February 20, 200917 yr I am planning to build server filled with my media files which will be streamed to different devices around my house. I am still new to this media server stuff and RAID stuff so I will need a lot of help from some experts. First I was leaning towards OpenFiler but I read that it doesn't offer different disks plugged on same array. That's the reason I choose unRAID. First I will start with 2 or 3 1TB disks WD10EADS. I choose this disks because of their price and low power consumption. Please note that I plan to upgrade space very soon, but I'd like to try out unRAID first. I will mostly store: 1080p Movies (bitrate: ~15mbit) I want that my data is secured as it can be against data loss. So if anybody knows how to prevent losing data that would be great. Media Server will be connected to: Fujitsu Siemens Laptop ASUS Laptop Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 Bedroom HTPC Living Room HTPC PC Ofcourse not all of these devices will stream at the same time but you can expect 4 of them to stream sometimes even 5. Which hardware will I need?
February 20, 200917 yr You should decide some things: Do you want to minimize power consumption? Do you need to minimize noise? (i.e. where will the unRAID server be placed?) What is the growth rate of your storage needs? Do you want to run applications (such as torrent downloading, virtual machines, transcoding) on the server? Is your home wired for Cat5e or Cat6 for full Gbit Ethernet? Do your switches support it? Are any of the playing devices using wireless instead of wired? Are any of the playing devices using wired 100MB Ethernet instead of Gbit Ethernet? What is your budget for hardware, w/o drives?
February 20, 200917 yr Also, are you transcoding the 1080p movies, or just ripping them? If you are not transcoding, you will have bitrates of 40Mbps for some.
February 20, 200917 yr Author You should decide some things: Do you want to minimize power consumption? Do you need to minimize noise? (i.e. where will the unRAID server be placed?) What is the growth rate of your storage needs? Do you want to run applications (such as torrent downloading, virtual machines, transcoding) on the server? Is your home wired for Cat5e or Cat6 for full Gbit Ethernet? Do your switches support it? Are any of the playing devices using wireless instead of wired? Are any of the playing devices using wired 100MB Ethernet instead of Gbit Ethernet? What is your budget for hardware, w/o drives? Yes I want to minimize power consumption as much as I can. Noise is not such a big concern but also wouldn't like to have something loud. Growth rate is probably going to be ~1TB per 2 months. I do not plan running any applications. No encoding or similar stuff will be running on server at all. There are some devices that are running wireless. I want to keep prices as cheap as possible but I do not want that my performence suffers a lot.
February 20, 200917 yr Are you storing raw 1080P or are you transcoding before storing? How long do you intend to grow at 6 TB / year?
February 20, 200917 yr Author I am plan to store downloaded .mkv's. I do not know what you mean by transcoding. Well I do not know how long do I plan grow my media. I know unRAID has limited number of disks but I do not consider that a problem.
February 22, 200917 yr Author I also forgot to mention. I prefer my secured from data loss then performence. It just has to run smooth.
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