AVS Forum banner

HTPC as dedicated server... need advice!

3K views 47 replies 13 participants last post by  EricN 
#1 ·
Alright guys, I need some advice.

I have an HTPC running an i5, Win8.1 pro, Mediabrowser3 server and WMC with a tuner. I seriously contemplated moving this HTPC to the computer room and making it a dedicated server but have since decided to continue to allow it to do its job at acting like a "server" and being my HTPC in my main living room as well. It doesn't really bother me that it is dual purpose because lately I haven't had to tinker with it and so far I am able to remotely access it from my laptop to do server updates and to configure misc things.

The main issue I'm facing is that I am running out of storage on a single WD red (4TB). I have 3 HDD bays for 3.5" HDDs. I want to get two more HDDs but am considering getting away from the Red's due to their failure rate.

The second issue I am having is how I would configure these three drives. The OS (Win8.1) is already on a 250GB SSD. The three drives would be for the sole purpose of storage for Mediabrowser3 server to access.

1. Which three drives should I buy? I would preferably like to have a minimum of 15TB of storage (perhaps 3 brand new 5TB or 6TB drives?).

2. How should I configure these three brand new drives? If the recommendation is to have them in some sort of RAID please help by explaining this... I am only used to RAID 0 (in a gaming PC) and don't know anything about other RAID configurations or unRAID (software?).

Thanks!

John
 
See less See more
#2 ·
Add 3 x 6TB (e.g. WD60EZRX [yup, Red is pointless]). You can use the 4 HDDs as is. Or you can create a large pool of 22TB, e.g. by using StableBit DrivePool, for easier handling of media.

You can set up RAID (e.g. vilett's disParity, it's free), but you will have to use one of the 6TB HDDs as a parity disk, so that you will have only 16TB (=4+2x6) storage space. You can add RAID setup with HDDs with data anytime later, so you can ignore it if you like at this time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jhughy2010
#3 ·
Ok this seems like a good idea and one I thought of briefly (not going the RAID route). Does stablebit drivepool protect the data against a single drive failure?

I have only the ability to house 3 HDDs. I would likely sell the 4TB red on eBay if I were to purchase 3 new HDDs. I have read some reviews regarding the Greens that made my stomach hurt so if there are any other "green" recommendations I would be open to them. Another thought was to wait until 8TB drives become commonplace (but I'm running out of room now) so that I would have 24TB of storage space.
 
#4 ·
Sub'd has I have a HTPC "acting" as a server at this vary moment. Like you it doesn't bother me, but having a NAD or similar setup might be more ideal?? I just purchased another 4TB Green from Newegg. Prior to purchasing this Seagate all of my other 2-4TB drives were Samsung Greens. I know a lot of people will swear against keeping them accessible all the time due to life, but I've no issues to date - knock on wood.


-Judd
 
#6 ·
Personally I like NAS drives for their longer warranty and vibration tolerance. I'm debating WD Red vs HGST right now for my next set of drives. I feel strongly that once you hit 3 or 4 disks you should go with a Raid setup. I use (and recommend) unRAID, but if you want to continue using Windows as your operating system I'd look at FlexRaid and SnapRaid.

Do you have any empty 5.25" bays? There are nice converters and drive cages that will allow you to use them to house multiple hard drives (i.e. 1in1, 3in2, 4in3, 5in3). Also, does your motherboard have open SATA ports?
 
#8 ·
Ok I here ya on the RAID set-up. I do very much like the idea of data protection... it would take awhile to have to re-rip a ton of movies and tv shows (some would be lost obviously).

I am currently using an Asus Z87-A motherboard and have 6 SATA ports. One is occupied by an SSD and the other is occupied by the BD optical drive. So I'll have four left over for HDDs.

I'm not totally opposed to RED's... after all I already have one of the 4TB drives.

I have one unoccupied 5.25 inch bay so I guess I could house another HDD in there. Let's assume I start with three total HDD's though for the time being.

I've got 11 WD green drives in my unRAID server that have been running 24/7 for the last 3 years. I just had my first failure this week and the beauty of unRAID is that you pull the bad drive out, put a new one in and it rebuilds itself over night. The next morning it's like it never happened.
Since I'll likely be installing the HDD's into a Win8.1 pro machine I don't think unRAID would work correct? Does flexRAID have the ability to just pull a bad drive and replace it with a new one then rebuilding itself as you described unRAID does?

Question for all: If I were to stick with my 4TB red, buy two more 6TB reds, would I be able to utilize all the space of the new 6TB drives?
 
