Using a NAS for HT audio/video media.. Anyone here do this?

[Kadarin]

I'm in the process of digitizing my dvd collection and am starting to consider the purchase of the 5 disk Drobo FS as a mechanism for both providing drive failure protection and to make it easy to stream media to multiple devices. I was wondering if anyone here does this, and if so what are the good/bad experiences you've had?

My current setup:

TV: http://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs/UN65C6500VFXZA
Receiver/Amp: Denon AVR-890
Speakers: Some really old Klipsch 5.1 setup that still sounds pretty good.
HTPC: Mac Mini, '09 model
Console/BR player: PS3
Other devices in the house: 27" iMac, Bose wave radio (yeah, I know...) connected via AirPlay, iPad, broken Linux box that will probably get rebuilt at some point

The Drobo FS would let me aggregate data in a central location that other devices could connect to via afp or nfs, and it'll store up to ~10TB or so. I get the occasional HDD failure, so I think this would be a good next step.

Concerns: Power usage, noise, potential bugs (with Drobo filesystem code, maybe?)

Thoughts?

 

[chucky2]

I just did this with a Synology DiskStation DS211j, two 2TB drives in RAID-1, works great. Really the limitation is the TV interface, not the NAS; TV is a Samsung PN50C8000.

Someone even got Serviio to work on a Synology (thinking about trying this myself).

About the only thing I can recommend is once you get the unit all installed and the volumes created, find out how to get to the command line and run the Linux version of chkdsk to make sure before you start dropping all your data on there, that everything is good. I figured I'd do this on mine, and low and behold, it did find errors the first time I ran it, corrected them, and the second time I ran it I was all good. Glad I did that before dropping tons of data on there...

Chuck

P.S. MakeMKV works really good...

 

[LikeLinus]

I use a Fujitsu Scaleo for my NAS. It has 4 1.5TB drives and (2) 2TB eSATA external drives. It runs on Windows Home Server. I have SyncToys setup to do an automatic backup each night at midnight to the 2 external eSATA drives.

It's really the best decision I've made. I can stream media to any TV in the house that has a front end (I use an HTPC and WD TV Live Plus), I can access all my media from any laptop or computer in one centralized location. I've got every room hardwired for gigabit and also run 801n wireless.

I would use something like the Dobro for sure, but I couldn't pass up the $149 price for the Scaleo at the time.

 

[Kadarin]

I went ahead and bought the Drobo FS; once it's set up I'll update this thread.

 

[Rio Rebel]

I think a NAS home server is a great idea. In my case, I built a solid HTPC with a silverstone case large enough to hold multiple 2 tb hard drives...so my htpc is my media server.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

I think a NAS home server is a great idea. In my case, I built a solid HTPC with a silverstone case large enough to hold multiple 2 tb hard drives...so my htpc is my media server.

Yeah I think I'm moving back to this route from the WHS box plus a dedicated HTPC box. Although I really did like the WHS box.

 

[CubanlB]

I use freenas to store all my movies and audio, and I really like it. Right now it has a linux software raid 5 of 4 1tb hitachi drives and I can pretty much max out sambas ability to provide bandwidth to my windows machines over GbE.

The main part where I feel freenas fell down was with fuppes and it's ability to set up a dlna container to be able to stream music directly to my receiver, ps3, etc. Although this may have more to do with my file naming scheme (or lack there of) for music. I ended up going a different route for music streaming but I was really hoping it would work.

I really like MakeMKV for ripping movies, but it messes up audio sync for TV shows about 50% of the time (although I think this again has more to do with how the DVDs were authored).

I got through ripping 5 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the GF before I figured out that the audio had major creep, and have been noticing it a lot more on other tv shows.

EDIT: I had my main HTPC as my media server for a while, but I didn't really like all of my media on a windows machine or leaving my htpc on all the time. Freenas with tuning turned on sets my cpu to 800mhz for pretty much everything. Doesn't use a lot of power, and I just leave it on in the basement humming away. I really need a newer PSU in it to really help it's efficiency but meh, it was meant to be cheap.

P.S. Nice TV! And don't sweat the Wave, those things do sound better than they have any right to...

 

[Aharami]

for those using HTPC as their media server, do you leave the HTPC on all the time? Or only turn it on when about to use it? How long is the startup? If leaving it on all the time, doesnt it use up too much power?

Disgruntled, why are you considering the switch back to HTPC?

I need to built some sort of media tank, but not sure if I should build a very basic low power one that I can leave on all the time that can serve media via a box like WD TV Live, or whether I should build a full fledged HTPC + Media Server that can be used for gaming also. My main concern with HTPC + Media Server in one is power consumption if leaving it on all the time, and start up time if turning off to save power

 

[jtvang125]

I don't have an actual NAS but have a server setup for file sharing. I have 12 2tb drives in raid5 right now. Case holds 20 drives but my raid card only supports 16 so I can add 4 more anytime in the future. I lost 1 drive last month and it did take about a day and a half to rebuild.

This thing sounds like a vacuum so no way can it be in the same room as the HT. The case of my HTPC has one of those IR receivers that taps into the power supply. Using this I have my harmony programmed to set the HTPC into standby with I press OFF and wake back on when I select the activity. I use Media Browser for the UI and MP Home Cinema for the player so I'll get hardware acceleration and bitstreaming.

 

[Modelworks]

I currently use a xp box for my server. Tried everything else and this was the easiest to customize and it works fine.
You might have problems using a NAS for anything other than file serving as most don't have much processing power or memory. If transcoding content is involved, forget using a NAS.

