Media Center PC help needed [Archive]

MadMike

06-12-2007, 04:55 PM

The sad thing is you will pay more for that P3 then you would if you went out and bought a new Core 2 Duo.

So I found out.

I'm looking to build a machine that I can copy my entire DVD collection to and hook up to the TV, so that I'll have all of them readily available instead of having to repeatedly grab and return them to the shelf. Yeah, I know, I'm going to need a shitload of hard drive space, but I don't need a very powerful machine otherwise.

I was wishing I had held onto the Athlon XP 2000 that I gave away to a friend who sorely needed her machine upgraded, but figured I'd be able to get another one like it for cheap. Hmm, Newegg doesn't have anything less than an Athlon 64 these days, so I figured I'd stop by the local shop that has all kinds of stuff, both old and new. I looked at the processor list and saw they had really, really old ones for a few bucks. But to get another one like I had would be around $100. I could get a new low-end processor and motherboard for that. Oh well...

technical.angel

06-12-2007, 05:26 PM

Yeah, I know, I'm going to need a shitload of hard drive space, but I don't need a very powerful machine otherwise.

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=834304 Terabyte drive $360

Shabo

06-12-2007, 06:25 PM

MadMike

06-12-2007, 06:54 PM

If you want to put your dvd collection on your HD, you might want to go with a RAID system. Extra safeguard so if one of the drives crashes, :cry:you don't lose all that time you put into ripping the DVDs onto your computer. And I'm not sure I would go with a low end processor to play back movies, unless you have a good amount of RAM with a good mobo that has decent bus speeds and doesn't really have many extra programs on it.

I'm probably going to go with an external drive (or more than one, actually. I have a lot of movies.) I don't really know much about RAID arrays, although I did try to read up on them, but ended up more confused than anything.

When I say "low end", it's actually a relative term. The old processor I mentioned previously played them back just fine, and the cheapest new processor I can get these days is faster than that, so I don't think there are any worries there. I think I'm going to put 512MB in the thing. It's going to be used solely for watching movies, not for any gaming, email, or anything else, although at some point I'd like to network the whole collection so I can share it with the other TVs in the house.

I'm pretty broke lately, and have to make sure I have enough for our beach trip, so I'm not buying it anytime soon. I do have a wish list, however. Maybe I could post it when I get home, if you wouldn't mind offering your constructive criticism. :)

jb17kx

06-12-2007, 11:13 PM

Western Digital also do a 1TB 10KRPM external drive...
There was also something a friend showed me, something like an external drive that was already configured as a RAID cluster, and could have more space added as you wanted. Best part is that comes in either IEEE 1393, IDE, or SATA. I'll look it up for you... I think it started at 1TB (so 2TB with no RAID) for around US$700.

The sad thing is you will pay more for that P3 then you would if you went out and bought a new Core 2 Duo.
I've only ever seen two Slot 1 PIIIs. One was a 650MHz that was owned by my school (they were never going to - couldn't - use it, but the admin wouldn'tt let me have it), and the other a 1GHz that was at a flea market for AU$200. Didn't have the dough for it.

Actually, Mike, I'd spec the machine slightly higher than that. I;d want to have plenty of backup umph, and if all this HD media stuff kicks off it can never hurt to have a bit spare. I'd go for:
-- Around a gig of ram (or maybe 768 - two sticks, a 256 and a 512), and fast stuff too, maybe 400MHz DDR2-800 SDRAM.
-- At least 500GB in the hard disk department - a 10000rpm disk would be good idea.
-- A decent processor (dpending on your mobo and chipset) - perhaps a Northwood Pentium 4, or even a superceeded-but-still-available Pentium D? You should also be able to find AMD Althlon XP stuff around, I saw some for sale online in around Februrary...
I'm sure you can go from there - that's probably actually overkill. My mindset is just to build one very good machine that does everything, rather than a few small specialised ones.

MadMike

06-12-2007, 11:53 PM

This is my list so far, minus the external drives. I haven't added them yet.

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=5920326

If you think I should double the RAM, I can certainly do that. Other than that, what do you think?

