[Solidify]

To get back on-topic, for those that backup their films and TV shows (not the ones you rip from tangible Blurays or DVD, I'm talking about the ones you get elsewhere *hint hint*), don't you find that the cost of having all of that media backup up far exceeds the advantages of having that backup.

In other words, say you have 10TB of films and TV shows that you've acquired online *hint hint*. And you keep all of that content backup up (whether that's having each drive mirrored or simply working out a RAID array that gives you however much fault tolerance you'd like), don't you find that between the amount of money you spend to power, maintain and purchase those backup drives for your media, you don't really encounter a loss of data often enough to make the whole process worthy of your money and space (considering you can theoretically just re-download everything, no matter how long it would take, provided you have an unlimited data plan)?

I'm in that boat and that's the only motive keeping me from backing up any of this media. Plain and simple, because it can be re-downloaded. It would sure be a pain to have to re-acquire 10TB or more of data, but I'd much rather do that than spend 10TBs worth of drives to backup media IN CASE is goes bad, since it's located on the web anyways.

What are your thoughts on that? It's something that is on my mind more and more now that my media collection of films and TV shows is rapidly growing.

This is why I recommended UNRAID. Because for the majority of users here, the cost of doing a mirror backup will be to the point where they will say "I'd rather just not do it". The average person on here isn't going to afford mirror back up. It's much simpler for them to simply us UNRAID and have a fault tolerance of 1 drive.

The average user is adding hard drives as needed, is BARELY spinning the hard drives anyway (you aren't running a server you're watching movies/TV shows every now and then. The chances you'll have 2 drives fail at once is very very low and you still can "reobtain" that data as well.

So my pick is UNRAID in terms of data protection. It's not a backup exactly, but hard drives rarely fail. I haven't had a single one fail. The average user isn't going to have more than 1-2 fail over their life time. You should protect against what is most likely to occur. A Nuclear holocaust could occur yet we don't all have bunkers. But a robber could rob your house so we lock the door. No need to go all out if you dont' feel it's worth it and get a mirror back up. But you should stil probably use something like UNRaid to protect against 1 drive dying.

I also periodically readd my content. I'll look for updated versions of everything anyway. Losing my data isn't even as bad really to me. I need to know WHAT I lost. That's the issue for me.

I can see people wanting a mirror backup though. Months after I moved out from college, our house there had the spirnkler system go offf. I would have lost everything if I still lived there so I definitely see how people would want a backup.

Best post thus far. I can completely relate to this. I think unRAID might be what I'm destined for.
What other arrays work like that.. One drive for fault tolerance giving you the most of your available storage?

[Kib]

Data from large companies shows that hard drives fail on average every 5-6 years.

To think you will have only one or two failed hard drives in a lifetime is therefore only true in case you don't plan on being very old.

[Solidify]

Company hard drives are put under more strain than those used for personal resources, or even home servers (i.e.: extended up-times and poor ventilation in some cases). Compare that to any one of us computer enthusiasts that customizes every each on their cases to increase proper airflow and monitor the temperature of internal components daily. I believe there is more passion and care put into home hard drives, thus why they last longer. Whereas in companies, everything is backed up so they could care less when one drive fails; they just replace it and rebuild the array, not to mention, company budgets are greater than those of a home user when replacing drives.

This has no basis in fact, it's just what I think to be true.

Edit: tential, to reiterate, what other RAID or backup solutions center themselves around a one-drive fault tolerance, like unRAID? I like this idea because very often does more than 1 drive fails simultaneously. And when that single drive fails, you can be secured by just emptying your pocket for one drive.

[tential]

To get back on-topic, for those that backup their films and TV shows (not the ones you rip from tangible Blurays or DVD, I'm talking about the ones you get elsewhere *hint hint*), don't you find that the cost of having all of that media backup up far exceeds the advantages of having that backup.

In other words, say you have 10TB of films and TV shows that you've acquired online *hint hint*. And you keep all of that content backup up (whether that's having each drive mirrored or simply working out a RAID array that gives you however much fault tolerance you'd like), don't you find that between the amount of money you spend to power, maintain and purchase those backup drives for your media, you don't really encounter a loss of data often enough to make the whole process worthy of your money and space (considering you can theoretically just re-download everything, no matter how long it would take, provided you have an unlimited data plan)?

I'm in that boat and that's the only motive keeping me from backing up any of this media. Plain and simple, because it can be re-downloaded. It would sure be a pain to have to re-acquire 10TB or more of data, but I'd much rather do that than spend 10TBs worth of drives to backup media IN CASE is goes bad, since it's located on the web anyways.

