Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > NAS/RAID & Technologies > Home Theater File Server
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mcholach   05-11-2009 at 02:52:25 PM

I am in the process of pricing a home theater file server. I plan to build a rack mounted server to store my 250+ DVD collection, but I am unsure of which route to take when it comes to Sata 150 vs. Sata 300. To begin with I will be using a Norco 20 bay enclosure with 5 Sata 300 WD 7200 'Black' HDs. NIC will be 10/100/1000, with the same on the HTPC side (NIC I mean). I plan on running Windows home server on the file server and using RAID5. My question is, do I need the through put of a SATA 300 (II) RAID controller, or am I OK with a cheaper SATA controller.

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Bronze Storage badge r_manic   05-12-2009 at 06:10:12 AM
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AFAIK, the better the RAID controller, the better.

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vgdarkstar   05-12-2009 at 06:31:52 PM
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DVD streams wouldn't be able to fully saturate gig or the hard drives, you'd be fine either way.

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mindless728   05-12-2009 at 07:28:29 PM
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i watch blu-ray quality movies from my server, it has 4x640GB drives in a raid-0
im using partial hardware/partial software raid

to elaborate more:
i have 2 sets of raid-0, 2 drives each
then i do a software raid 0 on the two sets

i can max out a Gigabit connection with this

though, with DVD streams, you won't come close to that


Message edited by mindless728 on 05-12-2009 at 07:45:02 PM
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Bronze Storage badge r_manic   05-13-2009 at 09:27:55 AM
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Agree with them, unless you plan to multi-task with the computer, working on it while it serves the movies to somewhere else (not recommended).

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ButtonBoy   05-13-2009 at 08:39:38 PM
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Yes, you will be better off with the SATA2 (3Ghz) controller. Better yet find one with multiple PCIe lanes. Why would you use such old drives as the WD 300s? Or are you using the VelociRaptor 300s? If so, they would really benefit from the SATA2 interface.

Keep in mind that there are far more issues here for getting an end-to-end solution working right. NIC cards vary considerably in performance, and RAID controllers have a no support for NCQ. Both will affect your server's ability to pump large amounts of data.

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Bronze Storage badge sub mesa   05-14-2009 at 11:40:11 AM
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Like NCQ would be of any benefit to handling single-user large file storage. Also, SATA1 (1,5Gbps) and SATA2 (3,0Gbps) would not cause any notable performance difference; because HDDs are too slow for that. It would matter for SSDs though.

------------------------------ ...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
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