I don't know anything about TV cards (I'm also planning to use this machine for recording), so I don't know if the one I picked is any good or not. I already have a wireless LAN card, so I don't need to order one of those.

I'm not too worried about HD media. DVDs are just fine, and if I ever cross that bridge, I can always upgrade later.

Kilamon

06-13-2007, 08:35 PM

This is my list so far, minus the external drives. I haven't added them yet.

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=5920326

Check out http://www.bigbruin.com/2007/nmedia_1 for a good case that may work better in your HTPC (Home Theater PC). Also, BigBruin has a lot of good information for your HTPC needs. Read up.

You definately need to use RAID. I do NOT recommend external drives. The playback speed will be slowed unless you use an external SATA with SATA plugs. Anything that uses USB or Firewire may suffer performance problems. You'd essentially be buying a sweet ferrari of a hard drive and then putting it on a dirt track. As for RAID, just get 2 drives to begin with and use RAID1 which will mirror your drives so if one of them fails, you have a backup. the BigBruin site has an easy to understand guide on RAID if you're confused.

MadMike

06-14-2007, 04:17 AM

Check out http://www.bigbruin.com/2007/nmedia_1 for a good case that may work better in your HTPC (Home Theater PC). Also, BigBruin has a lot of good information for your HTPC needs. Read up.

I actually looked at that same case once before. I had that on the list but removed it when I thought it wouldn't fit on my stand. I must have mis-measured, because I checked it again, and it fits just fine. I might go back to that one now, even though it's a lot more expensive.

You definately need to use RAID. I do NOT recommend external drives. The playback speed will be slowed unless you use an external SATA with SATA plugs. Anything that uses USB or Firewire may suffer performance problems. You'd essentially be buying a sweet ferrari of a hard drive and then putting it on a dirt track. As for RAID, just get 2 drives to begin with and use RAID1 which will mirror your drives so if one of them fails, you have a backup. the BigBruin site has an easy to understand guide on RAID if you're confused.

I'm afraid I'm still lost. Maybe I didn't look at the right document?

I'm going to need more than 2 drives to hold everything. I think I'm going to need about 2 TB to hold all my DVDs. Is it easy to add drives to an array? I've never done anything with that before. I've built and repaired my share of systems, but I'm feeling lost here.

JustADude

06-14-2007, 08:31 AM

Quick primer, as a general FYI: RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Independent Disks" or something to that effect. There are a whole bunch of different kinds of options for how that array is set up, numbered 0-5, based on what kind of scheme you use.

What Kilamon is suggesting is a RAID-1 "Mirrored" design. Basically, you get a pair (or, in this case, multiple pairs) of identical physical drives and set them up so the same information is always present on both drives just in case one goes out.

A better method, given how much storage you'll be using, would be the RAID-5 "Block-Interleaved Distributed-Parity" design. Basically you have multiple HDs, at least 3, where they each take turns keeping parity bits for a certain amount of space, so if any of them crap a brick, the info can be recovered easily using a check-sum routine. Also, RAID-5 is actually more space-efficient the more discs you have, since you lose 1/#th of the space on the discs (# being the number of discs in the array), as compared to a flat 1/2 space for a mirrored array.

Its only weakness is the slowdown for parity updates during small write operations, so I'd recommend putting your OS and files that will need updating on a single disc NOT in the RAID-5 and using the multi-TB block of discs only for bulk storage.

MadMike

06-14-2007, 06:54 PM

Also, RAID-5 is actually more space-efficient the more discs you have, since you lose 1/#th of the space on the discs (# being the number of discs in the array), as compared to a flat 1/2 space for a mirrored array.

So basically, you lose one of the drives, assuming they're all the same size?

Andara Bledin

06-14-2007, 10:51 PM

I'm looking to build a machine that I can copy my entire DVD collection to and hook up to the TV, so that I'll have all of them readily available instead of having to repeatedly grab and return them to the shelf.

I'd just get a DVD jukebox. It'd be less versatile over the long-term, but probably a lot easier to set up and use if you just want to stop shuffling discs.

^-.-^

myswtghst

06-14-2007, 10:55 PM

I'd just get a DVD jukebox. It'd be less versatile over the long-term, but probably a lot easier to set up and use if you just want to stop shuffling discs.

