I'm running out of hard drive space on my laptop and my two external 500GB HDs so I've decided to build a media server and basically an overall big computer to hold all of my stuff. I'd mostly be streaming content to my PS3, desktop, and our two laptops but I would also consider throwing in a decent video card (8600 or the like) to run 1080p video. Specs needed: 4x 1TB HDD Reliability 24x7 use My Questions: 1) Does it matter whether I pick out a server board or a gaming board? Why? 2) Should I buy a Dual Core, Quad Core, 2x Dual or 2x Quad? 3) Is a RAID 0 worth the risk of my data being lost? I have years worth of downloaded movies, TV shows, 100+GB of music, photos, and other data that would be an incredible hassle to download again so is RAID 0 stable enough to be plausible? 4) How much RAM is a good amount? Consider three PCs streaming at once. Answer whatever you can, I would appreciate the help.
these are the parts that i would get for a server/htpc. main parts cpu http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115043 mobo http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358 ram x2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122 blu ray http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136154 case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163055 video http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121287 sound http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829271001 psu http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139001 i would get a quad core for this type of computer. if you are recording tv and streaming movies while ripping dvds it will be very usefull. i would get 8gb of ram because it is cheap why not. i chose the motherboard because it has the right expansion slots so that you can have 3 dual tv tuners a sound card. video card, a raid card and still have a spare pci slot. it also has plenty of usb and dual gigabit which could be useful for the server. the video card has a built in hdmi port and can transmit sound over the hdmi unloke nvidia cards. it also has the ability to fully decode a blu ray movie with minimal cpu usage. storage hdd x4 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136151 raid http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131003 raid 0 is not worth the risk. 4 tb is alot of data to lose. i would recommend raid 5. you get redundancy so if a drive fails you can replace it and restore the data. the downside is you lose one drives worth of storage. so if you have 4x 1tb drives you get a total of 3tb but your data is safe. if you are going to be doing alot of streaming and other hard drive intensive stuff at the same time it would be a good idea to get a nice raid controller. they are expensive but are much better than onboard raid controllers. extra parts card reader http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820223103 tv tuner http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116036 vfd http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999192 universal remote http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16880100771 keyboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126008 these are just some other things that you might want. you can replace the front usb ports in the case i posted with a card reader. if you want to watch and record tv the new dual hd tuner is perfect. it can record two hd channels at once. if you get more than one can could record 4 or 6 hd channels at once. a vfd display is just a cool accessory for the front of the case. it can do stuff like show what music you are listening to or what movie is playing. a universal remote will come in handy for controlling everything. the logitec diNovo keyboard is really cool. it is the perfect wireless keyboard for a nice htpc build. it has function buttons and a built in mouse pad. price if you were to buy all of these parts with 3hd tuners and all the accessories it will be about $3000. if you only get 1 tuner and go without the accessories it will be around $2400.
alex131 I just did what you are doing. I used a gaming board with an older AMD 4800 CPU (I am streaming only). Another thing not talked about is the PC case. I went with the Silverstone Grandia GD01MX Black HTPC ATX Case, the price was $250: Case: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2929610&CatId=3429 The reason I went with this case, I too, have 4tb (internal). But I know, one day, (especially with Blu-ray rips), that might become full. So I use a hard drive (Hot Swap) system (in addition to the raid). Ex: I have 4tb raid + 1tb on the pullout, which I can have an endless number of pullouts = (limitless storage): Mobile Rack: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1196207&CatId=285 and with the case having the "DOOR" cover on the front, the mobile rack system will work. I did setup my raid as a raid 0. But, I have a manual backup in place. So "when" the raid fails, I can restore all my media back and not loose one movie. The only reason I went with raid 0, is because I didn't want to give up that 1tb of extra storage. Good luck with your build.
What are you using as a backup for this? Also, is the RAID 0 with four drives a big difference in speed for you?
I have 1tb drives inside the pullouts, and I backup my movies as I go. So when a movie/show/tvseries is ready to be put on the server, I also copy it to the 1tb drive as a backup. Then when it is full, I grab another. On the raid 0..I guess it is faster, but the reason I used a raid 0 really wasn't for speed, it was so I could combine all the drives into one. I stream to a Tvix Media player, and you have a limited number of drives you can share with the software it comes with. So, combining all the the drive together, Windows sees that as one drive.
i would not use raid 0 for storage of this amount. it is unsafe. hard drive failure can happen. i just had my 74gb raptor die a few weeks ago and it was not good. i didn't lose much important data but i still needed a new drive and had to reinstall the os. if one of the drive in raid 0 fails you could lost tb's of data. if a drive fails in raid 5 you buy a new drive and rebuild the array and all your data is back.
krj15489 I agree with you about the raid setup. If one drive fails, you lose it all. BUT, I backup everything to different drives. So if my raid 0 fails, no big deal. I haven't lost anything. I would just have to replace the failed drive, create my raid, and copy everything back. Also, you got me curious about the raid 5 setup. Thinking safety, and what you said in the previous post. So I looked it up on the wiki, and they still recommend to have backups. Which is what I am doing. Here is a copy/paste- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID "RAID is not a good alternative to backing up data. Data may become damaged or destroyed without harm to the drive(s) on which they are stored. For example, part of the data may be overwritten by a system malfunction; a file may be damaged or deleted by user error or malice and not noticed for days or weeks; and of course the entire array is at risk of catastrophes such as theft, flood, and fire." So if you use a backup system (and you should, separate from the raid array), I see no harm in using raid 0. On a side note- I use a 74gb raptor for my OS also. And the best software to help in a hard drive failure is Acronis. If it fails, it will restore your new drive back in about 5 min from your last drive image.