What are your thoughts on that? It's something that is on my mind more and more now that my media collection of films and TV shows is rapidly growing.

This is why I recommended UNRAID. Because for the majority of users here, the cost of doing a mirror backup will be to the point where they will say "I'd rather just not do it". The average person on here isn't going to afford mirror back up. It's much simpler for them to simply us UNRAID and have a fault tolerance of 1 drive.

The average user is adding hard drives as needed, is BARELY spinning the hard drives anyway (you aren't running a server you're watching movies/TV shows every now and then. The chances you'll have 2 drives fail at once is very very low and you still can "reobtain" that data as well.

So my pick is UNRAID in terms of data protection. It's not a backup exactly, but hard drives rarely fail. I haven't had a single one fail. The average user isn't going to have more than 1-2 fail over their life time. You should protect against what is most likely to occur. A Nuclear holocaust could occur yet we don't all have bunkers. But a robber could rob your house so we lock the door. No need to go all out if you dont' feel it's worth it and get a mirror back up. But you should stil probably use something like UNRaid to protect against 1 drive dying.

I also periodically readd my content. I'll look for updated versions of everything anyway. Losing my data isn't even as bad really to me. I need to know WHAT I lost. That's the issue for me.

I can see people wanting a mirror backup though. Months after I moved out from college, our house there had the spirnkler system go offf. I would have lost everything if I still lived there so I definitely see how people would want a backup.

Best post thus far. I can completely relate to this. I think unRAID might be what I'm destined for.
What other arrays work like that.. One drive for fault tolerance giving you the most of your available storage?

Well like I said earlier there is also Raid 5. But unRAID is the easiest to setup.

There is more in the unRAID thread.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=104489

I think some of it is slightly outdated since hardware changes every month and there is always a new product/option you can consider. If you could state how many drives you plan on using eventually I could give an actual hardware recommendation. But because it's a simple server, you don't need much processing power at all. All of the builds are quite cheap and there are cheaper ways to get each build. The one that uses the 24 bay Norco case for example comes out to 700 total. But you can get that same build for 300-400 shipped. The case alone costs 300-400 and the sata cards for the extra drives are also expensive. That doesn't even mention the included CPU, Mobo, Ram, etc. Picking these servers up is quite popular on AVSforum. There is a huge megathread on it. But that's of course if your'e looking at 24 bay servers haha. At this point in time, the smallest drive I would pick up is a 4TB drive. 6 of those is 24 TB of space so you probably only need something that can handle that.

I can ramble on all day so without a clear focus I'd just tell you every single option remotely possible out there in the world lol. If you have an idea of how much space/storage you need then I can better help.

[Dark_Slayer]

snapraid
unraid
flexraid

all good parity protection options

there's also zfs, but you can't add expand/contract your pool as easily (or with a single disk)

parity protection is definitely the most cost effective, and as we've been reminded so many times . . . it's just media so you don't really need the triplicate type backup

Also, popular jbod controllers are IBM m1015 and Dell PERC 310 flashed to LSI IT mode, dell has been the cheapest of late. 8-port controller for about $40-60 (at least I got mine for $40) Nice flashing guide here

[Solidify]

Come to think of it, this recent 600$ HTPC has kind of set me back. And I'm not ready to spend more on anther build for a file server at the moment. But I'll keep an eye out. But before I dive into unRAID, I think it's worth mentioning that my setup is rather difficult to work with since I don't have much connectivity in my home. My desktop PC, router/modem, TV and HTPC are all in the same room. The router is right by the desktop PC and then I have an ethernet cable routed around the walls all the way to my HTPC coming from the router. The result is that while I'm watching TV, not only do I hear the fan from the HTPC but I hear the desktop PC running in the background since I can't turn it off because the files are being streamed off it's internal HDDs.

Down the road, if I end up going with a dedicated storage server like unRAID (or similar), I would need to find a way to put the server in another room, at the very least, and then have it in my LAN (preferably by cable and not wifi).

So you see, there's quite a bit to consider before taking on this project. Not quite sure where I'd put the server or how I'd fish wires to it.

Feel free to see get a better idea of my setup (disregard my using Plex back then lol):


Edit: Just took a look at that unRAID thread and I was so close to buying the 10 x HDDs one but then I realized that price doesn't include the 10 HDDs , stupid me.

[bluray]

At the end of the day it's only movies.

+1....

[Solidify]

True. Then why do I feel this need to hoard, and to have the biggest database? I can't be the only one
Sometimes when I get a new drive, I find myself adding nonsense films I probably won't even watch to add my repertoire. Sad, I know.