^-.-^

My dad has a 100-disc cd player for that purpose.

Granted, my brother built me a handy-dandy little shuttle (it's a little baby computer, with a pretty green case) that is basically only there to store and play movies and tv shows for me. :D Have I mentioned that my brother rocks?

JustADude

06-15-2007, 05:36 AM

So basically, you lose one of the drives, assuming they're all the same size?

:doh: Yeah, pretty much. I guess I brain-farted since you lose 1/#th of the space on each drive, not all the space on one particular physical drive. And, like others mentioned, depending on how many DVDs you have, and if you care about special features, you might want to go with a jukebox. Of course, since you estimated a couple TBs of space, I bet you have more than 100 DVDs.

On most cases the external slots come with a blank plate, and can be used for an internal slot, so (depending on if you go with the separate drive for your OS and ripping/playback utilities or not) you'll need a case with either 6x or 7x 3.5" slots total, if you want to do RAID-5 array with over 2-TB of space. Check out the "ATX Media Center" class of cases on Newegg, and you should be able to find something to suit your needs nicely. :D Not sure on the quality of the brand, but Silverstone has some options that look pretty good, and Thermaltake has an option or two in that category as well.

MadMike

06-15-2007, 08:14 PM

:doh: Yeah, pretty much. I guess I brain-farted since you lose 1/#th of the space on each drive, not all the space on one particular physical drive. And, like others mentioned, depending on how many DVDs you have, and if you care about special features, you might want to go with a jukebox. Of course, since you estimated a couple TBs of space, I bet you have more than 100 DVDs.

I think I counted about 300 DVDs, and I'm not sure if I counted the ones my wife took up to the bedroom to watch and never brought back. I did a random sampling of about 30 discs, and it looks like the average size is about 6 GB.

As for special features, I'll still get those, because I'm just copying the VIDEO_TS directories, not ripping them into AVI files or anything like that. I've copied a few movies to my main computer's hard drive, accessed them from other computers, both wired and wireless, and even accessed the same movie from more than one computer at once, and everything's been working great so far. I did get a scare one time, though. The playback started skipping all of a sudden, but it turned out that the third party defragmenter I have on my main computer had kicked in.

I also have this cool remote that works with all kinds of different players, and also doubles as a mouse. I've had great luck with that.

I'm still not sure about the whole RAID thing. The drives are a little pricey for having the space of one of them being unusable. Almost makes me want to just take my chances. Besides, I've never had a drive that died instantly (knock on wood.) The last drive that died warned me by giving intermittent errors ("Error writing to drive C"), but still left me plenty of time to get a new drive, slave the old one, and copy everything back before it died completely.

I know someone said that external drives would be too slow, but I've looked around on Newegg, and I saw some positive reviews from people who bought them and used them for the same thing I have in mind. I might see if I can borrow someone's external drive and try it out. That way, if it works, great. If not, then I can look into other options.

Andara Bledin

06-15-2007, 09:25 PM

A DVD jukebox would still work with 300+ disks. One of the ones I spotted on a price comparison site was a 400 disk setup for about $500-$800 online and had several good reviews listed.

^-.-^

Kilamon

06-15-2007, 09:36 PM

I know someone said that external drives would be too slow, but I've looked around on Newegg, and I saw some positive reviews from people who bought them and used them for the same thing I have in mind. I might see if I can borrow someone's external drive and try it out. That way, if it works, great. If not, then I can look into other options.

:ot: Sorry, Mike, seems we've gone off the original topic of the OP.

Anyways, here's the link to the raid article (http://www.bigbruin.com/techtip.php?file=011) I mentioned.

I wanted to ask why you feel an external hard drive is necessary? Are you going to be traveling and want to take your movies?

As for the raid, if you want 2tb, I saw that there's 500gb hitachi for $100 each, or 1tb for $369 (with coupons). To get up to 2tb, you can use 5x500gb or 3x1tb. You will lose one drive's use to the raid5 array, and you can expand raid5, so the 500gb drives may be less expensive and easier later down to expand.

MadMike

06-15-2007, 10:26 PM

I wanted to ask why you feel an external hard drive is necessary? Are you going to be traveling and want to take your movies?

