File Server options?

jester77

Hi,

I've alot of media files that are currently on a media center PC. Hard disc is almost full so what I was thinking was having a file server somewhere in the house on the network and just use it for storing all my media files (750GB or 1TB), nothing else. Maybe a raid 1 setup if it's not too costly!

What would be the best options for this?
Are there any good off the shelf products for this or would a self build be better?

zilog_jones

You could get some old crap PC and set up some sort of NAS system - I hear FreeNAS may be good ('tis free anyway).

Only thing is how good an "old crap PC" you'll need - you'll need something whose BIOS will recognise the large hard disks you'll be putting in it (can't think right now whether a separate IDE controller card will negate that issue), and whether the processor/chipset will be too much of a bottleneck on accessing said modern disks (then again if you're using 100Mbit/s Ethernet or 802.11g, they're obviously the bottleneck here regardless).

I'd guess a late Pentium III (Via Apollo Pro or Intel 815 chipset) would be good enough.

SouperComputer

You can do it easily with a PII and 128MB of RAM. The HD size issue is taken care of by buying a cheap IDE\SATA contoller card which has its own BIOS. This also gives a welcome performance improvement.

FreeNAS looks good, I must try it actually.

Personally I have been using Clarkconnect Home V3.2. As it is going to be a media server, I would reccomend it as you can later add software such as slimserver etc etc in the future easily.

I also run a web server and a couple of other things on mine so FreeNAS wouldnt really suit this particular purpose.

[edit] just noticed that you are using MCE. Be forwarned that putting recored TV on a network drive is a huge PITA [/edit]

weeder

ive heard naslite reads any hdd in most old comps

SouperComputer

weeder wrote:

ive heard naslite reads any hdd in most old comps

Well you have two parts of the problem:

1) The motherboard's BIOS incorectly Identifies the HD's size. This can be overcome if the OS\App probes the HD controller directly or of course a BIOS update.
2) The HD controller itself does not support 48Bit LBA. In this case, you are buggered and you need to throw in a card that can identify and address the capacity correctly.

Luckily these cards cost buttons:

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=110632
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=118183

In fact I have an excess ATA one here to sell

The ideal situation however if you have the budget would be to get a multi channel SATA controller from 3Ware and setup a RAID5 array

http://cgi.ebay.ie/3WARE-8506-12-ESCALADE-12-PORT-SATA-RAID-CONTROLLER_W0QQitemZ140009912338QQihZ004QQcategoryZ39968QQssPageNameZWD2VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

WizZard

Check out Thecus for some neat and handy NAS servers.
Linksys do a little NAS server device (I have one) that you can plug in external drives to (can be expensive due to caddies etc).
Or the above if you have the space/want to get your hands dirty

SouperComputer

Check out Thecus for some neat and handy NAS servers.

Bookmarked! Nice little units!

ntlbell

SouperComputer wrote:

Bookmarked! Nice little units!

I got a couple of these recently, I can highly recomend!

Saruman

someone asked a similar question the other day. And someone posted a link to elara.ie and there is a pretty cheap NAS server that takes 2 IDE drives. Its just over the €100 mark.