I’ve done some basic research and wanted to pass this by the good citizens of SDMB hoping that they will correct and clarify my assumptions and perhaps give me advice based upon their experience.
**External hard drives **- this is fairly straight-forward: they attach through USB and become another drive letter. If you want this drive to be available to other computers on your network it must be shared out. This storage is only available if the computer they are USB-attached to is powered on.
Network Attached Storage - this is a box that connects directly to your router. It is more than the drives: you get an operating system that must be setup and configured through a web interface from another computer on the network. I believe the files are shared out as well… not sure. The advantages are that this device will rarely be powered off or re-booted and it is dedicated to file serving - nobody is playing games on it.
Media Server - this one I’m a bit fuzzy on. I understand that AV devices require component or HDMI inputs or AV streaming media protocol. So, does a media server have HDMI outputs, or does it only convert the media files on demand to to streaming? What about AV players than can’t play streaming media? Can it store and share files other than media files?
Any clarifications and recommendation would be appreciated, thanks!
I would go with a dedicated server that uses a low wattage chip like the Intel Atom chip and has a minimal footprint. This effectively is NAS but with the added benefit of having greater control and functionality. The low wattage requirements makes it easy to leave on 24/7 without taking a significant hit to your electric bill.
However I would see what the wattage requirements for a suitable NAS device are. The cheapest ones have no internal storage and give you a couple of USB ports to connect external drives. These probably have lower power requirements than even a light weight Atom based server but I don’t know if they are significantly less. Units like this should be available for around $100-150. Units with internal storage will normally be much more but you can probably find a few that are under $200 and that come with no internal HDD’s - so it would be just the box.
I’m not very familiar with media servers - media players, yes, but not servers. I guess the archetypal example would be the slingbox but I don’t know anything about their operation.
I strongly recommend that if you go with an external drive, get ones that support an eSATA port. This is so much faster than USB. I picked up an double eSATA port to put in my computer for $5.00 and it’s a simple to install.
1 - What do you actually want it to do
2 - What your budget is.
3 - Are you a PC user or a Mac user?
If you’re a PC user, I suggest you look closely at Windows Home Server. Not only will it act as a storage server, but it will also act as a backup device, and as a media server if you have an XBox 360. That said, there’s a new version in beta.
I’m running out of space on my hard drive so expansion is required. Also - need to backup another machine on the home network. And I am thinking of a project whereby I would rip my entire CD collection (1000+ cd’s) into mp3 files.
I’m a PC user. Budget isn’t a big concern - I see terabytes of storage in the $200-$300 range, right?
If you want storage and backup, then WHS is for you. Just get yourself a standard PC box, slap in as many 2 TB drives as you can afford and the PC will support, and install WHS. WHS will back up all your PCs overnight and balance your CD rips across the drives.
Get yourself a couple of external USB drives too, so you can have off-site backups (e.g. to guard against your house burning down).
I would stay away from using any kind of RAID setup if you go the server route - unless you’re already familiar with setting up and maintaining RAID arrays. I’ve been doing this stuff for a couple decades and I still avoid it although that’s mainly paranoia on my part. There are a lot of advantages depending on the configuration and what you need, but I still prefer to run backup jobs and handle everything manually. However many people will disagree with me so take that for what it’s worth.
There are products like Acronis True Image that will do continuous backups for you anyway, so you can get some of the benefits of RAID arrays without learning a whole new architecture.
I looked at one of the Atom chips (D510, 1.66Ghz). It has a thermal design max of 13 watts. That’s pretty amazing - at least to me. All of my machines have TDP’s that are in the 120-135watt range. There are even some motherboard designs that don’t require a fan for the CPU heatsink - just the heatsink.
I assume it can run Windows Home Server, but I don’t know anything about that product. I have heard good things about it though.
2tb internal hard drives are now on sale for $110.00, so definately look for sales after Thanksgivig. I also would stay away from RAID, if you are only after storage. In other words you won’t have to access the data a lot.
1000 CDs ripped into mp3 isn’t going to take a lot. Because you’re going with extra drives, I strongly recommend you rip your CD collection to lossless (FLAC, APE, WavPack) and then convert to mp3 on the fly using something like dbPoweramp or Foobar. That can be tedious and once the music is ripped lossless you won’t have to worry about it.
There are lots of options. Here’s what I did historically (and why) followed by what I do now (and why):
Historically:
Linux box with some Intel or Athlon processor (I don’t remember which), running KnoppMyth. It served two purposes: MythTV for all of our television DVR needs, and NAS, which I used as a backup from our home computers, as well as a media backend for all of the frontend machines. It had RAID1 storage for backups, as well as for TV shows and movies. It progressed from 300 GB of storage in 2005 to 2 TB of storage in 2010 (net storage, i.e., double that considering the RAID1). Frontends for MythTV and the stored media consisted of original Xboxes hacked to run XBMC. Of course MythTV and media content were also available for any of the household PC’s. It also served as dedicated client for bittorrent. It was a 24/7, always-on machine. It was exceptionally reliable, despite the cheap hardware. Although I’m comfortable with Linux, there was really nothing “Linuxy” that you had to worry about. Once the SMB and NFS shares were set up, it involved no tinkering.
Current as of August 2010:
I decided to move to HD, and there weren’t a lot of HD solutions with Dish or DirecTV. As a consequence, I moved to a Dish DVR and a Slingbox to address my remote needs (remote needs are very important). HD also meant a structured wiring system including video distribution. So, I gutted my lovely server and went with modern hardware. As such, it afforded me the opportunity to upgrade from Linux to Mac OS X. Yes, I do mean a so-called “Hackintosh.” With the correct hardware, it was just as easy as installing Mac OS X on a genuine Mac (of which I have a few). It has HDMI out (feed to every television via an HDMI matrix switch), 6 TB of storage (3, because it’s RAID1’d), runs the excellent Plex Media Server (remote access! iPad, iPhone, iPod, Plex), and so far has been just as dependable as the old Linux OS. Knock on wood, though, it’s only been since August, whereas the previous setup lasted for years with the only downtime related to power outages.
I’m not nearly as ambitious. I have a hex core rig for my HTPC for stuff I download and a couple of DVR’s for satellite. Directv has some streaming software that lets you play anything on the dvr on any computer in the house - windows computer anyway, not sure about other OS’es. I rarely use it though. I’m just never going to be able to handle watching video at my desk. I can’t even tolerate sub 1 minute youtube clips.
I have a bunch of external HDD cases so I can move storage around as needed. But what I really like are the dual drive docking stations like this one. They only work with SATA drives and you have to check which iteration of the SATA standard and the max capacity, but I love those things. The drives to get hotter than they probably would in a well ventilated case with a nice beefy fan, but I haven’t seen any impact on lifespan so far. Thermaltake even has a couple of computer cases with a dock built into the the top of the case.
You’re probably not going to know what’s really important to you until you live with a particular setup for a while.
I run two Netgear ReadyNAS Duo’s. One is a 1TB X-RAID while the other is a 2TB X-RAID. Both are accessed via this router. I’ve used external hard drives for a while before I migrated to a NAS approach. Those drives didn’t go to waste. I can attach the better ones via three different USB ports per NAS box.