I wouldn't be taking them out of the house, no. I just figured it would be the easiest to expand as my collection grows.

JustADude

06-16-2007, 04:10 AM

I wouldn't be taking them out of the house, no. I just figured it would be the easiest to expand as my collection grows.

As Kilamon mentioned, massive internal drives seem to be cheaper than the same size external drive, and the RAID-5 can have extra discs plugged in and it'll automatically redistribute the load across the new volumes. There's also much less space lost to 'formatting' issues on a RAID array, since the computer sees the whole thing as only one disc.

Kilamon

06-19-2007, 04:25 PM

As Kilamon mentioned, massive internal drives seem to be cheaper than the same size external drive, and the RAID-5 can have extra discs plugged in and it'll automatically redistribute the load across the new volumes. There's also much less space lost to 'formatting' issues on a RAID array, since the computer sees the whole thing as only one disc.

Yep. You can do a cheap linux server with a big raid5 array and store that in another room and then also build out the mid-quality HTPC with a simple (yet sizable) drive to allow you to rip the DVDs (unless you want to use Linux for it) and store your PVR movies/shows. Then, you access your media library across the network where it's safely stored on the raid array. Bonus from this method is that you don't have to worry about keeping all those drives cool in your entertainment center AND you can use a larger case to allow you to use more hard drives as well as have more capacity for expeansion, physically. BTW, this is what I did. I use my normal workstation (XP) to rip DVDs to store on the Linux server (also my PDC, DNS, DHCP, Print Server and File server) and I can access them from any machine on the network including the HTPC which has a smallish 250gb hdd and cheap celery processor. It plays all my MP3s from the network, all my movies, and I can record live tv as well. Works pretty nicely. I think the new TiVo standalone machines are capable of accessing network resources, too. You might want to check that out.

MadMike

06-28-2007, 05:01 AM

:ot: Sorry, Mike, seems we've gone off the original topic of the OP.

No problem. Since we now have another forum more suited to what we were discussing, I split this conversation off from the other thread and moved it here.

A few things have changed since we discussed this last, and any help you or anyone else can give me would be appreciated.

I found a nice piece of software for managing my movies called "MediaPortal". But unless I want to be searching through several different folders for my movies, it looks like I'll have to go with RAID after all, if for no other reason than to show all the movies as being under the same folder. So I'll need some help figuring out how to do that. I'm assuming I'd need some sort of external enclosure, since only so many drives will fit inside a case, especially if I get a Media Center one. If you could recommend something, that would be a big help.

Now, to address some of the other comments:

1. I don't want to just get a DVD jukebox, as I'd like to network my collection, and eventually get computers for the other TVs in the house and have them be able to access my movie collection. Besides, if everything is on computers, and one of them breaks, I know how to fix it. Not so with a jukebox.

2. I would prefer not to have to build a seperate server, but I will if I need to. I'd prefer not to have to buy a second set of parts (case, motherboard, processor, etc.), and I'm not sure where I'd even put it. If possible, I'd like the main computer to be able to double as both a media center and a server.

3. I've seen the terrabyte drives, but at the moment, they're horribly expensive, moreso than the 500GB ones, dollar per gigabyte. It would be nice to have, and I wouldn't need nearly as many drives, but unless the come down in price by the time I'm ready to put this together, I think the best thing would be to get several 500GB drives.

4. My friend who was going to bring over the external drive had to cancel on me, so I never got to find out if it would have been fast enough or not. Doesn't matter anyway, since I've scrapped that idea.

5. I have a link to my wish list somewhere, if anyone can take a look and tell me if I'm on the right track. If you see an external drive on the list, ignore that. That's left over from when I thought I was going that route, and may not have gotten around to updating it yet. I might end up changing a bunch more things, but if someone could at least let me know if I'm on the right track, that would be great. :)

RichS

06-28-2007, 03:57 PM

5. I have a link to my wish list somewhere, if anyone can take a look and tell me if I'm on the right track. If you see an external drive on the list, ignore that. That's left over from when I thought I was going that route, and may not have gotten around to updating it yet. I might end up changing a bunch more things, but if someone could at least let me know if I'm on the right track, that would be great. :)

Mike, I have a Media Center PC that I put together with leftover parts & some new ones.

