HPTC - Partitioning, RAID, OR External Backup?

eddiem74

Hi guys,

I am just putting together my spec for my first ever HTPC purchase and build, however was wondering after some reading what I should be considering to do in terms of partitions, and/or RAID, or what I should do in terms of backup/recovery ?

Should I worry about this stuff after I purchase the system or do I need to give some consideration now ?

The HTPC I am putting together will be purely for TV, music, movies, and pictures, little to no games.

Useful links, information, or guidance appreciated, as always !

karltimber

Hi eddiem74

Good luck with your new build.

I found out the hard way - when my main hard drive just lots so much info - mce didn't work no more.

So when I reinstalled the 6 odd pieces of software -mst,weather,codecs,setup tv etc, I did not want to have to do this again so I used Acronis True Image 11 - and stored it on an ext drive - an image of the main drive which can be fixed in 5 mins flat.
All my music is on my mp3 player also - backed-up
My pics are on a seperate hd also.
My movies - we share them at work - so my work colleagues have backups for me already.

no doubt ther folks have different setups,

enjoy,
K

mathias

Yes , I agree with the previous poster , dont bother putting a raid into the HTPC , it will just add to noise and you dont want that , back up all your stuff to an external and hope you never have to use it , if you do , and image reload is fast !

eddiem74

Ok, thanks.

So when I spec my build, if I stick in a couple of 500GB harddrives, when I install everything the install process will view those 2 harddrives as 1, and install software over them, right? (Sorry for the novice questions!)

Then once that is completed, I can plug in an external harddrive, and create an image/backup to that, right? So if I am using an external Harddrive of say 500GB, what happens what that is exceeded in my HTPC storage ? Do I just add an additional external drive, and continue on or ?

I see Acronis True Image 11 requires a purchase, is there anything standard in Vista that would do? Or is there any good free software for this ?

Also, an IMAGE is something different to a BACKUP, right ?

Appreciate your help !

mathias

Two hard drives seen as one would be a raid zero setup. The main benefits to doing that are faster access times , the main drawback is that should anything happen to one of the drives then the data on both of them is lost.

Raid zero is good for gaming , but if your not intending to play games then there really is no point , its just an extra risk of losing data. But as long as you have the volume imaged it would be OK.However it makes a lot more sense not to set up such a volume as it would be unlikely that both hard drives would fail at the same time if they were separate , that way you would image them both and only have to restore the one that failed , raid zero is risky and more costly as you would need a backup drive at least as big as the volume your imaging. ( you'll need that anyway , but 1TB external drives are much more expensive than 2 x 500GB external drives )

There are a number of programs that are good for imaging , I got one called retrospect , its not free but it came with my maxtor drive so I use that.

Others are Norton Ghost , Acronis , and so on , with Vista Business and Vista Ultimate I know you get one as part of the OS , I have Vista home premium and its not included with that.

You need Vista home premium or Ultimate otherwise you have no media center , so if you have Ultimate then your all set to go.

An image is like a compressed volume of your whole hard drive with all your installed programs , everything , all backed up , you just reload the drive with the backup and its back to where it was when you made the image.
You should make fresh images regularly so that you are up to date with all your data and so on.

Data backup on the other hand would just have your personal files , you'd still need to re-install the OS and all your programs from the original disk , and would take about half a day to re-install whereas an image can be done in less than half an hour depending on the program you used.

The process can be called imaging , cloning , or ghosting , they all mean the same thing , heres some more info with links to some free programs ,

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/08/clone-hard-drive-with-free-disk.html
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml

eddiem74

Sorry for the additional 'basic' questions, but so I can get this clear:

My HTPC case willl be able to take a few hard drives, so if I install say two 500GB drives, does the system see that as one or two drives or ?

For example, will one be my C:\drive, and another I:\drive or how will this be treated by the system, or do I control that during set-up ?

mathias

It will see all the drives as separate unless you specifically set up a " raid " volume , its not advisable to do that on a HTPC.

You would need a motherboard with raid features to do this , most have them these days , if you dont specifically need it , and it sounds like you dont , then dont do it!

MAJJ

Hi Eddie and Mathias,

AFAIK I know we share a common interest Onkyo 605 amp and decent speakers. Similair to probably many others on this forum.

WRT to your setup mathias - I've read you have a Zalman HD160 plus a number of Hard Drives. Could you elaborate further on what list of hardware completes your setup. I think it would beneifit Eddie and others, including me, I would be especially interested about your sound setup details - if you have a separate sound card or are using onboard sound. Are you using FLAC etc?