#7 ·
I've got 11 WD green drives in my unRAID server that have been running 24/7 for the last 3 years. I just had my first failure this week and the beauty of unRAID is that you pull the bad drive out, put a new one in and it rebuilds itself over night. The next morning it's like it never happened.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jhughy2010
#13 · (Edited)
I actually tested all the solutions in the table (otherwise I can't write the table :)). FlexRAID's RAID-F is pretty good and easy for even novices. DrivePool+disParity is also as easy, very light-weight and a lot cheaper. You won't go wrong in either way. Personally I prefer DrivePool+disParity because DrivePool supports multiple pools and mirroring too (RAID-F is mainly only for static data such as movies). It also integrates "Scanner" nicely. Scanner is another product from StableBit, it scans all disks in the system periodically (thorough scanning of the entire surface of each disk [that FlexRAID can't do] as well as checking SMART attributes) that adds another safety measure.

Lastly, another thing that I though of was just purchasing two green drives for now (because of my limited budget), selling my red drive on eBay, then assigning a drive letter to each of the new drives and taking all my media (movies and TV series) and equally spreading it across both drives. That way if one drive fails I only loose half my media and I don't have to "think" about RAID at the moment (eventually I will have to because as the collection grows the number of drives will too).
Even in this case, DrivePool is helpful. Create a pool with two new drives and copy all data there from the old drive. "Balancing" is automatically done by the program. Add more drives later to the same pool and set up parity when you feel it necessary.

CrystalDiskInfo is another (free) solution of SMART attributes scanning; when someting goes wrong with SMART values of a disk in the system, it reports the problem quickly.
 
#15 ·
I actually tested all the solutions in the table (otherwise I can't write the table :)). FlexRAID's RAID-F is pretty good and easy for even novices. DrivePool+disParity is also as easy, very light-weight and a lot cheaper. You won't go wrong in either way. Personally I prefer DrivePool+disParity because DrivePool supports multiple pools and mirroring too (RAID-F is mainly only for static data such as movies). It also integrates "Scanner" nicely. Scanner is another product from StableBit, it scans all disks in the system periodically (thorough scanning of the entire surface of each disk [that FlexRAID can't do] as well as checking SMART attributes) that adds another safety measure.



Even in this case, DrivePool is helpful. Create a pool with two new drives and copy all data there from the old drive. "Balancing" is automatically done by the program. Add more drives later to the same pool and set up parity when you feel it necessary.

CrystalDiskInfo is another (free) solution of SMART attributes scanning; when someting goes wrong with SMART values of a disk in the system, it reports the problem quickly.
Thanks again. As soon as I get two new drives I'll post back here for any additional help I may run into. At the moment the only data that will go onto the drives is two folders (movies and TV series) for mediabrowser. It sounds like flexRAID might perhaps be the best solution.

WD green drives might be at the top of my list. Any ideas when the 8TB drives will hit market? I'd prefer two of them, then in a few months from now grab another maybe when there is a sale or I find a coupon.
 
#16 ·
Ok guys I'm officially out of room on the 4TB red drive. New movies are being stored on my external hard drive. So I need to set up a RAID solution on my server. My server is Windows 8.1 Pro (would FlexRAID work for this?)

Are the Seagate 8TB Archive drives a viable solution for RAID? I will be using these drives to store movies and TV shows that will be streamed to various devices throughout.

I need to get the ball rolling... if the Seagate drives are not a viable option than should I get Reds or Greens from Western Digital?
 
#17 ·
Jury is still lout on the 8TB Archive drives. No real world info out there on them yet.

From what I understand about them, they probably would not be a good choice for a traditional RAID array.

If you were wanting to use them with something like FlexRAID or another RAID alternative then they might work depending on your usage. It's likely they would be fine for typical media server duties, but I'm less confident in their ability to be a good parity drive. (though real world performance may prove me wrong) But what I'm really getting around to is I'd wait to let somebody else get their hands on those drives and get some idea of how well they'll perform and hold up before you go moving terabytes of data onto them.

Outside of those drives, if you're going with traditional RAID, you'll want Red/NAS drives. If you're going to use one of te RAID alternatives then you can likely get away with the cheaper Green/Non-NAS drives, but some people still prefer the Red drives.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jhughy2010
#19 ·
Ok awesome. I'm going to purchase two WD Red 6TB drives within the next few days (watching prices on several sites). Is DrivePool an all in one solution to RAID? In other words, is it a piece of software that pools the drives (to look like one) and then facilitates parity? I was looking at FlexRAID for this purpose.
 
#23 ·
I didn't read this whole tread in detail, but thought I'd add my experience. I am using a Drobo NAS with Plex Media Server on a Mac Mini and am very happy with performance.

http://www.drobo.com/storage-products/5n/

I've got mine loaded with 5x3TB Seagate 7200 rpm drives for 8TB of available storage. I have it configured to withstand two disk failures, if configured for one disk failure the available storage would be just shy of 11TB.

