[BenInCOSprings]

I want to do the following:

1) Mismatch drive sizes - I have a bunch ranging from 1.5 TB to 300 GB
2) Parity protection - like unRaid does... devote one drive to safety, no more
3) Lots of drives - 9 or 10 (external USB drive support would be great!!!!!)
4) stick drives together... right now I have like 5 movie directories on 5 different drives; I want to jumble them together so that I can have 5 HD's, all showing up as /movies
5) Keep data intact, so that if I pull a HD out of the server, all the movies on it are still readable by another computer

Which out of FreeNAS, unRaid, and WHS can do all of those?

unRaid can. You have to pay for it though.

[Geeba]

WHS too - £66 - Bargain

[JustinAiken]

So unRaid and WHS both can, but not FreeNAS? What's it missing?

[olympia]

I want to do the following:

1) Mismatch drive sizes - I have a bunch ranging from 1.5 TB to 300 GB
2) Parity protection - like unRaid does... devote one drive to safety, no more
3) Lots of drives - 9 or 10 (external USB drive support would be great!!!!!)
4) stick drives together... right now I have like 5 movie directories on 5 different drives; I want to jumble them together so that I can have 5 HD's, all showing up as /movies
5) Keep data intact, so that if I pull a HD out of the server, all the movies on it are still readable by another computer

Which out of FreeNAS, unRaid, and WHS can do all of those?

So unRaid and WHS both can, but not FreeNAS? What's it missing?

WHS cannot do parity protection, can it?
As far as I know, WHS only duplicates selected files/dirs across multiple disks.

unRAID is quite unique with that type of parity protection.

[Geeba]

Nope - I squiz read it a bit quick... WHS doesnt like RAID - You can hook up an external drive and configure that as a backup for the server as well as coping it across multiple disks... it will pool your drives as well so you wont have the multiple folder problem for your movies....

[slicemaster]

I personally recommend FreeNAS, it is free, runs on cheap hardware and is very easy to install/configure/maintain.

PS! Feel free to update the NAS (Network Attached Storage) wiki article.

I second FreeNAS! It is great, simply bullet proof, it supports basically all the hardware out there, old or new, cheap or expensive, low end or ultra high end! I've been running mine on a socket 939 Athlon64 rig with a 12 channel Areca PCIe raid controller and it can handle anything i throw at it.

[Evanrich]

So unRaid and WHS both can, but not FreeNAS? What's it missing?

Freenas Can...you can do ZFS pooling, and combine drives that way.

[Evanrich]

For those of you running WHS for your media server, can you tell me what kind of speeds you get over your network, and if WHS is capable of streaming a 40GB bluray rip? I only used WHS for machine backups before, and its been about 6 months since I've used it.

I'm currently using Freenas as my media server, but I'm looking at getting WHS setup again as an all-in-one setup for media serving as well as backups of my machines.

Thanks.

[Geeba]

Hmmm I have 12Gb rips that go across no problem to a Live box... biggest I have I'm afraid

[kemik]

For those of you running WHS for your media server, can you tell me what kind of speeds you get over your network, and if WHS is capable of streaming a 40GB bluray rip? I only used WHS for machine backups before, and its been about 6 months since I've used it.

I'm currently using Freenas as my media server, but I'm looking at getting WHS setup again as an all-in-one setup for media serving as well as backups of my machines.

Thanks.

I stream Blu Ray rips no probs. Guess it will depend on your network to a degree as I have 1Gb switch and 1gb Network card in my WHS. Used to have 100Mb switch and it worked with that too

[Evanrich]

I stream Blu Ray rips no probs. Guess it will depend on your network to a degree as I have 1Gb switch and 1gb Network card in my WHS. Used to have 100Mb switch and it worked with that too

I have Cat 6 ran through the house, a managed 16 port gigabit netgear switch, and gigabit cards in my server and every machine (except my laptop, which is either 10/100 or 54Mbps, depending if I plug it in or use wireless. so looks like it shouldn't be an issue for me then.

Now just to see if i should look at using WHS for my storage server, stay with freenas, or wait for the next version of WHS to come out.

[pFranzen]

I use an HP Mediasmart WHS machine with great success on XBMC. It's connected through a simple gigabit router to my little Zotac-based HTPC (running Ubuntu), and it has no problem playing back high-bitrate BluRay rips.

It showed up easily as a network share, and pointing XBMC at it was probably the easiest part of setting up my XBMC installation.

[hazeh]

I've been using freenas for years with zero problems and fantastic throughput.

Reading this, I was wondering if anyone uses freenas (or any tftp server) to boot xbmc on a system without any disks?

[kemik]

I use an HP Mediasmart WHS machine with great success on XBMC. It's connected through a simple gigabit router to my little Zotac-based HTPC (running Ubuntu), and it has no problem playing back high-bitrate BluRay rips.

It showed up easily as a network share, and pointing XBMC at it was probably the easiest part of setting up my XBMC installation.

Hi,

What software do you use and what format do you rip your Blu Ray's to for storage and playback?

Thanks

[GJones]

Just for completeness, OpenFiler is very FreeNAS-like but with more bells and whistles.