[gooner]

Right guys as I see it I have the above two options.

My htpc will be used to also rip the blurays so needs to have reasonible amount of power.

For the HTPC with a NAS was going to go for one of these from eskro

http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=721011&postcount=1

probably the AMD one and maybe the SilverStone Grandia SST-GD05B case instead pair this up with the QNAP TS410 as recommended by Poofyhairguy.

For the larger HTPC/Media server I was looking at using a similar spec to above but using a lian li v354 and starting off by putting 4TB in it

http://www.ksn-online.co.uk/components-c...-8942.html

I have read Poofyhairguys comments on nas is the preffered way but I was just wondering by using this larger style case if it will make it not too much more noisy than the first option especially as I am having a higher powered HTPC with either option!!!

[wicky]

The main reason I went with two stand alone systems was simple.

I could keep my server in the office (out of sight, out of hearing distance) and could always expand it as my needs grew. Several years ago I was sitting on about 1tb of storage powered by a power hungry Athlon 64 X2 dual core and over time it has evolved and is now based on a new Asus e350 mATX system and 8TB worth of drives (2tb). I like the freedom of being able evolve my server without effecting my HTPC, and vice versa. I tend to build or rebuild my HTPC every year or so in an effort to drive down physical size, power consumption, and bring up performance and feature base.

Having everything combined in a single box, for me, would have been a nightmare. I hide my HTPC inside a wooden IKEA cabinet that houses various things I need on hand. The cabinets are big enough to hold a V354, but I'd rather my pcs be unseen and silent. I also like the idea of being able to use my HTPC to watch netflix or web-based shows even if my server is down for a little while.

But of course it is all subjective, you may not see these as advantages for your build. But I would probably guess that most people right now are doing it this way for one reason or another, a lot of people like to use the various all in one HTPC Zboxes or shuttle systems which force you to use external storage as they only have room for a single drive internally.

I guess if you are keeping everything all on the same shelf it would make sense to build an all in one, but if you can house your storage in another room and access it via wifi or ethernet, then it will reduce cabling clutter and leave you with fewer devices staring back at you with their LED lights of judgment while you try to enjoy your media :p

[gooner]

The main reason I went with two stand alone systems was simple.

I could keep my server in the office (out of sight, out of hearing distance) and could always expand it as my needs grew. Several years ago I was sitting on about 1tb of storage powered by a power hungry Athlon 64 X2 dual core and over time it has evolved and is now based on a new Asus e350 mATX system and 8TB worth of drives (2tb). I like the freedom of being able evolve my server without effecting my HTPC, and vice versa. I tend to build or rebuild my HTPC every year or so in an effort to drive down physical size, power consumption, and bring up performance and feature base.

Having everything combined in a single box, for me, would have been a nightmare. I hide my HTPC inside a wooden IKEA cabinet that houses various things I need on hand. The cabinets are big enough to hold a V354, but I'd rather my pcs be unseen and silent. I also like the idea of being able to use my HTPC to watch netflix or web-based shows even if my server is down for a little while.

But of course it is all subjective, you may not see these as advantages for your build. But I would probably guess that most people right now are doing it this way for one reason or another, a lot of people like to use the various all in one HTPC Zboxes or shuttle systems which force you to use external storage as they only have room for a single drive internally.

I guess if you are keeping everything all on the same shelf it would make sense to build an all in one, but if you can house your storage in another room and access it via wifi or ethernet, then it will reduce cabling clutter and leave you with fewer devices staring back at you with their LED lights of judgment while you try to enjoy your media :p

I can understand your reasoning and it does make sense in your situation.

If however I went for the qnap and I outgrew it's 8TB then I would need to buy another. the NAS would Aldo be in the same room as the htpc as will need to use Ethernet to stream the blurays to the htpc as not gonna trust homeplugs or wireless for that. but obviously the qnap would be easier to hide!

I guess while I am looking to use the htpc as a ripping device it is always more likely to cost more and be noisy. where as if I take this out of the machine it can be a lower spec and hopefully then generate less noise and heat!

If I was to get a USB bluray drive so I could rip on my 4yr old core2duo MacBook would that be an ok solution? I guess it would be slow!!

Thanks

So much useful info in this forum!! probably too much!!

[Choque]

Why going for qnap? most people (including me) here are using unRAID which let's you go up to 22 drives (currently, probably more in the future) which would give you a whooping 40TB of storage space

[gooner]

Why going for qnap? most people (including me) here are using unRAID which let's you go up to 22 drives (currently, probably more in the future) which would give you a whooping 40TB of storage space

Well probably cause they are small simple solution. As I want to store it in my living room don't want to have to cable it from one room to another. Also in reality I probably won't get over 8TB I just don't download and buy that much media. I only have about 30 blurays and maybe 200 DVDs and I don't buy loads each year maybe 10-20. Also all my music collect is probably 100gig maybe a bit more but not loads. I do have other CDs I could rip but I will probably never ever listen to them.

