Why use a NAS?
#16
I wouldn't use USB drives as from my experience they go wrong at some point and its bye bye movies Sad
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#17
Benefits of NAS:

-Drive pooling
-Parity (protection for drive failure)
-Remove noise and heat from HTPC
-Increase longevity of hard drives by removing them from the case of the better processor and GPU/allowing for louder and better cooling.
-Run background services such as sickbeard, couchpotato, transcoding, ftp server, maybe even a simple webserver with MediaFrontpage running on it without burdening/cluttering your HTPC.
-If you have more than one HTPC on the network, it is much less likely someone will shut down the computer while you are in the middle of watching a movie, as no one will really be bothering the NAS.
-It's fun to build things
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#18
^^^^^^^^^^^^

What that person said.

I have easily:
800+ Movies
100+ Tv Series
1400 Albums
1000's of photos from 2000-2011
Many Scanned Documents
Central Download location for network

All backed up on a unRAID server with Parity protection. I know that when I put something on it its shared amungest the Network and for all practical matters safe.

Of course this isn't a which NAS would I go with, but no matter what you go with make sure it has some kind of user security and keep in mind just because you can pack it to the hilt with space remember what do you do if you simply loose a drive. Data is really cheap, but restoring it isn't.
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#19
tcman47 Wrote:1600 movies, wow!, when I first got into xbmc I immediately downloaded about 120 movies, since then I cant find much of anything else that I want to watch, perhaps I am just too picky? Huh

Haha... I got all of the imdb250 and pretty much the entire Criterion collection in DVD9.... The rest is pretty random Smile
Kodi: Kodi 17.4, with Transparency!
50 TB Unraid Server: Docker Apps: SABnzbd, Sickrage, mariaDB
HTPC: Win10 (cause Steam), i7, GTX 1080
Watching on: Panasonic TC65-PS64 with lowend Sony 5.1 HTIB
Other devices: rMBP 15", MBA 13", nvidia shield
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#20
The good thing about a NAS is you usually over-size it, so that when you are full of media, you can just add more drives and keep truckin'.

Most HTPC cases just aren't designed for this type of expansion.

I combined mine, and it worked out great. I had 6 TB's of storage in my slim, sleek XBMC box, and it functioned as our home server and our HTPC. Obviously it remained on all the time.

I went through quite some effort to keep the hard drives cool, while not generating too much noise. Its not a difficult problem to solve, but it is an expensive one, and still, its a fine balance.

I have just recently built a home server using an Array R2 case, which can hold up to 6 hard drives, doubling my capacity potential. At the same time, I have reduced the size of our HTPC, and most of all its noise output.

I'd say if you can fit your collection within 2TB, combining them is a good idea. If you are looking into more than that, especially in the future, then a separate NAS is a good idea.
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#21
branlr Wrote:Benefits of NAS:

-Drive pooling
-Parity (protection for drive failure)
-Remove noise and heat from HTPC
-Increase longevity of hard drives by removing them from the case of the better processor and GPU/allowing for louder and better cooling.
-Run background services such as sickbeard, couchpotato, transcoding, ftp server, maybe even a simple webserver with MediaFrontpage running on it without burdening/cluttering your HTPC.
-If you have more than one HTPC on the network, it is much less likely someone will shut down the computer while you are in the middle of watching a movie, as no one will really be bothering the NAS.
-It's fun to build things

Big key factor here.
If you intend on having XBMC boxes in multiple places a NAS or some sort of server is a better option.

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#22
I might be a little naive here and I don't want to pass moral judgement on anybody but are you guys really paying to have 1000-2000 movies? And it sounds like many of them are HD implying Blu-ray. Wouldn't that cost upwards of $15-30k for that size of a movie collection?

Are people really downloading over 1000 HD movies?
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#23
Quote:Are people really downloading over 1000 HD movies?
People are by nature collectors. Don't worry about it and don't make off-topic posts.
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#24
iammattsanders Wrote:What I don't understand however, is why I need a separate NAS, and can't just plug in a load of USB drives to the Revo and share those with all the other computers on my network and have the Revo work as HTPC & NAS at the same time.

Any thoughts?

One of my concerns with multiple USB drives is the bus speed. I've always experienced better transfer rates when comparing an external drive to an internal one (especially SATAII). Got this from wikipedia:

USB;
"The theoretical maximum data rate in USB 2.0 is 480 Mbit/s (60 MB/s) per controller and is shared amongst all attached devices."

SATA II;
"With a native transfer rate of 3.0 Gbit/s... ...the maximum uncoded transfer rate is 2.4 Gbit/s (300 MB/s)... ...The physical connection between a controller and a storage device is not shared among other controllers and storage devices."

I hope you find the right solution that fits your needs.
-sab0fro
ImageImage
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#25
A NAS solution is great for those who require loads of drives and storage space. For the majority of us and those who can't be bothered with the hassle a NAS can be overkill.

I would keep a NAS in mind when you are building your setup and possibly work towards it as you build up your library of content.

There are a lot of alternative solutions/combinations out their that will meet your requirements.

For example my HTPC has an eSATA 2TB external drive connected, which is very silent and very fast and I use this drive for videos only.

For my music and photos I use a PogoPlug Pro (picked it up for $50) which is hooked up to a 1TB USB external drive that is tucked away in another room. The PogoPlug can work over wifi or ethernet and works as a very affordable "NAS type" solution. XBMC can then read the Pogoplug drive just like any other source and while the PogoPlug Pro isn't responsive enough for videos it certainly works very well for music and photos and/or as a backup option for files that are stored elsewhere in your network on shared drives/folders.
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#26
ktrdsl23 Wrote:I might be a little naive here and I don't want to pass moral judgement on anybody but are you guys really paying to have 1000-2000 movies? And it sounds like many of them are HD implying Blu-ray. Wouldn't that cost upwards of $15-30k for that size of a movie collection?

Are people really downloading over 1000 HD movies?

When I was in the Navy I would buy movies all the time while in port of course I would try to buy them cheap knowing that they could get damaged. I would put them all in a CaseLogic case and take them with me. Of course several months out to sea I would have watched them all several times on a portable DVD player. Pull back in and well store those and start all over again.

I just wish when I was in the Navy Digital copies were available or a solid and easy method of ripping was so I could store them and take them with me. Guys with iPads and iPods have it made. Wink

I'm just a firm beliver in ripping or downloading once because I'm to lazy to do it twice. Thats why I built a server with some open bays so as I put something on it and I need space I just add another drive and collectively it becomes part of my movie/music/photo collection.

For my Needs USB drives are for portabilty. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using them for storage for collections, just not expandable enough for me.
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