RAID for HTPC, is it overkill?

[bigsnyder]

I was toying with the idea of using some sort of two drive RAID setup for my HTPC. Anyone
using two drive RAID in their HTPC? If so, what kind of setup? Or should I just stick with
one large drive? I am considering the WD2500YS (or bigger YS model) for my system.

C Snyder

 

[smopoim86]

I'm running 4x250gb in raid 5. I'm getting about a 100mbs average transfer. This is on an intel ich8r southbridge

EDIT: and yes, generally it is overkill. unless you are doing it for data backup

 

[Ayah]

Personally, I would say put a RAID 1 in it just to make sure your valuable *legal* media isn't lost due to a crash.

 

[Atheus]

Newer drives can all push over 40MB/s, so at 2 hours long, a movie would have to be 288GB in total to exceed a single drive's capacity. Are your movies 288GB?

 

[BurnItDwn]

Get the raid if you want to, you probably won't notice any difference in speed as most modern drives run MUCH faster than the rate that video plays at.

If you want raid for the redundancy aspect of it, and are willing to take the hit in usable space, then it's worth it.
If you just want raid 0 to boost performance, it's not worth it IMO. (one drive fails, you loose the whole array ... not the best scenario to be in)
EDIT: I'm not saying raid 0 is bad always, just in this scenario, it is impractical. I know you folks who are big on video or audio editing and sometimes encoding can get big benefits from having a really really really big and fast scrap volume to mess with.

If you want raid 0 because it's cheaper to buy multiple 200-400gb drives per GB of space than it is to buy one of the 500GB+ drives per GB of space, then use your best judgement.

My HTPC has a 200GB drive in it that I use for live TV recording as well as the OS, MythTV, and other software (under 4GB of space). It can record about 100 hours worth of DVD quality mpeg2 with my Hauppage prv150. I set the settings down a bit, as I am just replaying it to a SDTV with an S-video connector, and the loss of quality can be noticed at times, but I can fit about 200 hours of live recording with it set up this way.

Any of my DVD's that I've ripped get stored on my file server and in the xvid format.

If you plan on storing DVD rips as well as recorded TV programming, or if you want to record HDTV, or if you simply want hours worth of recording space, then a larger drive or array is warranted.

 

[krotchy]

Originally posted by: Atheus
Newer drives can all push over 40MB/s, so at 2 hours long, a movie would have to be 288GB in total to exceed a single drive's capacity. Are your movies 288GB?

FYI a 1 Hour 4:2:2 Uncompressed 1080i Video is about 417GB...

Just saying, . Thank god for video compression ehh?

 

[bigsnyder]

@all

Thanks for the feedback. Not quite sure what I will decide, but the feedback has
been helpful.

C Snyder

 

[mithrandir2001]

HTPC seems like no place for RAID...only RAID 1 for data security, but at the expense of an extra drive with heat production and power consumption.

Even a cheapo 5400rpm drive is more than sufficient for HTPC playback duties.

 

[DLM]

Originally posted by: mithrandir2001
HTPC seems like no place for RAID...only RAID 1 for data security, but at the expense of an extra drive with heat production and power consumption.

Even a cheapo 5400rpm drive is more than sufficient for HTPC playback duties.

i agree, plus, along with addwd heat and power consumption you'd have more noise, noise isn't something i want in a HTPC.