nightfly

Is this the '+A' model that has 7 instead of 6 SATA ports? Thanks for helping us find this.

Does anyone know the difference between Netgear's Blue and White switches? I have a 5-port GigE switch that's been perfect for the last 9 months or so. As I've looked at a bigger one, I sometimes wonder at myself for being influenced by aesthetics on a switch I don't have any other Netgear gear, but as a Mac user I'm drawn towards the white, which looking at it now, is a bit dirty.

I'd love to hear any further feedback of someone who has this combination (unRAID + Popcorn Hour) working - or who could not get it to work, either way I'd love to hear your experiences.

As an MKV x264 affectionado (downloads, don't think I can rip my hd-dvd collection with Mac software and I really hate using windows) I'd love to know if any of you have a reliable set-top-box you play MKVs on? I've read a bit about popcorn hour and tivx, but I also read about 4.0 audio limitation. I use my laptop for playback in my theater (720p projector) but it's a hassle to setup/tear down (it also comes to work). As for the quality, I've watched original HD-DVDs on both my 720p projector (96") and a 56" 1080p DLP RPTV and there is only a noticeable loss in quality with the best of the best transfers, even on 720p MKVs, although at 4.3GB they're still HD without any doubt and AC3 is good-enough audio for me (although Dolby TrueHD is actually awesome - I've heard the difference, but my sound system is low-end). For my money, 720p is the sweet spot at 4.3gb for most films (that's with AC3, not DTS) for long-term archival. Feeling a little sorry for myself because of my $430 HD-DVD player and collection that I don't want to even calculate, I'm not in a big rush to buy Blu-Ray, although once my favorite Trilogies are released I'll reconsider - should have a 1080p projector by that point, too.

I'm also wondering this as I'm in the market for both a gaming console (want to game in theater) and a media streaming front end for my theater (presently use a laptop as HTPC but it's a hassle to do setup/tear down). The thread linked to below from AVS suggests that it's doable if you run twonkyvision (not free) on the unRAID (there's a link there to the lime wiki showing how to do this) for UPnP and basically, yeah it should work. Main question: is anyone doing this? My goal is to run MKVs (preferably without the lengthy transcoding process, but just tweaking the files to be PS3-compatible mp4 h.264 files, hopefully with the 5.1 in tact. Input appreciated! AVS link: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13013703#post13013703

So as I added up my shopping list I started wishing I could just add 2x500s instead, but I don't think it could work - your math was helpful. Then I started to philosophize, really the only time to 'move up' to a bigger drive is when you're ready to buy 2 of them - unless you upgrade now knowing that it'll be incrementally cheaper to upgrade further in the future - but in this market that doesn't make much sense. I must admit, I'm balking at the sticker price of starting from scratch. Wishing I hadn't sold off my old P4 gaming rig a couple years ago when I went all Apple. Here's my list (I can paste the fuller list with newegg links if any wishes) $35 low-end crap Indian-made case supporting 10 3.5” drives (with cage below) $65 PSU $35 CPU $105 MOBO $30 Memory $20 cage $350 2x750 samsungs $120 unRAID license $760 total (for 2.4TB usable over 8 drives)

So I go to Newegg and I see that Samsung Spinpoint 750s are 32mb cache vs the cheapest WD jobbers that are 16mb (and $15 cheaper). Since one of these will be the parity, don't think there's any advantage to the 'higher end' drive? I'll probably get at least 1 Samsung (for Parity) because I bought a 500gb Samsung drive for my Mac Pro and like it - quiet, but probably more case engineering than drive superiority Thanks!!!

Spectacular response! Thanks for taking the time to understand my situation. Any thoughts of drive-adding philosophy?

So... was the Lounge the wrong place to ask these questinos? Any suggestions?