Your case makes a good match for AV receivers and what eddie is talking about is what I may also do and is what you have done already.

Thanks and I hope this isn't seen as thread hijacking more of a help!
Majj

eddiem74

mathias wrote: »

It will see all the drives as separate unless you specifically set up a " raid " volume , its not advisable to do that on a HTPC.

You would need a motherboard with raid features to do this , most have them these days , if you dont specifically need it , and it sounds like you dont , then dont do it!

Ok, so if I start off with one 500GB harddisk (might be easiest), and then load OS, upload photots, musics, movies, etc.., once I begin to run out of space, I can add another 500GB say, and it will show as another drive, I could then for example choose to store all movies on that, and keep pics and music on the existing drive, right ?

This would just involve a copy/paste from the existing drive to the new one ?

And then in terms of backup/image it would still cover both drives ?

mathias

WRT to your setup mathias - I've read you have a Zalman HD160 plus a number of Hard Drives. Could you elaborate further on what list of hardware completes your setup.

My HTPC setup is as follows ,

Zalman HD160

Four 500GB hard drives

An 8800 GT 1GB golden sample ( silent solution ) , this was added last week , and upgrade from an 8500.

A Auzentech sound card , 7.1 with optical outs and options to switch out op-amps . ( Creative and onboard dont cut it for me).
http://www.auzentech.com/site/products/x-plosion.php

Currently Im using lame VBR 0 to encode all my 3000 plus albums , Im thinking about going uncompressed but that presents quite a storage problem. Wav sounds better but the file sizes and 3000 albums will most likely mean a separate NAS unit.

The motherboard is and Abit Ab9 with a core2duo 6750. A zalman cooler is on here with a software adjustable fan speed , it runs at 1350 rpm and is whisper quiet on that setting.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=320110

This is fed into the Onkyo with HDMI using spif passthrough on the video card ( its an nvidia tag on and not as good as the HDMI from and ATI , but as no card passes HD audio yet Im not upgrading till they do. At the moment its as good as anything else out there )

Speakers at the moment consists of a Mordaunt short Avant premiere plus set. Excellent speakers , but they are a little underrated for the Onkyo , fully driven the onkyo delivers about 90W rms , the Mordaunts can handle 80W , but its never going to be fully driven anyway.

They sound great though.

TV is a Panasonic Plasma 42 inch , upgraded from a 32 inch LCD a few months ago , the LCD is now in the bedroom.

I have already lost data once through a hard drive crash and at the time I had no backups , now Im anal about it and have all the Data imaged on 4 external drives. I update every two weeks.

I nearly cried when I lost all that data , it took me months to re-encode all those albums , never again !!

Im running Vista home premium , previously I was running XP MCE and I think Vista makes much better use of the TV screen space , especially with the albums.

Besides the HTPC I have a PS3 , this is taking over from the Pioneer as my preferred SACD and DVD audio player , ( you cant encode those !! )

I have pioneer 656 dvd player , it would be more appropriate to call it a universal disc player , but its old now and I use component with that , it does not have HDMI.

And last , I have Sky HD , this only does stereo over the HDMI so an optical connection is fed to the onkyo for surround with movies.

Oh , a quick edit , I got a Harmony 885 remote not so long ago ,
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=313231
These things are tedious to set up , takes about two weeks , but when its done they are brilliant , I only have two remotes on show now , this and the PS3 blu-ray , the harmony controls everything , its a beaut , but it doesnt do bluetooth so the blu-ray remote is still required.
I have a Microsoft MCE keyboard stacked on a bookshelf for surfing the net on the TV , something the Missus loves to do.

MAJJ

Hi Mathias,

Thanks for sharing all that, I appreciate it. It's great to see an example of a working solution.

I really feel for you on that data loss - have lost 2 laptops HDs and am wiser for it.

Interesting point on uncompressed file sizes - must do the numbers on the requirements but yes it would make a sizeable increase.

Am thinking of ripping apart my Medion PC and salvaging bits and going with a new case - but will be waiting a while. Your post was very helpful and shows the bigger picture and a few 'watch outs'.

Thanks again,
majj

karltimber

Hi,
I have 2 hd in my media pc 2 *500gb

I have them partitioned into 4 drives.
C :150gb
R:350gb
S:250gb
T:250gb

I have only software on the 150gb and recorded tv. and have this partition imaged and saved on an ext drive.
and the other 3 partitions have all my movies and music -backed up on my mp3 and friends media drives -free off-site storage

K

eddiem74

Ok, cheers everyone, I have the gist of this now.

Once I eventually get set-up I will post back if there are futher questions.