Ideas/Opinions about creating a home server?!

[Manos]

Hi everyone and thank you in advance for checking out what I need help with.

I already have about 7TB of HDD in my PC. I use my PC about everything ( including gaming ) and one of those things is that I dont even use a (HD)TV anymore other than using it as a display for my PC. My new 2TB HDD is already full since im a sucker for storing in it 1080p movies ( with DTS sound as a requirement.. :S )

I dont like the fact that I have so many HDDs in my tower. I have almost 24/7 my PC on and I had to dissable my PC from turning off my HDDs when inactive. So even when im at work, gaming or anything everything is working in the box plus adding up to the heat. So I started thinking about an external storage solution.

Checking server prices can be spicy for me in some cases but paying up to 400$ which I dont know if I really need such boxes. ( TOPS! doesnt mean it has to be that much... Half the price if possible would be welcome if useful for my case ) My question is IF someone can point me to the right direction. What kinbd of conection would I need? Is USB 3 futureproof compared to Ethernet so Id rather wait for more to come out if not already a good option available? Is the speed of those too much for my needs since I mostly need the box for mostly watching from my HD movies collection from it? Not going with a raid one would be a VERY bad choice? I know im full of questions but money is kind of an issue so I rather not make a wrong move for no reason and waste them just for being clueless on the matter.


Point being... I just need it for storing mostly my collections and going through them from the box itself. Prefferably something that gives me the option to put 4 HDDs in it ( so I can fill it with 4x2TB or 4x3TB of HDDs ) and also Id LOVE it to be accessible from other PCs as well in the house so it can offer more to the family while being there. I saw things like Acer's easyStore but has no raid and kinda pricy. Or Western Digital 4TB ShareSpace Network Storage System 4-bay which I dont even know why 4-bay and not up to 8TB+? Im so confused and feel more of a noob than ever with no experience on the matter Maybe I could make my own serverbox if someone is willing to also explain where to start from making it more effective, flexible and cheap? Im willing to spend time on it ^.^

Any kind of help, direction and sudjestion would be EXTREMELY apreciated and im sorry if the way I talk ( type!? ) is confusing but Im not American nor English in any way.

Thank you in advance and Im sorry for all the rant and noobism.

 

[iceclock]

u could use a nas box with the drives u need such as :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage


its a networked attached storage unit, which is interesting withou the hassle of building a pc specficied for network transfer of big data streams

 

[Manos]

Im already checking on NAS options. Lots of them but I need to figure out if and what are the differences of some of those.

Thank you for your reply ^.^ Ill keep checking here and looking around on the NAS offers. Lots of them

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I have 12 PC's at home and use an NAS .... it's great ...it's easy and it keeps me of having to reconfigure my kids boxes cause it's an iTunes server

This is what put in 3.5 years ago:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822122010

w/ two of these (lowest noise and temperature of all performance level drives):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148433

It's bit long in the tooth I guess, but still doing it's job well, then again I don't need all those multimedia thingies like streaming to i-Phones which seem to be of critical importance to kids w/ too much time on their hands

 

[Manos]

I have 12 PC's at home and use an NAS .... it's great ...it's easy and it keeps me of having to reconfigure my kids boxes cause it's an iTunes server

This is what put in 3.5 years ago:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822122010

w/ two of these (lowest noise and temperature of all performance level drives):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148433

It's bit long in the tooth I guess, but still doing it's job well, then again I don't need all those multimedia thingies like streaming to i-Phones which seem to be of critical importance to kids w/ too much time on their hands

This looks cool to me when it comes to price/baycount, so its what mostly matters As for the iPhones etc I honestly dont care. I do want to make sure I can watch my movies from it or even better connect it through Media Center for simplicity. Im already liking this so far. Seems like a great value to the ones ive seen so far x.x

Im at work and even here im still looking around the net . So many things I didnt even know I could do through those things... Im half confused and half excited

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859321014&cm_re=acer_easystore-_-59-321-014-_-Product

This looks sweet but I guess I rather make a raid out of it since Im planning on using all 4bays with 2TB each HDD and this doesnt look like it supports RAID

One ( more ) stupid question I dont need to care about the HHDs actual rpm since the drives arent going to be used to their full potential when it comes to speed individually. Am I understanding this bit wrong? I would guess that any new Seagate/Western Digital HDD would be the same to me, even if its a green one, so I can save some money out of that. SSD will go in my main tower.

 

[adampower]

That does look sweet. But I don't know anything more than the specs I just read. I like the simplicity of whs and was tempted to buy it myself.

As you say the 7200rpm drives are not necessary today... with that atom based box. You're not likely to bump into 100MB/s. And... I don't necessarily believe in 'future proofing' due to the fact that I haven't been to the future yet and today's best hardware will probably be cheaper or obsolete. So, to keep a long story long... buy green!

I like to tinker and build my own little boxes but I'm dismayed to find that the hp 495 is actually very similar to my build and not much more expensive.

... my 2 cents

 

[Manos]

That does look sweet. But I don't know anything more than the specs I just read. I like the simplicity of whs and was tempted to buy it myself.

