HTPC: NAS or internal?

bohmfalkcw · Sep 26, 2015

I'm looking into setting up my first HTPC and was wondering if I should put the storage inside the system or if I should get a separate NAS? I will be using the storage to hold my digital media library that I will be putting together from my large collection of Blu-Rays and DVDs.

What are the pros and cons?

Thanks for any help,
Topher

getochkn · Sep 26, 2015

Depends on how much media, if you want it backed up, will you be accessing the media from other devices other than the HTPC, if so, do you want the media transcoded, etc. Lots of options.

Wolfshadw · Sep 26, 2015

I will be using the storage to hold my digital media library that I will be putting together from my large collection of Blu-Rays and DVDs.

Don't bother. Unless you have the funds for backup drives and have drives on hand for when one fails, it's not worth the time and effort. Had about 750GB of movies stored on a drive. Took weeks to build the library. Rarely used it. Barely even touched it. When the drive failed, I restored it from a backup. Took days to recover. When my back up drive failed, I decided it wasn't worth the effort to recreate it. Eventually, I just deleted it and used the drive space for my DVR.

It's a nice idea, but really not practical, in my experience.

-Wolf sends

jsmithepa · Sep 26, 2015

Internal
Pro: Cheap and easy. Can sleep with the CPU.
Con: An hassle to add/upgrade even with a large tower. If another box needs access to said storage then this box needs to be on, configuring network shares can be a hassle.

External NAS
Pro: Accessed from multiple clients. Front loading bays means adding/removing drives is a breeze, don't have to disturb main PC.
Con: $$$.

Wolfshadw · Sep 26, 2015

For full disclosure, I should state that my original intent was to use something like this Drive Bay Enclosure for it's hot swap capabilities, plus a hardware RAID card for sustainability, but for what I really wanted, the cost just rose too high and I could never afford it.

This set up was actually intended for my server running Windows 2008 Server with a multitude of virtual machines running. While I had the VMs up and running for a time, costs prevented me from ever getting the "NAS" up and running.

-Wolf sends

bohmfalkcw · Sep 26, 2015

Thanks for the info. I had initially planned on getting a WDTV player and an NAS to go with it (couple dozen blurays so far couple hundred dvds so a few TB to start I'll need at least) and that evolved into looking into an HTPC. I'm thinking I might go with the WDTV for now so I can spend the money on the NAS first and then slowly build up the HTPC later.

Whichever way I go, I'll be playing my media through my receiver to my TV. If I do the NAS, I'll be going with 2 HD in RAID for backup. If I go internal I figured I'd have an external HD to backup everything on.

This is also my first foray beyond using Netflix through my XBox and a bluray player, so there's probably still a lot I have left to learn.

bohmfalkcw · Sep 26, 2015

For NAS I have my eye on WD MyCloud EX2: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1180

jaguarskx · Sep 26, 2015

For myself, I rely on internal drives because I built my HTPC back in 2009. I use a simple RAID 1 configuration. I plan on upgrading my HTPC probably next year with a dedicated RAID card so that I can use 4TB hard drives because I really doubt my old ABit 35 Pro motherboard will recognize those drives. It will have two RAID 1 arrays using four 4TB hard drives.

I thought about using SSDs as a form of permanent storage (because they have no moving parts), but 8TB of SSD storage is still rather expensive.

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HTPC: NAS or internal?

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