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How do you store your media at home?

G

gizbug

Platinum Member
Most home users keep their movies and music on their desktop hard drive? Or do u have a NAS? Never looked at getting a NAS but my movie and music collection is starting to fill me 3TB hard drive on my pc
 
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infos / build thread here.
 
I have two external 4T HD. I was thinking on going the NAS route but I figured thta will be about $300 before any HD, on top of that I still needed a backup plan that should run outside the NAS, so the two external was more cost efficient for me.
 
I have a media server in my basement.. which serves as the whole home DVR and media repository.. I have about 6TB of storage on it.
 
Internal SATA HDDs +
nz7AkOn.jpg

Plugable USB 3.0/2.0 SATA Hard Drive Docking Station (ASMedia Chipset; UASP and 3TB+ Support)
 
I use an old D-Link NAS tucked away in my basement (old house, easy to run cables through the open basement ceiling). 2 x 2TB drives in it mirrored. The PS3 upstairs streams from it. Works well.
 
First, thanks for the replies.

Background: Home Windows 8 pc (3TB space), Macbook Air, 3 Ipads, 3 Iphones, Boxee Box, ASUS AC66U router.

I want to unload all my MP3's and MKV movies that I have on my Hard Drive, and move them to a NAS. This will free up my Hard Drives and help better organize my files. I want my MP3's on a NAS, which my Home PC Itunes can access and stream. I want my MKV files on a NAS, so I can stream them to my Boxee (opposed to SMB share off my Windows 8 box). Does it sound like a NAS is the best solution for me?

If so, I see a lot of positive feedback on Synology products. Seems like no local stores here in Chicago carry these. I looked at Microcenter, and see a D-Link DNS-325. Would this be a major downgrade over a Synology (DS212j 2200)?

I'm trying to find one that already has HD's in it, but those seem tough to find.

Opinions please.
 
I have a file server sitting in a shelving unit, has about 6TB in it, plus the OS drive, it also runs my Minecraft server
 
i have a supermicro server at home with 8GB ECC, xeon E3-1225, 8x hitachi 3TB in raid6, running windows 2008 R2 standard. 16.3TB total space formatted.

my old NAS is similar but with 2TB drives and an i5 2400. it's just sitting in the corner right now collecting dust.
 
Just order a Synology off Amazon or Newegg if that's what you are interested in. They have the best prices and cheap shipping. The 212j is probably sufficient for streaming to one or two devices, but the CPU and RAM is somewhat lacking for much more. The upside is a very low power consumption, even when active.
 
I have the majority of my media stored on a 2TB HDD in my HTPC, backed up, of course, across 3 other drives. Eventually I'll have to go to a 3TB HDD, then I'll use the old 2TB and others as backup.

I'm currently re-ripping my music library on the old Pentium D Dell upstairs, onto 2 old dinosaur 80GB HDDs...
 
Everything is stored on large internal hard drives paired with external drives of the same size for backup. In addition I have one massive external drive filled with media connected directly to my WD Live next to the tv.
 


Server hardware is pretty standard - ASUS P8Z77-M Pro w/ i5-2500K, 16GB RAM. Intel SSDs for OS and VMs, and eight WD 3TB Reds connected to a 3ware 9650SE. Running Windows 2008R2 Standard with Hyper-V.

Important files are backed up to an external 1TB drive and to Crashplan cloud storage.

I'm going to be replacing the core hardware with a Xeon and ECC RAM at some point this summer.
 
gizbug said:
I want to unload all my MP3's and MKV movies that I have on my Hard Drive, and move them to a NAS. This will free up my Hard Drives and help better organize my files. I want my MP3's on a NAS, which my Home PC Itunes can access and stream. I want my MKV files on a NAS, so I can stream them to my Boxee (opposed to SMB share off my Windows 8 box). Does it sound like a NAS is the best solution for me?
Click to expand...
Yes. Put all your files on the NAS device and you'll be able to access them either through SMB, iTunes, or UPnP.

gizbug said:
If so, I see a lot of positive feedback on Synology products. Seems like no local stores here in Chicago carry these. I looked at Microcenter, and see a D-Link DNS-325. Would this be a major downgrade over a Synology (DS212j 2200)?
Click to expand...