Looking over your list, I'd boost the RAM another 512MB for 1 GB. Just get another 512MB stick to take advantage of dual-channel.

There's a few of questions I have also -

Are you thinking of doing more with it eventually than just media storage? If you want to do more, then maybe get WinXP MCE over WinXP Home.

I didn't see a graphics card listed - what are you going to be using, and are you going to have this connected to a TV? You can go with a lower-end card (you're probably not going to be doing anything 3D with this system), but you have to make sure that there's an output your TV supports (S-video for an older set, DVI or VGA for newer). A fanless graphics card would be a good choice for a system like this - the less noise, the better.

MadMike

06-28-2007, 10:00 PM

Looking over your list, I'd boost the RAM another 512MB for 1 GB. Just get another 512MB stick to take advantage of dual-channel.

:doh: Someone had mentioned that previously. I meant to add another stick, but forgot.

Are you thinking of doing more with it eventually than just media storage? If you want to do more, then maybe get WinXP MCE over WinXP Home.

The only other thing I'd want to do with it is record TV, hence the TV card. I know nothing about TV cards, so I have no idea if the one I picked is any good or not. What would be the advantages of MCE? The MediaPortal software I've chosen to use is free, and from what I've seen from the screen shots, looks a lot like MCE.

I didn't see a graphics card listed - what are you going to be using, and are you going to have this connected to a TV?

Hmm, I could have sworn I had one listed. My son has a spare one that I might be able to use, but I thought I added one just in case.

Yes, the whole idea is to hook it up to the TV thru S-video, and the stereo thru an optical connection. That's why I added a sound card, instead of just using the onboard sound that all motherboards have these days.

Another thought I had about a separate server -- how much of a machine do you need for a server? My son has quite a few computers just sitting around, although they're a bit old. I think the best one he had was something like a 300mhz Pentium 2.

Shabo

06-29-2007, 01:42 PM

Oh no, please tell me you aren't seriously thinking of setting up the P2 as a server. That would be heinously slow. There would be no way you could put anything greater then W98 on it (2k would take up too much system resources) and you probably wouldn't have a good playback rate. At all.

I was talking with one of my fellow techie geeks, and he was saying that for Raid arrays, you only need a raid controller, hard drives, and case, and that you could set one up for $800. He was also saying that the cheapest way to get the network to all of your tvs would be to buy original XBoxes, mod them out, then install windows media center on them and network them to the raid server. This could be easier said than done, but I'll see if I can find anything online that is a how-to kind of thing.

Ok, I found a nice article with step by step instructions on setting up a raid array on a regular PC. RAID (http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/RAID.htm)

Here is another article of how someone created a setup with just raid controllers, drives, and a ps, and done as cheaply as possible. You might want to get bigger HDs though, lol. Poor Mans Raid (http://www.inventgeek.com/Projects/PoorMansRaid/page4.aspx)

This is how to mod the Xbox to be able to play things on it from the network. Xbox Mod (http://www.productwiki.com/microsoft-xbox/article/how-to-go-from-xbox-to-xbox-media-center-in-30-minutes.html)

RichS

06-29-2007, 02:18 PM

Oops! I guess I didn't go over the previous posts completely...:doh:

Since you already have the MediaPortal software, I'd stick with XP Home then. Looks like MediaPortal has the same capabilities as XP MCE for free. If I didn't get XP MCE for free, I'd probably give that a try. If Microsoft pushes it's DRM further, I just might anyway, either that or Myth TV (http://www.mythtv.org/).

I don't know if that TV card's good or not either. Personally, you can't go wrong with Hauppauge. I use a Win-TV 150 MCE, and video quality is great! I found this on NewEgg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116625R) - it's a little bit more $ than what you have listed, but I bet it'd be well worth it. As far as graphics, I didn't see one listed, but any good card with an S-Video output would do well.

Other than that, it looks like you'd be set with that system.

As far as servers, I haven't a clue. Only server I worked on was an ancient dual P166. :D

MadMike

06-30-2007, 01:33 AM

Oh no, please tell me you aren't seriously thinking of setting up the P2 as a server.