[nickr]

+1

I need to develop a serious illness or win lotto to get the time to watch what I have already, but still the pool of media grows...

[Cypher64]

True. Then why do I feel this need to hoard, and to have the biggest database? I can't be the only one
Sometimes when I get a new drive, I find myself adding nonsense films I probably won't even watch to add my repertoire. Sad, I know.

Lol I hear you there, it's why I had 70+ TB of storage at one time. But, really not worth the effort. I'm now down to 40TB and still gonna cut that in half.
I'm no longer gonna pay to store stuff I won't watch (or so I tell myself)

[DJ_Izumi]

738hrs of TV Shows marked unwatched on mine currently. Though I've really found that the LazyTV add on encourages me to work through it. I'm hoping to take a good chunk out during the summer.

[tential]

Come to think of it, this recent 600$ HTPC has kind of set me back. And I'm not ready to spend more on anther build for a file server at the moment. But I'll keep an eye out. But before I dive into unRAID, I think it's worth mentioning that my setup is rather difficult to work with since I don't have much connectivity in my home. My desktop PC, router/modem, TV and HTPC are all in the same room. The router is right by the desktop PC and then I have an ethernet cable routed around the walls all the way to my HTPC coming from the router. The result is that while I'm watching TV, not only do I hear the fan from the HTPC but I hear the desktop PC running in the background since I can't turn it off because the files are being streamed off it's internal HDDs.

Down the road, if I end up going with a dedicated storage server like unRAID (or similar), I would need to find a way to put the server in another room, at the very least, and then have it in my LAN (preferably by cable and not wifi).

So you see, there's quite a bit to consider before taking on this project. Not quite sure where I'd put the server or how I'd fish wires to it.

Feel free to see get a better idea of my setup (disregard my using Plex back then lol):


Edit: Just took a look at that unRAID thread and I was so close to buying the 10 x HDDs one but then I realized that price doesn't include the 10 HDDs , stupid me.

The server would be silent. It's not doing anything. You'll have 1 fan running at the lowest speed possible most likely. It's 2014, there isn't a good reason why your PC should make noise unless you are running a hardcore gaming rig and at that point, you most likely dont care about noise. Example: R9 290X reference graphics cards.
I haven't heard my gaming rig unless I did a hard session of gaming with 0 airflow in my room, then laid down and listened hard with nothing on. Otherwise, I've never heard it before. The Xbox 360 is the LAST time I'll deal with a noisy eletronic. That thing made movie watching impossible. No matter how great it was at streaming movies, the fact that it was the loudest thing in the room at all times was obnoxious. No possible way I could even sleep with it on.

If you're getting noise from any of your PCs you should check the fans and then check and see if you actually need that amount of airflow. Chances are, if your builds are all relatively new you just need to replace the fans with quieter fans. If you aren't gaming on your HTPC and you're only web browsing/XBMC on it then you can switch the fans to low airflow/silent fans and reduce the noise in the room.

+1

I need to develop a serious illness or win lotto to get the time to watch what I have already, but still the pool of media grows...

My utorrent stats over the last 30 days alone is disturbing. Recorded HDTV now is getting bad as I start figuring out which shows I have to record myself and how to encode myself.
I'm around 7000 hours of unwatched HDTV and 3000 unwatched Movies?

At this point, the reason the library is growing has ZERO relevance to what I intend to watch. It's just growing because I like it to grow. Gossip Girl, Desperate Housewives, Pretty Little Liars.... It's just growing because "I want to catch em all!"

[ProsjektX]

Have to give a vote for Flexraid (software solution) with storage pooling. Using it myself for a few years. you can have as many parity disks as you like and disks can be inserted into the raid with data on them. couldn't be easier, set up and forget, also runs on Linux and Windows.

[bluray]

Then why do I feel this need to hoard

Don't feel bad, and you are not alone! Hoarding and obsession with videos that I will never re-watch used to be my problem too. I used to have a big Uraid storage. I sold it, and I haven't missed it....

It is the same thing as saving stuffs in the garage that we will never use it. I donated it to charity, and I haven't missed those things....

[Solidify]

I just want to have a giant movie collection so that when my family turns on the HTPC to watch TV, and they ask me "Do you have this?" I can say of course. Those times when they ask me if I have a particular film and I say "No, I don't have it yet (because it hasn't been released yet) or because I never got around to acquiring it" I feel like I ruined the show lol it's pathetic I know.

Bluray, how do I overcome this obsession to hoard and have the biggest media library, before it gets out of hand.. preferably now while my library is only 3TB.