As you say the 7200rpm drives are not necessary today... with that atom based box. You're not likely to bump into 100MB/s. And... I don't necessarily believe in 'future proofing' due to the fact that I haven't been to the future yet and today's best hardware will probably be cheaper or obsolete. So, to keep a long story long... buy green!

I like to tinker and build my own little boxes but I'm dismayed to find that the hp 495 is actually very similar to my build and not much more expensive.

... my 2 cents

I wish I knew more about the subject or I would build one myself. I honestly had never been interested in the past about this so I have no idea. The same way i cant wait to build my new rig ( waiting for the Cougar to be rereleased ... ) Id love to do in this case. The last 3 days Ive spent over 40 hours on this x.x

Im still at work, the security guard is asking me to download for him some *** but I really have about 30 tabs open still atm looking around x.x

Like i said I guess Id have to go with RAID ( 5? since i need too much storage and a bit security for them ) so im trying to limit my searches. So damn complicated its turning out to be when you dont know a thing about them

 

[Manos]

One quick question... I dont know by how much those NAS solutions are functional as indipendent units so I was wondering if they can also work for seeding while my PC is off.Lets say I got the NETGEAR RND4000 or something similar. Can I have it on by itself seeding through uTorrent?

Its not something I require so much but if it does will let me also get a clearer image of what they can do. I wasnt kidding I have no idea

 

[f4nt4sm4]

You are right, even I have no idea if that NAS solution support torrenting, let me tell you something, I have an already past his age PC (a Lenovo Thinkcenter *AMD 3500+ 2G RAM etc*) that was just collecting dust in my wardrove so I just bought an Adaptec SAS/SATA controller 2405 (It supports 4 channels) slammed 4x2TB Seagate HD a 80G IDE Hard Drive for the WHS v1 OS, and just using drive extender im pretty cool with that, I have installed utorrent, RDP and some GameServers for the fun of it (Quake III, Battlefield BC2, etc). The advantage here is that you can have backups, media center, online access to files, and RDP and it's not that expensive.

And there's the new WHS v2 "Vail" that lets you stream in realtime videos to Ipods, Zune 1080p content (I think it converts videos automatically someone correct me if I'm wrong), the only cons here is it doesn't have Drive Extender.

Well hope this helps...

 

[adampower]

I'm embarrassed to say that I don't use uTorrent much in either direction. However, I understand that most NAS boxes could seed if you let them. The fact is the 'NAS' is a computer on it's own. It doesn't require anybody on the network for it to be doing what it does. The difference is the NAS has an operating system designed to serve files. You won't get gadgets on your nas that tell you the weather or follow stock trends. It just writes what you feed and reads what you request (like a hard drive with a LAN connection).

 

[Manos]

You are right, even I have no idea if that NAS solution support torrenting, let me tell you something, I have an already past his age PC (a Lenovo Thinkcenter *AMD 3500+ 2G RAM etc*) that was just collecting dust in my wardrove so I just bought an Adaptec SAS/SATA controller 2405 (It supports 4 channels) slammed 4x2TB Seagate HD a 80G IDE Hard Drive for the WHS v1 OS, and just using drive extender im pretty cool with that, I have installed utorrent, RDP and some GameServers for the fun of it (Quake III, Battlefield BC2, etc). The advantage here is that you can have backups, media center, online access to files, and RDP and it's not that expensive.

And there's the new WHS v2 "Vail" that lets you stream in realtime videos to Ipods, Zune 1080p content (I think it converts videos automatically someone correct me if I'm wrong), the only cons here is it doesn't have Drive Extender.

Well hope this helps...

Was considering shoving my old PC into a small box and use it as a server ad buy any kind of card if needed but I guess I will have to figure out how to dissable things on it in order to not waste so much electricity. Mobo is an Asus Maximus Extreme with 2GB DDR3 on it and a GTX 8800 756MB with a Corsair PSU.

Had 2 bad days and got slow on my research but im getting back on track and you have no idea how much I apreciate all your replies

Dont even know if my MOBO can RAID but ill check in a while after I grab something to eat. ^.^

 

[Manos]

I'm embarrassed to say that I don't use uTorrent much in either direction. However, I understand that most NAS boxes could seed if you let them. The fact is the 'NAS' is a computer on it's own. It doesn't require anybody on the network for it to be doing what it does. The difference is the NAS has an operating system designed to serve files. You won't get gadgets on your nas that tell you the weather or follow stock trends. It just writes what you feed and reads what you request (like a hard drive with a LAN connection).

Dont want anything more than storing all my media files and be able to share in my house. No need to even keep track of things really, let alone stocks xD. Im just a sucker for HD content and turns out too pricy of a habbit But yeah, the seeding factor would be great to not be forced again to be leaving my new PC on. I feel bad enough for abusing my older one. Was on 24/7 for 3 years straight. Half my bill was from the damn PC!

Thank you for the info. Im getting to understand more or less all the purpose of a NAS and the differences of the sollutions. Gonna get me a green 2TB HDD in a few as im left with only 3GB out of my excisting 6,5TB and get back to looking