 

[vshah]

i use a win7 box for my HTPC, i have it set to hibernate after 30 mins of idle. starting up takes under a minute from pressing the button to XBMC...this is on a 7200rpm drive

 

[poofyhairguy]

I built my mediaservers. Only way to get a server that holds 16 drives for under $400.

 

[LikeLinus]

poofyhairguy - ha, I recognize your name from XBMC.org.

I just built my HTPC 2 weeks ago and have loved it every minute since! I had a WD TV Live Plus that I've now passed down to the kids TV. It was great for what it was, but it's not even close to the HTPC.

My NAS is obviously separate from my NAS and I like it that way. My NAS does not only hold Media, but documents, photos, software, backups and various other things. I also didn't want to leave an HTPC on with a bunch of drives in the living room or bedroom at all times. My NAS is headless and I remote in with my laptop/desktop/HTPC. Good stuff.

 

[Kanalua]

I am doing this with my current HT setup, PS3 -> NAS/desktop.

I'd recommend a decent NAS if you want to do it well. I have a Synology DS108j, and it is woefully under powered for anything more than SD content. It also doesn't act as a media server very well.

 

[GTaudiophile]

What do you all prefer for a NAS: FreeNAS or WHS or something else?

 

[poofyhairguy]

What do you all prefer for a NAS: FreeNAS or WHS or something else?

Something else: Unraid

Only solution that gives you single disk parity (and not duplication like WHS), and also allows you to mix and match drives (unlike any RAID).

 

[CubanlB]

Freenas' implementation of zfs is quite good I hear, although I haven't needed to use it.

Expansion is fairly easy, although, you need to set up the zpool with the number of disks it will have total, so no adding an extra drive, only swapping one to a larger capacity, rebuild, repeat.

pooffyhairguy, what are you using to connect 16 drives? A good raid controller could easily set you back 400$ 16 drives at 400$ is pretty good.

I haven't had the need to go beyond my freenas setup yet, unraid seems interesting, but isn't quite free.

 

[poofyhairguy]

pooffyhairguy, what are you using to connect 16 drives?

Well the first 8 drives I have hooked up to mob sata. The other 8 are a Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8I bought cheap off Ebay.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Im thinking of going with FreeNAS. I played with it for a bit on my old rig witha 2HD setup. I'm waiting for the Z68 platform to come out and then I'll buy a 6 drive setup or something.

 

[Modelworks]

If you decide to go with FreeNAS or one of the linux installs and your home network is windows pc , make sure you understand samba and how to configure it. File sharing between windows and other OS isn't always trouble free.

A few other options
http://www.untangle.com/
http://www.amahi.org/ --- good one for home media
http://www.zentyal.org/

Uninstall windows live if it is installed also or it will kill network shares between *nix OS.

http://www.samba.org/

 

[Kadarin]

So far this has been pretty straightforward; I have the Drobo FS and the iMac connected to a gigabit switch, and both my iMac and my Mac Mini can mount the available shares (one for Time Machine and one for files) via afp. It'll get more interesting when I get the linux box running at some point in the future, but otherwise so far so good. This thing is about as loud as a basic ATX form factor PC. I haven't yet tested any of the Drobo apps nor tried to use this as an iTunes server; I'll again update when I do.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

for those using HTPC as their media server, do you leave the HTPC on all the time? Or only turn it on when about to use it? How long is the startup? If leaving it on all the time, doesnt it use up too much power?

Disgruntled, why are you considering the switch back to HTPC?

I need to built some sort of media tank, but not sure if I should build a very basic low power one that I can leave on all the time that can serve media via a box like WD TV Live, or whether I should build a full fledged HTPC + Media Server that can be used for gaming also. My main concern with HTPC + Media Server in one is power consumption if leaving it on all the time, and start up time if turning off to save power

Namely because I don't want to buy/build a system for it. I don't know though, I might upgrade a system I currently have to Sandy Bridge which would give me a spare system to put WHS on.

The big thing is having 2 systems up uses more power, and would rather 1 system. That said, if I can build a low power system, that would work too.

 

[CubanlB]

If you decide to go with FreeNAS or one of the linux installs and your home network is windows pc , make sure you understand samba and how to configure it. File sharing between windows and other OS isn't always trouble free.

Uninstall windows live if it is installed also or it will kill network shares between *nix OS.

http://www.samba.org/

Freenas has had a pretty easy setup for CIFS/SMB for a while. no need to edit the .conf file as pretty much all the settings are right in the web setup now. The main thing that wasn't right on the page/wasn't supported in past releases was Asynchronous I/O, which is now right there.

I usually get around 70-90 MB/s if I have the server setup for speed and around 30-40MB/s when everything is tuned down for power saving. This is way more than you need to stream files. For me it was easy to transfer about 2.5TB to my raid array and then enable tuning for the power savings.

I know ZFS requires much more CPU overhead, so If I try it in the future I'll let you guys know how it goes.

 

[GTaudiophile]

I have enjoyed using FreeNAS myself. I just wonder if there could be any easier/better solutions out there?

Not that I am unhappy with FreeNAS...just wondering.

The main purposes of the NAS are to act as a backup and to stream music and 720p mkvs over the network.

 

[Grit]

I could use some input guys.

I would LOVE to have a quiet HTPC with a Ceton tuner card to replace my two TiVos. If there's some way to make THAT box ALSO a media server AND store backups for other computers, I'd be set.

What I want is WHS with WMC so it can be my home server & media center.

My OTHER concern is SPEED. My current WHS box (intel core 2 duo cpu w/2 GB RAM) took 8 hours to restore 200 GB bare metal backup over gigabit ethernet. Ugh! Is there ANY way to speed that up?? Different hardware? NAS? Anything?

I really love having WHS wake up all 3 computers and store backups for me, but actually having to restore one was PAINFULLY SLOW.