It's a very slick product, well worth the $$ IMHO.

One of the great features is that you can use combinations of different drive sizes and swap with more capacity on the fly.
 
#24 ·
I had thought briefly about going the NAS route, however, I already have a dedicated server and my case has space for four HDD's so I thought that I might as well build my storage array within my server to cut down on costs. It looks like an entry level 4-bay NAS would set me back $300-$400 (diskless). I could build one but that would probably cost even more. There are other drawbacks like having to connect the NAS to my alreadly full ethernet router. Also, the NAS would be consumer a little extra power so I thought since the server is already on most of the time doing its thing why not incorporate the server with the storage component of things.
 
#27 ·
I am curious what people decided to do in this thread?

I am just setting up a HTPC, and plan to use it also as a media sever/ home server, and have installed windows 8.1 pro. I want some type of parity and pooling.

Part of my plan is using my htpc, with hdhomerun and cable cards and using it as a DVR. The comments about multiple drive pools with possibly different parity parameters is interesting. It sounds like Flexraid maybe can't do that?

I only know a tiny bit about all of this, basically what I have been reading over the past few days.
 
#28 ·
Here is what I decided to do:

I run my HTPC as a dedicated server that serves not only my household via Emby (Android TV, Chromecast, WMC, Android Tablets) but also remote locations as well. The HTPC portion of the server is basically WMC which I utilize mostly for Emby (Blu Ray rips) and for OTA live TV. Emby server runs on the HTPC (server portion) and transcodes to various devices (I use WMC server for live TV transcoding). The i5-4440 seems pretty sufficient for not only the transcoding but for light (3 year old) AAA games.

I opted to stay away from FlexRAID and actually I have yet to attempt parity. I have three 6 TB Western Digital Red drives that are coupled with Stablebits Driverpool and Stabelbits Scanner. I have Drivepool not only putting all the drives together as one pool but I also have it balancing the drives to keep space uniform on all the drives. The only thing stored on these drives are Blu Ray rips. I feel like the implementation of Scanner is plenty sufficient in regards to data integrity. If a drive fails or is beginning to fail, Scanner will let me know and I'll have (hopefully) enough time to back up that data before the drive actually fails.

If I find the need to implement some sort of parity solution like SnapRAID in the future than that is what I will likely do. But for my purposes now, having data spread out evenly among several large drives and having Scanner watching over the drives is good enough.
 
#29 ·
I'm actually looking to upgrade my server and replace FlexRAID. My needs are nearly identical to yours.

I'm looking at the i5-4690S (bit higher Ghz, and lower TDP). I'm curious what the rest of your build looks like.
I've already got a Norco 4220 case :)
 
#40 ·
My recommendation would be to use a different closet. I'm lucky that I have a large closet off my utility room (washer and dryer room) that I was able to use. I would not want that heat and noise in my bedroom.

Also, the heat will build up quickly in a non-ventilated closet, something I am dealing with right now. I have some solutions in mind, but probably won't mess with it until spring of next year, because it'll be plenty cool in there over the winter.
 
#43 ·
Does your recommendation stick considering I'll only have the switch, modem, wireless router and power/surge panel?

Top to Bottom I have:
24 Port Keystone Jack Panel (Monoprice)
--Replaced with 48 Port Panel (Same 2U height)
Cable Modem and Router on a Rackmount Shelf
--Router just replaced with a Linksys WRT 1900AC
Netgear JGS524 ProSafe 24 Port Gigabit Unmanaged Switch
--I now have a Netgear GS724T 24 Port Gigabit Managed Switch under it
Norco 4220 Case (Media Server)
Cyberpower Power Distributor with LED Display for Wattage in Use
SurgeX XU115 Battery Backup/Surge Protector/Power Conditioner
Cyberpower Power Distributor with LED Display for Wattage in Use

Once the theater is finished that equipment will go at the bottom.
Neat set-up! I'm a newbie to networking (I have some pretty basic questions); what is the advantage to having a "managed" or smart switch for the home network? I expect my wireless router to do all the network managing... am I missing something? I have the Netgear R7000.

http://www.amazon.com/Brother-P-touch-Office-Labeler-PT-D200/dp/B007TN092K

Label the crap out of everything. The uniform look of a neat patch panel makes it easy to forget where and how everything connects.
Great advice!!!! I'll definitely be needing one of these.
 
#48 · (Edited)
I'd say the borderline is around 16 ports. Once you're at 24 ports, go with a punch panel. You don't need a fancy punch--a $20 one is enough for home use. The per-port price for keystone will add up.

NB: If you are using pre-terminated ethernet cables on the wall side, you have to use a female-to-female keystone. Those cables have stranded copper instead of solid, and you can't punch them down.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top