10 Terabytes of Movies

[Bitwize]

I have the EX470 as well, with a 4-bay eSata Sans Digital enclosure and 8-bay USB Sans Digital enclosure. So far I've got 11 1.5TB drives with duplication turned on for only 1 share...my Blu-ray share. The Blu-ray backups are streamed to the A-110 with myiHome, which is installed on the EX470 along with the YAMJ plug-in. So far I love my set-up and only wish the A-110 had gigabit ethernet and PGS subtitle support for M2TS files ;o) Good news is, the C-200 will grant both those wishes.

In conclusion, the HP Mediasmart Server is a fantastic option that provides plenty of room for storage growth.

[strum]

The only thing I don't like about Windows home server (or any product that runs that OS like the HP device) is that I need double the storage. I looked at running my own raid box when I ran out of space on my Drobo.. but none had the flexability i wanted, like painless storage expansion, so I just picked up a drobopro.
So now with both devices hooked up to my PC, there is 20TBs of storage and I can easily expand to 32tb with no fiddeling with configurations.

[Bitwize]

(06-26-2009 05:33 PM)strum Wrote:  The only thing I don't like about Windows home server (or any product that runs that OS like the HP device) is that I need double the storage. I looked at running my own raid box when I ran out of space on my Drobo.. but none had the flexability i wanted, like painless storage expansion, so I just picked up a drobopro.
So now with both devices hooked up to my PC, there is 20TBs of storage and I can easily expand to 32tb with no fiddeling with configurations.

Double the storage?? I currently have 11 1.5TB drives and could add up to 21 more hard drives with the addition of 2 more Sans Digital enclosures (and filling up the 8 bay I currently own). I believe 32 is the max number of drives for Windows Home Server. Of course there are alternatives which work just as well (i.e. Drobo), but I could easily double/triple storage with my current configuration.

[jacksteel]

With regards to the original poster, I got round this issue by using NTFS junctions with the LinkShellExtension Tool

I created a share with folders, eg, Film/SD, Film/HD, TV then selected content on each the separate disks and mass linked them to the appropriate folder within the share. Now the share gives the impression of all the content is located within 1 folder even tho they span over multiple disks.

Hope this helps.

[str1der]

(06-26-2009 08:01 PM)Bitwize Wrote:  Double the storage?? I currently have 11 1.5TB drives and could add up to 21 more hard drives with the addition of 2 more Sans Digital enclosures (and filling up the 8 bay I currently own). I believe 32 is the max number of drives for Windows Home Server. Of course there are alternatives which work just as well (i.e. Drobo), but I could easily double/triple storage with my current configuration.

I think what Strum was trying to say is Home Server is basically a semi intelligent mirroring system so for movie storage you will only get to use about half your storage. The other half will be the duplicated/backed up files. So with your 11 1.5 TB drives your actual storage capability would be around 8-9 TB

[Bitwize]

(07-03-2009 09:12 PM)str1der Wrote:  I think what Strum was trying to say is Home Server is basically a semi intelligent mirroring system so for movie storage you will only get to use about half your storage. The other half will be the duplicated/backed up files. So with your 11 1.5 TB drives your actual storage capability would be around 8-9 TB

Yes, sir, correct. Honestly, with storage being so affordable, I don't mind the Windows Home Server duplication scenario. Actually, I'm pretty sure I read that this type of backup/duplication puts less wear and tear on the hard drives over time. Not sure how true it is, but sounds good to me

[str1der]

I myself use an Unraid system that I built. The advantages of this system for a media server are great. First you get raid 5 "like" protection with a parity drive but no striping. You can use drives of mismatched size while only your parity drive has to be the largest or equal to the largest in the system. Replacing a drive or upgrading one to a larger one is simple. Since the data is not striped you can have a truly catastrophic disaster (more than 1 drive fail) and the other drives can be put into a PC to get the data off them. Plus the entire system boots and runs off of a thumb drive. I can't recommend this system enough. Plus you get to use all the storage except the single parity drive. So with those 11 1.5 TB drives you would get 15 TB of storage. I know storage is cheap but you're still talking a bout several hundred in drives.

[Yitaro]

(06-16-2009 02:46 AM)daniel.boone Wrote:  I rolled my own using unRAID. The advantage here is you can swap and add drives as you go.

I started with a few spare drives I had sitting around and eventually grew the array to 5 x 1tb drives. I've been looking at adding another drive in a month or so.

10TB can be done with 6x2TB drives. One drive is used for parity. The rest for storage. To the NMT it would appear as one big drive. With my setup I stream via http (lighttp) and use YAMJ for the video gui.

You can buy a preassembled storage server from them or build your own if your technically inclinded. Toughest part of rolling your own is picking the right hardware.

Daniel, what hardware are you using? Would you mind listing it out? I would like to set up something like yours. Thanks.

[neilt0]

unRAID is the way to go, IMO. I looked at all the options, including WHS, and ended up with unRAID. It's specifically designed for what we want to do -- store large movie collections.
I've now got 2 unRAID servers, one has 16 drives, the other has 9 drives -- for a total of 16TB.

My unRAID Server1 setup: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.p...5#msg34915