I do think unraid is cool and for a big setup the way to go but probably not for me.

Also buget wise I was looking at £1000 for storage and htpc don't think I could do both with unraid for that money.

[Choque]

Well I'm currently using the free version of unraid which let's you use up to 3 drives (2 for data and 1 parity drive) so I'm up to 4TB real storage space right now (using 3 2TB drives obviously).
As far as parts go, unRAID is really cheap to build. Have a look at Raj's Prototype Designs for example.
You said 8TB should be enough for your needs so let's see

5 Drive miniBox
Mobo: ZOTAC GF6100-E-E
CPU: AMD Sempron 140
RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR2 800
PSU: CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 CMPSU-430CX 430W
Case: Rosewill R101-P-BK
SATA Expansion Card: 2 port SATA2 Serial ATA II PCI-Express RAID Controller Card (Silicon Image SIL3132)
Hot Swap Drive Bays: Norco SS-500
Hard Drives: Green drives (5400 rpm or 5900 rpm), such as WD Green, Hitachi CoolSpin, Samsung EcoGreen, and Seagate LP
Cost: $330 + shipping + cost of hard drives
Capacity: 8 TB
Expandability: Expandable to the 6 Drive miniTower with replacement of the hot swap bays and case.

[gooner]

Well I'm currently using the free version of unraid which let's you use up to 3 drives (2 for data and 1 parity drive) so I'm up to 4TB real storage space right now (using 3 2TB drives obviously).
As far as parts go, unRAID is really cheap to build. Have a look at Raj's Prototype Designs for example.
You said 8TB should be enough for your needs so let's see

Yeah really good builds and supprising the cost really however i think if I take the price in $ as the same in £ as its usually very close then add in the costs of the 5 drives would take it to £640. Plus I will have to locate this box somewhere other than the living room.

Then need to still purchase a htpc for ripping etc. It all adds up

I think the lian li htpc/homeserver might be the best option as I could add the disks as I wanted (no raid JBOD) and have heard than it is very very quiet with the stock fans on low speed, then further down the line I could look at positioning this remotly if new house allows it etc and just using it as a server with a new htpc front end and would still be able to put 20TB in it if needed and as in new room could turn fans up to full if required. However as I would have my OS on an SSD and so will only be using this and the one disk the media is stored on then it shouldnt be getting too hot?

I am not sure about using raid as its only my media anything I dont want to rip again will put on external usb drive (like my music or downloaded material) then if a drive fails I will have to rerip the items on the disk!! A pain granted but not a deal breaker.

[Choque]

Yea well in the end it comes down to personal preference My unRAID server is located in another room and connected to my GBit switch via a 20m CAT6 cable. So I used a normal pc tower case for it.
Of course if you don't need raid, then you don't need unRAID, that's correct.

As for your budget - you should be totally fine. My builds cost where around 830€ which is ~£740 for HTPC + unRAID server and that HTPC is capable of playing the meanest 1080p rip and bitstreaming HD audio. Of course if you want to put a gaming rig together (which isn't a HTPC in my eyes but that's just my opinion) then you would need some more money but yea, in the end it's your choice

[T800]

Out of curiosity why don't people just buy a cheap laptop or nettop with Gigabit ethernet and keep adding multiple bay HDD enclosures for a network server?
This is what I ended up with (although it wasn't a cheap laptop), it wasn't planned but it works fine, it's easy to set up, easy to manage and easy to fix.
I can keep adding 4 bay enclosures as I like.

[Mallet21]

Sounds like you have already made your decision so further discussion is probably moot. Just buy a huge case with a quad core processor, fill it with hard drives and be done with it.

[gooner]

Sounds like you have already made your decision so further discussion is probably moot. Just buy a huge case with a quad core processor, fill it with hard drives and be done with it.

I certainly wouldn't say I have made up my mind!! in fact I think I have made my mind up four or five times each with a different configuration!!

Both have pros and cons this the nas solution has less cons but the media server is simpler.

Anyway probably just toss a coin

[BigBadBaz]

I think its a tough call. I am in a similar situation. The thing with me is that I do travel so I am tempted to go with a small all in one media center suite.

If I was in the one place I would be going more towards the HTPC and NAS. This is because you have a network location with all your entertainment and it will be easier to expand storage and even open up the options of putting more media centers around the house with no issues of accessing data. Its a lot more flexible in my opinion.