Well, not anymore. I started to realize that as I was looking at parts. I guess there's no getting away from having a separate server. So I'll have to put together a wish list just for that. I guess I won't need speakers, and I have an old CRT sitting around. Maybe I can find space for it in the laundry/storage area. It's not like I'd need a comfortable place to sit at it and use it, unless the thing goes down and for initial setup, and even then I wouldn't have to be on it for long.

I've been looking at RAID cards. Looks like I'm going to have to go SATA, because the IDE ones I saw look like they can only handle four drives max.

I think I saw a couple that can handle 12 drives. I don't know that I'd need that many, but the more the better. I also saw some motherboards that say they're RAID-capable. Does that mean I wouldn't need the card?

I'm starting to get the idea, I think. Someone mentioned that RAID-5 would be the way to go. Just one question that I can't seem to find the answer to -- do all the drives have to be the same size? By the time I'd need to add to the thing, the bigger drives will probably come down in price, and I might want to add some of them. What I'd really like is to use some of the terrabyte drives I've seen on Newegg, but they're still hellishly expensive.

Any idea what type of processor would be good to go with? Maybe the one I have for the media center?

Personally, you can't go wrong with Hauppauge.

Thanx, I'll have a look at that one later. I'm sure that one would be good, I think I saw that one listed somewhere in the software I'm using.

JustADude

06-30-2007, 10:19 AM

To answer your questions in order:

Yes, that means that the MoBo has a RAID controller built into it, so you wouldn't have to get a controller. Just be sure it's SATA 3GB/s standard, since that's the fastest out there.

The drives don't all HAVE to be the same size, but the array works most smoothly and efficiently if they all are. You'll need to add up however many you need to get the total storage, then add one more for the parity checking to get the total number of drives. I'll also once more recommend getting a small, separate physical drive for the OS, so you don't have R/W bottlenecks if the system has to do something during playback.

Just about any processor created since the birth of WinXP should do you just fine. You'd want to get at least 1Ghz, but I don't think you can find one under that these days anyway.

MadMike

07-01-2007, 01:40 AM

I'll also once more recommend getting a small, separate physical drive for the OS, so you don't have R/W bottlenecks if the system has to do something during playback.

Understood, and that brings me to another question...

How would I exclude one of the drives from the array if I'm using a motherboard that supports it, rather than a RAID card? With the card, I assume that all I'd have to do would be to hook one drive up directly to the board and not the card.

I've updated my wish list recently. On the recommendations I've received so far, I've doubled the RAM, switched to a Haupage TV card, and added a video card (I could have sworn I had one listed, but there didn't seem to be one when I checked.)

If this looks OK, I guess the next thing to do would be to put together a server. I've seen some motherboards that handle a large number of drives, but I also noticed that some of them have dual LAN ports. How would you use something like that?

EDIT: How does this motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813127004) look for the server?

RichS

07-01-2007, 03:27 AM

How would I exclude one of the drives from the array if I'm using a motherboard that supports it, rather than a RAID card? With the card, I assume that all I'd have to do would be to hook one drive up directly to the board and not the card.

With the motherboards I've seen that have onboard RAID, they have separate SATA or IDE adapters for RAID, so it's almost the same as a separate card - just attach the separate drive to the normal SATA or IDE adapter on the board.

I do separate drives on my HTPC also - one smaller main drive for the OS & downloaded Internet TV, and one separate drive for recording. Another good reason for this is if the OS has a problem, I can just format & reload without losing my recorded content.

I've updated my wish list recently.

Looks good to me - the 7800GS card will be more than enough to do the job, and I like the upgrades both to the Hauppauge TV card and the Corsair memory.

JustADude

07-01-2007, 05:58 PM

How would I exclude one of the drives from the array if I'm using a motherboard that supports it, rather than a RAID card? With the card, I assume that all I'd have to do would be to hook one drive up directly to the board and not the card.

As RichS said, there'll be a separate place to plug the drives in, plus you'll have to go in and build the array once the physical drives are installed. It'll either be done in the BIOS setup, or during another setup screen that comes up during boot.

