[Cuddly Cannibal]

Hello,

So I am now completely obsessed with XBMC and all of the supplementary tools that go with it. At this point I've filled up around 6 TBs of hd and now am getting a little more concerned with backing up my media and housing it in something better than external cases. I have been looking into building a home server for a little while now, but I am coming up short once it comes to the actual building of a server as I have very little experience actually building computers.

The things I know:
I want lots of space for hard disks, and I have no limitations on how large the case can be.
I will most likely use WHS and Flexraid for backup
I would like to build something with the ability to hold (at a later date) around 20TB of data.
I would like to do it on the cheap

Things I don't know:
The parts I need to accomplish this task.

I am partial to this case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6811182566
but as far as hardware is concerned I have no idea what I am getting into. If anyone could offer some advice it would be greatly appreciated!

[vsilvalopes]

Hi !

I have a WHS 2011 setup in my house.
I've built it with 3 Hard Drives, One of 500 GB for the system install, and temporary place for the downloads, and 2 of 2 TB in a RAID setup to store my media (TV Shows, Movies, Pictures and Music).

The Hardware that I'm using is very simple. I've bought an Athlon 2 X2 processor, with an Asus Motheboard.
The system has a total of 4 GB of RAM.

It runs smooth, stream All my media and provide access to the Sickbeard, Couchpotato and Sabnzdb+.

As you're only interested in backup features, using a basic Athlon processor can do the business for you.

[teaguecl]

I will most likely use WHS and Flexraid for backup

Using Flexraid is a very good choice, it's fantastic for storing media. Thinking it is a "backup" is a mistake! Flexraid (like Unraid) will protect you from a single drive failure, which is very nice and will save you lots of headache. It does NOT protect you from the following things which a backup would:
- your home burning down (or lightning, flooding, etc.)
- your home being burglarized
- an accidental deletion of a file by you or anyone using your machine

You are on the right track with your server build, but please don't think of it as a backup - it's not. It's a robust storage solution that is resilient to drive failure, but backup is something else.

I can't comment on specific hardware for your build, but I would suggest buying hard drives as you go. For example, if you need 4TB of storage then I would buy 3 2TB drives now since they are in the "sweet spot" for cost/MB. Get 2 3TB if you find them on sale. Expand whenever you need to, preferably when you find a great deal on hard drives. The point being, don't buy too much more storage now than you need - it's almost guaranteed to be cheaper later.

[Cuddly Cannibal]

I've been looking at my options and this this looks appealing. Rather than use windows home server, I might consider using windows 7 with flexraid and it seems like that would satisfy the requirements to run that. I would still like to run Couch Potato, SickBeard and Headphones if possible on the same system, anyone have experience with this combo or something close?

[DTK1337]

How goes this? I am very interested as I am in the same boat.

[bigsquid]

Is there any benefit between WHS, flexraid, and unraid when looking to run sickbeard, Couch Potato, etc? I've been running sickbeard on my laptop under W8 and sometimes it doesn't update unless I force it.

[manthony6920]

Cuddly Cannibal. did you ever set up your server?