I apologize in advance for what will likely be a long post. I'll ask my questions and then give the back story of my situation should any of you be interested. 1) How fast do most unRAIDs boot? Is the flash the bottleneck? 2) Have any of you figured out a formula for figuring hard drive upgrades? I mean something like 'only buy a larger size drive if you're willing to buy 2 or more' or 'better to buy more of the same size drives unless...' I'm sure many of you guys have put more thought into it than me. I'm also interested whether you calculate on the basis of $/gb or watts/gb or #drives/gb etc. in weighing out options. I'm happy to see that 750gb drives are coming very close to 500gb prices in $/gb (saw one $155 shipped today). This guy had only a 16mb cache. Maybe that's where all of them are at and only higher end 1TBs have 32mb, but here's my third question: 3) Does the cache size on parity disk impact performance? Should one buy a 'higher end' SATA for the parity drive because it's the workhorse? Now I'll spammily explain why I ask these 3 questions. How fast does it boot? I'm trying to decide whether to build an unRAID system now in my present house in India (where we have 6h daily scheduled power outages) or wait for 7 months more when we move into a different city with only 2 hours a day. I *could* leave it on here 24/7 like I do my Mac Pro thanks to my new 3.5kva battery backup system, but if it booted in 10-20 seconds, then the answer is pretty easy - boot it when I need to write to it or stream from it, otherwise leave it off. I need to decide whether I'm doing it now or later shortly, because I have a number of friends coming to visit (from our church back home) and bringing us several suitcases of goodies that we'll order online. If I was to include $400 of newegg parts (everything but drives and a case) now would be the time to order it. About the formula for upgrades, I'm wondering if/how many drives I'd need to add to start off. I think a lot, as I presently have 900+GB of HD movies on a mostly-full external GigE 1TB Lacie drive (2x500GB inside). In fact, most all of my drives are pretty full, so dumping them and then re-incorporating them into the array will be tricky. In addition to these two, I have 2x120gb IDE drives sitting around and a 400gb IDE. I think I'd have to add at least 2x 750GB drives to even offload my data and get started, although I do have 300GB free on my Mac Pro that I could temporarily store stuff on. I don't think I'll change the internal configuration of my Mac Pro, with the stock 250GB system drive and 500GB storage drive. But I'd be tempted to maybe just get a 750GB, swap it into my Pro and then take the 2 drives out of it, making 500GB the biggest drive and parity drive (for now). I can't imagine anyone's actually followed my rambling, but I'll finish the final part. How big a part does disk performance play for a parity drive? Just wondering if I should get the cheapest possible $/GB across the board or 'invest' a bit more in a higher-end/spec'd drive for parity. Thanks for your patience! Alex

FYI when I transfer from Mac Pro to MacBook Pro over GigE (through white netgear router) I get up to 40MBps - just under half of 'gigabit''s potential. I'm guessing the 2.5" SATA on the MacBook Pro is the bottleneck. When I'm reading from the MBP I only get 25ish MBps, oddly. Either it writes faster than it reads (boggle) or vice versa on the Mac Pro or I'm missing something. Anyway, 40MBps was nice. I max out at 22MBps reads (10ish writes) on my current RAID 0 Lacie 1TB drive (also over GigE). Closer back to the topic here (although that was also a divergence) I find it interesting that both GigE ports on the Mac Pro are active and on - any one know how I could my system which one to use for Internet? Say if I had two modems and connections, one unlimited and one limited but faster, how could I tell it which Internet to draw from, which NIC I mean?

I haven't tried BD/HD-DVD backups (rips of discs that you own, as opposed to .mkv, which I have tried) but I'm thinking you're light on processor. Tom suggests 2.0ghz, although a 'modern' 1.6ghz 'should be fine, but no lower' according to him - specifically the Celeron Conroe 420 1.6ghz. The other issue is that, afaik, you can't run BT or any other apps on the box other than unRAID, which is it's own (mostly closed) OS. I might be wrong, but I don't think you'll be able to use the box for both at the same time.

Rick can you tell me anything about performance? I guess, unless this isn't your first unRAID, you don't have much frame of reference, but I'd love to know if you feel the 1.6ghz is at all under-powered.

Thanks Rick - are you pleased with the performance? I'm assuming you went with a single stick because either you had it lying around or you wanted to save on power, yeah?

There's a lot of talk in the low-power thread about the Antec - $60 (less rebate) for a 430w 'earthwatts'. Cutting it a little close for startups, but the only cases available here max out at 10 drives, anyway. eSATA takes separate power, right? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371006