[mlu3141]

Hi all,

I've seen plenty of threads discussing which hardware for NAS and the like, but I haven't seen anything discussing when and why you'd actually build a server for your media. In my case, I'm running three instances of XBMC - a main one in my basement, a second in my bedroom and a headless music player in my living room. In all cases, I'm using small HD's and thus rely on external storage for my local media. In the latter two cases, I'm running XBMC on Windows 7 so I can use a couple of workarounds to access WMC (Cablecard DVR and Netflix), Hulu and Amazon Prime. I also use these two for running emulators. I have a 3 TB HD of local media (not including recorded TV) that's served via USB 3.0 to my basement computer and made available to the Windows workgroup. With this filling up, I've used an old 500 GB HD (USB 2.0) to record TV from the basement. This appears to work well, even playing HD video across the network with no problem.

I'm considering adding another 500 GB to my bedroom setup for recorded TV. Before I do, would there be any advantages to having a server? Outside of a little gain in convenience, all I see is power, but how much power will I be saving by doing this? I couldn't imagine a NAS, say, is that much more efficient than what I'm doing now.

I should also point out that I back-up my media simply by making occasional copies to old external drives I keep in a closet. I'm pretty happy with this set-up since I don't do the whole torrent thing and don't add new media that frequently. Is this a good way to go?

[whitebelly]

I wouldn't base my decision on power use, although I'd bet you could save power with a centralized storage approach.

Sounds to me like you are shuffling and managing a lot of different drives. That gets old after a while, particularly as your library grows. External drives often don't have good ventilation/cooling, so they may not last as long as internal drives.

You have lots of options. You can share large drives on multiple HTPCs, select one and add drives to it, or centralize with a server/NAS. To me, it sounds like you are at a point where a central NAS or Media Server makes a lot of sense. Don't mess with a 500GB HD unless you know you won't need more, get a 2TB or 3 TB drive and share it.

[GortWillSaveUs]

Sounds like you have a diligent method of backing up data that works for you.
Most people do not.

From what you described,....I wouldn't suggest the expenditure and maintenance of a separate server.

In my case, I use my unRaid server for backing up digital media, such as photos, important documents, scans, music,
and some movies that I can't live without like "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". A server will not guarantee that you
won't suffer data loss,....you must understand what you want from a server and use an appropriate file system. If you
were to go with a server,....I'd suggest unRaid.

[Harro]

I'm pretty happy with this set-up since I don't do the whole torrent thing and don't add new media that frequently.

I guess you have answered your own question.
Once your media gets out of control and you have hard drives all over the place, I would then suggest stepping up to a server of your choice.

[mlu3141]

I appreciate the feedback. I wanted to make sure there wasn't something I was overlooking or misunderstood. Looks like I'll stick with what I have unless I somehow start adding a lot of new media, but with all the different streaming options and music being comparably small, it's hard to see that happening.

I guess the consensus is a server makes sense when you start juggling drives and really only applies to those who do torrents and the like?

[whitebelly]

^servers are useful also for those who rip a lot of their media, and can also provide a platform for delivery of the media to different devices. That could include something like PLEX where you can transcode media for consumption on your tablet/phone, or even access remotely when away from home. Its a great place to keep your music collection.

Another great use of a server is as a backup platform for all your other computers.

[Digital Vortex]

Not really for torrents.. I have a mate that like to rip his blu rays into digital content, and for the last few years has been running around the house with hard drives, like you, depending on where he or who wanted to watch what. When I pointed out the benefits of a NAS he never looked back. The price of convenience not wondering who had the drives were worth it for him!

I understand the power concern, and there are a number of things you can do. I first had a Synology 210j - a two bay NAS, managed remoted via a web browser. Synology interface is great and very easy to use. It uses less than 30 Watt with 2 hard drives

As storage requirement grew I opted for HP Microserver - a device that can easily fit 5 hard drives (6 or more if you look around various forums!) and with 3 hard drives runs between 40Watt and 50 watt (depending on what the server is doing).

There is Thread post about Microserver here

[protocol77]

I started with home servers after firstly upgrading my main computer and having this old computer sitting in a corner collecting dust I then noticed the amount of steps I was doing in organizing my media It would involve putting the media onto the computer naming it then putting in a folder then moving it to the correct folder then taking a copy and putting it onto a an external drive or flash drive then going to one of the 3 xbmc machines I have and plugging it in then playing

I also had an issue when I wanted to watch stuff on ipad I had to convert it then copy it on there

So I looked at ways to automate as much of this as possible and came across some articles about turning your old PC into a home media server so I turned it into that

I know use software to grab videos I dump into ONE folder it moves sorts and names it then when I start xbmc it scans that folder over the network and adds then into xbmc so now I can just turn on my xbmc find what I want and it plays over the network

Also for my ipad I installed a app on the server that I can connect to over ipad wifi and stream and transcode on the fly