I, personally, would avoid that ABIT board, since the reviews seem to indicate it's got some issues. Otherwise, the specs on it look great, though.

MadMike

07-02-2007, 10:29 PM

OK, I'm getting confused again. I know you advised me not to use the board I linked to, so I'll just use it as an example.

I think it had 10 SATA connectors. How do I know which ones can be used for the array?

JustADude

07-03-2007, 12:02 AM

I think it had 10 SATA connectors. How do I know which ones can be used for the array?

If it works like the board I have they ALL can. The controller looks at all the SATA drives plugged into the board and says "Hey, which ones do you want to hook up and how?"

MadMike

07-03-2007, 03:20 AM

Thanks. I'll see if I can put together a parts list for the server, and let you and anyone else who may be knowledgeable have a look. :)

MadMike

07-03-2007, 10:38 PM

JustADude

07-03-2007, 11:30 PM

I was looking at this board (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128037), and I thought it looked good. It has 10 SATA connectors, and I figured that would be enough, with a few to spare, just in case.

But then I saw something in one of the reviews that said it actually has 2 RAID controllers, 6 on the one and 4 on the other. Is there a way to use all of them for one, or no?

Things are getting a little confusing here. Would I maybe be better of getting just a basic board and a RAID card?

Not sure, since I don't have experience with Gigabyte parts, but I wouldn't think so. If you want to do more than 6 drives (which would be either 2.5TB or 5TB after losing one for the RAID checksum) you'd be best off to go ahead and get a separate PCI card to do array.

MadMike

07-04-2007, 01:27 AM

Thanks, I'll start looking at RAID cards.

A couple more questions, if you don't mind. And anyone else who can help is free to jump in as well. :)

Going back to the media center PC, would there be anything wrong with using onboard sound? The only reason I went with a card at all is because I want to connect to my stereo's optical connector. However, I've found a board that I think will work with the processor I picked, and also has a built-in optical connector. It also seems to have some better reviews than the original one I picked. Most of the cons are about things I don't intend to do, like overclocking.

Here is the board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135208

I'm not going to change my wish list just yet until I'm sure this one would be OK.

And another question: Since I'm not going to be using the server for anything intense graphics-wise, would it be OK to get a board with onboard video and use that, or would that eat up too much memory? I'm hoping to put together a list for that soon.

Oh, FYI, I think I'm going to get 750GB drives for that. It sucks that it's twice what the 500GB drives cost, but I want to make sure I have enough capacity, and the terrabyte drives are still around $400, and last time I checked, they're only allowing one per customer.

JustADude

07-04-2007, 01:45 AM

Nah, for just straight playback you should be fine with on-board graphics and sound, if the thing comes with its own D-Audio jack. You might want to consider looking at some of the HD cards, though, to see if you can't get one that will do some really fancy audio- and video-out stuff for your TV in one package.

MadMike

07-04-2007, 01:50 AM

OK, I think I'm going to switch the motherboard, drop the sound card, and switch to a SATA drive since the new board only has one IDE connector.

My TV is S-video, so unless there's a board with one of those built in, I'm going to have to go with a video card.

Thanks for all your help so far. Hopefully I won't need much more.

:yourock:

RichS

07-04-2007, 02:08 AM

I was just going to say that the ECS motherboard is probably better than the Jetway, & just make sure that the MediaPortal software works with the onboard sound. If it does, you should be all set!

EDIT: Just went to the MediaPortal site, and the only recommended hardware is TV cards, so you should be OK with the onboard audio.

MadMike

07-04-2007, 02:35 AM

Yeah, I've been playing around with MediaPortal on two computers, both of which have onboard sound. Nice piece of software. :)

MadMike

07-04-2007, 02:50 AM

OK, I made the changes, and good thing I went back and double-checked because this board takes a different type of memory than the other one did. Good news is, it was about $20 cheaper. :D

If anyone wants to take another look and make sure everything looks OK, I'd appreciate it. I'm going to go ahead and see if I can put together a server.

RichS

07-04-2007, 05:49 PM

Looks OK to me.

