
I've been reading up on Unraid and Flexraid, but haven't heard a lot about WHS 2011. Are there major negatives to it, as I don't see a lot of threads with people using it. Does it allow you to install programs, like Sabnzbd or Sickbeard, on the server itself?
Click to expand...
The major negative aspect of WHS 2011 is that it doesn't come with a solid form of RAID or parity based data backup like UnRAID and FlexRAID does or the drive pooling feature that WHS 1.1 had. However you can combine FlexRAID with WHS 2011 quite easily to make up for that:
http://www.openegg.org/2011/10/18/flexraid-drive-pool-and-raid-for-whs-2011-spoilers/

As for programs, yes Sabnzbd or Sickbeard can be installed onto WHS 2011 with little issue.
 
Danny Bui said:
The major negative aspect of WHS 2011 is that it doesn't come with a solid form of RAID or parity based data backup like UnRAID and FlexRAID does or the drive pooling feature that WHS 1.1 had. However you can combine FlexRAID with WHS 2011 quite easily to make up for that:
http://www.openegg.org/2011/10/18/flexraid-drive-pool-and-raid-for-whs-2011-spoilers/

As for programs, yes Sabnzbd or Sickbeard can be installed onto WHS 2011 with little issue.
Click to expand...

So using WHS 2011 and Flexraid, I could add my current 2TB drive into the "pool" and not lose my data. For example, I could buy another 2Tb drive, then pool the two together, getting 4Tb of storage while maintaining all the media on original drive?
 
I'm just using an old pc with 13 hdds, 1 blu-ray, and one boot drive. Windows 7 home sharing, network, and mymovies. Works great.
 
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AQ_OC said:
I'm just using an old pc with 13 hdds, 1 blueprint- ray, and one boot drive. Windows 7 home sharing, network, and mymovies. Works great.
Click to expand...

Blueprint-ray?

Is that the new one that holds 47 pterodactyl's?


:p
 
officer921 said:
So using WHS 2011 and Flexraid, I could add my current 2TB drive into the "pool" and not lose my data. For example, I could buy another 2Tb drive, then pool the two together, getting 4Tb of storage while maintaining all the media on original drive?
Click to expand...

I would never add a drive with data you want into a pool, even if it's supposed to not wipe it. Recipe for OMGWTFBBQ my data is gone! :eek:
 
I would second the need to backup your data before manipulating devices. Though I prefer open source solutions, the method of backing your data up first applies to all OS's and all file system configurations regardless of the claims. This isn't because solutions like FlexRaid don't work, it's because it's a good practice to get into period and will save you more times than I could list.

Personally I would save the money on the OS and put it towards storage. Considering the cost of hard drives still isn't where I would like it to be there's very little benefit in my eyes to spending money on Windows to file share.

That being said, Windows will be the easiest if you are relatively new to file servers.

My setup is OpenIndiana (ZFS).
 
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+3 (or 4) on the WHS. I've been using v1 for 3 years with great results. Automatically backs up every pc in the house, allows me to stream my entire movie, photo and family video collection and it's dead simple to add more drives. I used an old 775 mobo, pentium 4 and 2gb ram.
 
I have 2 640GB drives, plus a 1.5TB drive for backups. Not that great, but it's the best I can do considering the circumstances.
 
I prefer NAS's solutions to DIY. I have three NAS's
1. Qnap with 6x2TB drives (raid 5) for my movies, currently over 1700 (90% HD)
2. Thecus 4x2TB (raid 5) for TV
I also have a backup server for my movies, a pc solution with a Dell perc 5i raid controller, 8x1.5TB hard drives (raid 5)
 
+1 on WHS + FlexRAID. Running WHSv1 myself and I'd upgrade if I wasn't lazy (and if it ain't broke etc etc).

Also grab some ECC RAM since the machine's running 24/7.
 
This is excellent knowledge. Thank you all very much. I'm still a rookie when it comes to backup and I don't even have a home server yet, but it seems long overdue. I'm quite tired of shuffling through hard drives and worry about having them all backed up. Perhaps I'll setup a server soon. I just ran Cat6 drops to all my bedrooms, so I think I'll place the server in one of those away from all the computers.
 
Yeah a file server has been pretty damn useful in my home life.
 
