Ok, so I've used XBMC for a while with various laptops or desktops etc, and I'm finally looking at spending some money on a proper HTPC setup.
I'm probably going to pickup a Revo 3700 to use as the HTPC itself.
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.
I feel like I'm missing something obvious here.
Moving on from there, if I do need a NAS, would something really simple like a pogoplug suffice?
Any thoughts?
Ofc you can, but you will need to have the HTPC on 24/7 if you want to acces the media on those hardrives anytime.
Ok,
That makes a lot of sense.
Does this mean that the power consumption of a NAS is going to be significantly lower than the HTPC?
What other downsides to leaving it on 24/7 are there?
The power usage from NAS + HTPC will not be lower than HTPC with USB disks.
Plugging in a lot of disks will increase power consumption, heat and noise. If you want to make the htpc as silent as possible you make it diskless and put all the disks in a closet = NAS.
You might also want to use higher quality disks and RAID config in a NAS.
Yup, noise is the main issue. One external HDD is ok, 2 would be acceptable but more than that and the noise factor may become an issue. External HDDs make more noise than internal ones in a good quality case.
So in the short term, due to budget constraints, I can use the HTPC as a dual NAS/HTPC, and as budget allows, add a NAS to the setup when I can afford it?
Thank you very much indeed for helping such a noob out!
No problem. Matter of fact I still not use a NAS myself, due to lack of a place to put it... next problem is that you probably do not want wifi between NAS and HTPC if it can be avoided.
After purchasing this Revo, it'll probably be another 12 months at least before I even look at a NAS, and I'll probably be in a different apartment by then so who knows what the future holds.
I have all my media on 3 drives on my upstairs computer, I smb share it over my 1gb wired network to two other computers in my house, each next to a flat screen tv.
The total storage size of those 3 drives is 1tb, 2tb & 1.5tb for a total of 4.5tb,
right now I have qty.150 1080p .mkv movies, qty.900 320kbps mp3 albums and qty.370 720p episodes over 6 different tv shows, still got plenty drive space for more.
No NAS involved anywhere.
TC
If you just have a few drives, you don't really need a NAS.. Get above 8 TB though, and it becomes highly practical.
Also, it's really nice to have one directory/folder that has all of your movies instead of having to remember if a particular movie is on disk1 or disk7...
clock2113 Wrote:If you just have a few drives, you don't really need a NAS.. Get above 8 TB though, and it becomes highly practical.
Also, it's really nice to have one directory/folder that has all of your movies instead of having to remember if a particular movie is on disk1 or disk7...
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?
TC
It could be considerably less than 1600, depending on the quality. You're right enough though, 8TB is still a lot even for BD rips...
*edit*
Just read clock's sig. Jeez, 1600... :p
In raid five you do have the benefit of disk recovery as well, something a bunch of cheap USB drives hung off a computer probably don't. i.e. if you 1.5tb drive goes belly up, do you have a copy of that data elsewhere?