Media Center PC help needed

[RichS]

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]

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.

[Kilamon]

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.

[JustADude]

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.

[MadMike]

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.

[Kilamon]

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.

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

Anyways, here's the link to the raid article 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.

[Andara Bledin]

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.

^-.-^

[MadMike]

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.

[JustADude]

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

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. 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.

[myswtghst]

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. Have I mentioned that my brother rocks?

[Andara Bledin]

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.

^-.-^

[MadMike]

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?

[JustADude]

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]

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.

[Kilamon]

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

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/...Number=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.