I am going through this decision right now also. I currently have all of my movies on 2x1.5TB USB enclosures. I am going to build a file server. I have looked into unRAID, but am disappointed by the price. I hadn't really looked into FlexRAID, but having to sit on top of WHS v1/v2 or Windows 7 disappoints me as I don't have an extra license right now.

My friend suggested Fedora Linux and just create a software RAID 5 on that. I also want the server to serve up 1-3 VM's, and this would fit dual purpose for really cheap (I could probably do the VM's with the Windows flavors as well). Lastly, it interests me because I really want to learn Linux, and this would force me to do that.

What do you guys think?

magao said:
I have a Windows 7 server that serves many purposes; file server; Skype (with attached wireless Skype phone); torrent downloads; etc.

It currently has 2x 2TB and 2x 1.5TB drives in it. Rather than raiding/jbod or anything I've kept them as individual drives, and used NTFS junctions and volume mountpoints to have them all accessible from a single shared folder.

The reason I don't have them in any form of raid/jbod (which I've used in the past) is the difficulty in upgrading/replacing. With my current setup I can just add in one more larger drive, copy everything to it, fix up drive letters and volume mountpoints, then remove the old drive.
Click to expand...

Could you explain better how you do that in Win7? Everything I am finding is talking about Win2000.
 
Kelvarr said:
My friend suggested Fedora Linux and just create a software RAID 5 on that. I also want the server to serve up 1-3 VM's, and this would fit dual purpose for really cheap (I could probably do the VM's with the Windows flavors as well). Lastly, it interests me because I really want to learn Linux, and this would force me to do that.

What do you guys think?
Click to expand...
Sounds fine to me. Just get comfortable with Linux as much as possible before you put all of your critical data on it.
 
If you're considering raid 5 and the inherent limits there, you might want to look at zfs. Open source and very powerful, and at least expandable in a sense.
 
UnRAID would be a great solution.

I used to have my media stored on two external drives hooked up to my xbmc box. Luckily I never experienced drive failure.

I built my unRAID box a couple weeks ago. I absolutely love it. I'm still kicking myself for not doing this years ago!
 
Kelvarr said:
I am going through this decision right now also. I currently have all of my movies on 2x1.5TB USB enclosures. I am going to build a file server. I have looked into unRAID, but am disappointed by the price. I hadn't really looked into FlexRAID, but having to sit on top of WHS v1/v2 or Windows 7 disappoints me as I don't have an extra license right now.

My friend suggested Fedora Linux and just create a software RAID 5 on that. I also want the server to serve up 1-3 VM's, and this would fit dual purpose for really cheap (I could probably do the VM's with the Windows flavors as well). Lastly, it interests me because I really want to learn Linux, and this would force me to do that.

What do you guys think?



Could you explain better how you do that in Win7? Everything I am finding is talking about Win2000.
Click to expand...

Just FYI, FlexRaid can run on top of Windows or Linux. I'm running it off Ubuntu 11.04 myself. Mainly so I can get myself more familiarised with Linux as well.

So if you want to try Flexraid AND Linux, do that.
 
Kelvarr said:
magao said:
I have a Windows 7 server that serves many purposes; file server; Skype (with attached wireless Skype phone); torrent downloads; etc.

It currently has 2x 2TB and 2x 1.5TB drives in it. Rather than raiding/jbod or anything I've kept them as individual drives, and used NTFS junctions and volume mountpoints to have them all accessible from a single shared folder.

The reason I don't have them in any form of raid/jbod (which I've used in the past) is the difficulty in upgrading/replacing. With my current setup I can just add in one more larger drive, copy everything to it, fix up drive letters and volume mountpoints, then remove the old drive.
Click to expand...

Could you explain better how you do that in Win7? Everything I am finding is talking about Win2000.
Click to expand...

Which part?

For the junctions/mountpoints I just use Link Shell Extension.

For upgrading (which obviously doesn't happen very often) I install the new drive (either internally, or using my SATA drive dock) and copy all the data I want to it. Then I run Junction Link Magic to list all junctions and delete any referring to the drive(s) I'm about to replace. Then I use the Disk Management section of Computer Management (right-click Computer, select Manage and change the drive letter(s) of the drives I'm about to replace to unused ones, and change the new drive to use one of the old drive letters. Then I recreate the junctions I want and uninstall the old drive(s).
 
mountvolumes.jpg
 
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