Yes. Synology products are in a different league than D-Link. The 212j is available on Newegg and other online retailers. Get it there instead of dealing with local store inventory. You're also usually better off getting your own drives. WD is my preference - although I've been burned by poor packaging with hard drives (in general) when shipped from NewEgg. I previously had eight WD10EACS drives in my server, and then replaced them with four WD20EARS drives (basically got to trade up the drive size for the same price). All 12 of those drives are still running today. WD Green drives are no less reliable than other drives.
 
I am using a nas4free based nas server running an AMD C-60 board, 16gb of RAM, and Six 2tb drives in a ZFS raidz config.

8578502083_9f8a5dac08_h.jpg


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8.88tb usable
 
Server with 10x hot swap drives:



9x1TB drives in raid 5. 6.3TB of space. 3.4TB used now. There's one drive for OS.

Full rack:



Those IBM arrays are for occasional backups, but I don't really power them on that often. I don't have enough UPS power to keep them on all the time and I can't put non IBM drives in there so I don't really want to rely on it due to not being able to replace any drive that fails. Got it for free so can't complain, but I don't use it for production.


I eventually want to get one of those 24 bay supermicro cases and build my own SAN, as my current server is on it's last legs. IT chokes up when there's too much IO/cpu usage and VMs start to crash.
 
Zxian said:


Server hardware is pretty standard - ASUS P8Z77-M Pro w/ i5-2500K, 16GB RAM. Intel SSDs for OS and VMs, and eight WD 3TB Reds connected to a 3ware 9650SE. Running Windows 2008R2 Standard with Hyper-V.

Important files are backed up to an external 1TB drive and to Crashplan cloud storage.

I'm going to be replacing the core hardware with a Xeon and ECC RAM at some point this summer.
Click to expand...


Is that a second gen Stacker?
Got a first-gen one myself, with 3 4-in-3 modules and 12 disks and 2 SSDs for the system. Used an ATX mainboard to get cheap access to 10x SATA, and am passively cooling the CPU (what with three fans at the front and one at the rear, plus PSU and top exhaust).
Running Gentoo Hardened Linux on mine, and mounting out via nfs and samba. Makes me have no spinning disks at all in the desktop.
 
_Rick_ said:
. . . . am passively cooling the CPU (what with three fans at the front and one at the rear, plus PSU and top exhaust).
Click to expand...
That's not passive cooling, passive relies only on the heat itself creating convection flows. 🙂
 
I have a Synology DS111 with a 3TB drive thats almost filled. Im in the process of building a low power PC so I can have more space.
 
I am definitely not cool - a dinosaur even! 🙂 I have 4 kinds of media. First, I keep my original DVDs in a bookcase:
media1.jpg

And, I keep my original music CD's in an adjacent bookcase:
media2.jpg

And, in a third bookcase, I have collectibles on vinyl disks, cassettes, and video tapes:
media3.jpg

And, lastly my own digital imagery 9thousands of files created over the past 18 years, are stored on 3 duplicate HDDs on 3 systems.

I don't have time to watch movies except on occasion, and I just about never watch anything twice. I admire all of the hi-tech NAS and server approaches, but they do not suit my lifestyle.

I accept not being one of "the most." 🙂
 
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I am using a DIY WHS 2011 + FlexRAID Media Server/NAS. If I hadn't decided to run Windows on that machine so that I can use it for other tasks then I would have recycled some old parts and just spent $400 for HDDs, a flash drive and an unRAID license.
 
Slightly dated pics, but still accurate. HTPC/Media Server Mark I and II - each with 16x 2TB Hitachi drives :
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Both are exact mirrors (including hardware, except PSU, case and ODD).
Mark I : (gave to brother, acts as my backup)
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Mark II :
jw_gurthang_10.jpg



Lulz :
gurthang_005_resize.jpg
 
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