Sounds like MediaPortal might be a better solution than what I have - 1) it doesn't look like it has the DRM that Microsoft puts into MCE, 2) unlike MediaPortal, MCE has very specific hardware (graphics, TV, & sound cards) & DVD decoder requirements, and 3) MCE records in Microsoft's dvr_ms file format instead of a straight MPEG-2 format.

When I can upgrade my HTPC (I'm looking into making it quieter with less & larger, slower rotating cooling fans), I'll definitely be looking into it.

MadMike

07-04-2007, 09:56 PM

OK, I'm looking at RAID cards now.

I had my eye on some that could handle 12 drives, but they're hellishly expensive. And some of them don't even have cables. They have what they call "Multilane" connectors, which I can't find anywhere on Newegg. I googled around for them, and it looks like even the cables are expensive. The cheapest RAID card I could find that had regular cables was almost $700.

I dropped down to cards with 8 connectors, which should be plenty if I'm using 750GB drives. I probably won't get that many drives to begin with, but I'll be able to add on as needed.

I've been looking at this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115026) and this. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115022)

They're both made by the same company, and only $10 difference in price. The first one is PCI-E, and the other one is PCI-X, which I'm not familiar with. I did some research, and it says that a PCI-X will fit in a standard PCI slot, but it sounds like it will run slower. I haven't seen any boards on Newegg that have anything called a PCI-X slot, so I'm a little confused here.

I'm a little concerned about the first card, as some of the reviews say that running a RAID-5 with more than 4 drives will slow things down. I've seen similar comments with the second card, but they say that only write operations are slow, so maybe that's what they mean with the first card as well. Since there aren't going to be a whole lot of write operations to the array, that really wouldn't be a problem.

Any ideas here?

JustADude

07-05-2007, 02:51 AM

I'd go ahead and go with the PCI-E card, since it's the fastest standard out there. The other one, the PCI bus would be a bottle-neck on your transfers.

MadMike

07-05-2007, 03:24 AM

Thanks. I should be able to go from here. Hopefully, the next post I make here will be to post the parts list for the server. :)

Shabo

07-05-2007, 01:24 PM

Ok, make sure that as you expand your drive collection, you expand with the same size and model of HDD that you have in there already. Apparently this is a requirement for raid controllers.

LostMyMind

07-05-2007, 04:36 PM

That depends on the RAID card. Some card requires same sizes and even models. Others don't care.

MadMike

07-07-2007, 02:50 AM

OK, I finished putting together a parts list for the server. If anyone would care to check it out...

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=4575345

I'm starting out with 5 drives for now. I can add up to 3 more with this card if I need it.

The 160GB drive is the one that's not part of the array. I figured I wouldn't need that one to be very big.

I also assumed I'd need a floppy drive, since most of the cards I looked at come with a driver disk.

JustADude

07-07-2007, 06:38 AM

They're usually on CD these days, MadMike, and you could get by with a tiny little IDE drive, like about 40 GB or 80 GB if you wanted, since JUST the OS and critical apps are going there. :D

If you do want a floppy, go ahead and spring for the ones that do the memory-device reading as well. It's a couple bucks extra, but you'll get your money's worth out of it if you (like I) have a phone with a MicroSD memory card or use digital cameras. Stick it in your tower and use your tower's current floppy for the server. ;)

MadMike

07-07-2007, 06:58 AM

You're right -- I went back and checked, and it does come with a CD, not a floppy. I'll think about whether or not I want to keep the floppy drive, and if I want to go with a smaller hard drive.

I don't really need a card reader on the server. I already have one on the main computer, and if I want to put anything on the server from a card, I can just use a shared folder.

I believe the board I picked only has one IDE connector, which the DVD drive will need, so I think I'm going to have to stick with SATA.

Does everything else look OK?

JustADude

07-07-2007, 07:13 AM

I believe the board I picked only has one IDE connector, which the DVD drive will need, so I think I'm going to have to stick with SATA.

Does everything else look OK?

Otherwise, everything looks great, but you can plug 2 IDE devices into one connector, since they have the 'master' device 'slave' device thing. Don't ask me how that works since they had jumperless setup on drives by the time I got on the scene, but you plug one into a connector in the middle of the cable and one into the end.