Need advice on increasing hard drive storage - Page 2

Thats why you need eSata with a feature called port multiplier. That type of connection will allow all four of the drives inside there to show up as individually lettered drives.

It's not really the age of the house that's a problem. A 50s vintage house shouldn't have any problem. Problems arise though when upgrades have been done such as heavy ups, or split boxes where different circuits in the house are essentially on two different sides of the electrical box. Then it's sometimes difficult to cross over from one side to the other. You really can't know until you try, and as I say, you normally know right away. It either works or it doesn't. Buy it from a place like Amazon with a good 30 return policy. Get it home, plug one into your existing router or switch and plug it into a socket. Plug the other into a the socket where you want it and plug in a laptop or something and see if it works. If it doesn't return it. There's really nothing difficult about setting it up, and as I say, in my experience, it either works or it doesn't. There's nothing much to fiddle with other than trying a different wall outlet.

They work fine in most of my house, but in an addition that was built out the same time as we had a heavy up to the electrical system, they won't work at all.

DId you have dual coax to your DirecTV receiver prior to them installing the whole home setup? If so you probably have a spare unused coax line to that location that could be used for ethernet over coax. You use a pair of MOCA adpaters like the NETGEAR MCAB1001 similar to the way you use the pair of powerline adapters. They just using different wire to connect.

I just connected it using USB and all 4 drives show up as separate drives once I formatted them. Transferring a ripped bluray can take between 15-30 minutes and it slows the connection down to the point where if I'm trying to stream a bluray at the same time from one of those hard drives I get stuttering so I usually do it when I'm playing a game or streaming something online or from my other external hard drives. If you have an esata connection and your PC esata connection supports port multiplier which allows for all 4 drives to show up as separate drives definitely go that route as the connection to your PC will be a lot faster.

Also, an older house might actually be better for powerline ethernet adapters as houses built after 2005 usually have AFCI outlets which are terrible for powerline connections. I think my connections maxed out at around 25 Mbps which was not sufficient for streaming bluray rips. Give it a shot and if it doesn't work just return them and try MOCA instead. I'm actually thinking about trying to connect MOCA adapters to my old DirecTV connections to see if I can stream blurays to my bedroom since I canceled them and no longer use the outlets.

I use the mediasonic 4 bay too and it does a great job for me

Well it helps if they left the old Cox wiring in place, becuase they you should have some unusued coax that you could use for MOCA.

i use a old xp hp that was my wife comp still running after 8 years just put a couple 1tb drive in there and it shares all over the house, but then im still using xboxs with xbmc to watch tv in some rooms on sd tvs

If there is no eSATA on your dell, you could always add a cheap PCI card. As for you existing computer, it may very well have one already. Check the back for a connector that looks like the below images (on top regular SATA on left, eSATA on right, below eSATA ports)

Also, if you do go the enclosure route, keep in mind that you could always use the HDDs in a server if you decided to upgrade. You'll have only wasted $100 (less if you can sell the enclosure) but it may be a much bigger waste to go the server route if you're not using all the extra functionality.

At the moment I have 2 2TB and one 3TB HD in my HTPC That gives me 7TB internal. In about a year when I fill the 3TB Drive I will start replacing them with 4TB hard drives. That will give me 12TB internal. And and I also have an eSATA port for an additional drive or drives.

I am just starting w/ HTPC and forsee a need for more storage.

This was my initial plan to take advantage of my MOBO 6 SATA ports and the 3 HDD cages built into my case, I have been advised against maxing out this case w/ HDDs due to poor ventilation I'm also concerned that my stock 300watt PSU is underpowered for one 1TB, and two 2TB internal HDDs.

I will most likely just use my cases builtin toaster for unlimited removeable HDDs. OP so maybe you can concider a toaster.

sycochkn what size PSU do you have and is you'r case well ventilated?

Thanks STB

i bet you can still look up your pc's info by its serial number on dell's website. that would give you a listing of parts and stuff it used. i know i could do that with an old gateway computer i bought in high school years ago, id assume dell has similar data on its site.

The port you are pointing out is not eSATA... appears to be a 1394 port as it is labeled "1394."

And even if you had an eSATA there is probably a 50/50 chance (if that) that it has port-multiplier. Most eSATA ports on motherboards are not port-multiplier aware. To get port-multiplier aware eSATA you'd probably have to purchase a separate add-in card (some enclosures come with them).

This is what an esata port looks like:


It usually says esata because as far as I know there is no standardized icon for esata.

Here's also a handy reference list of various cables, ports and icons from WD, although again, I don't think their esata logo is standardized at all, although others like for USB are standard. http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/...ypes-for#esata

To add to the confusion, quite a few laptops come with a USB/ESATA combo port.

I don't know if that one does or not. You want something that explicitly says so, like this one which says "The PCI Express eSATA controller card also features port multiplier capability with command-based switching for connecting multiple external hard drives to a host PC or Mac desktop through a single external SATA connection.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815158088

Note, I haven't used that so I can't vouch for it, but that's what you're looking for.

Edit - I think a "Tempo SATA E2P" would be another possiblity for you, although again, I haven't used that card, but it purports to support up to 10 external SATA drives through its two external ports. Think you can get it at Micro Center, Beach Audio, and other places.

mortey,

If there are any local commercial computer and/or audio/video sales companies in your area (not Best Buy!), you might consider discussing the possibilities with them. Of course, they'll want to charge for their services (typically $100/hour or more).

And don't forget about off-site backups. Recovering from the loss of a large server, whether due to theft or an act of nature, would not be easy if it contained your only copy of all of your media.

As I say, haven't used it, but it should be pretty much plug-and-play.

5400 rpm drives will be fine, at least if you're not trying to set up a RAID. They are plenty fast for streaming media, and they run cooler. Personally, I like the Hitachi 5K3000 Coolspin drives. They perform well, run cool, stay quiet, and they've been reliable for me anyhow. Although how long that will remain true now that they are owned by Western Digital remains open to question. (It's also likely only a matter of time until Seagate wrecks the Samsung drives.)

Some people report that some green drives don't play nice with some RAID controllers.

The lab where I work gave them a try in a RAID array. It was constantly having to rebuild the array, with rather defeats the reason for going to low-power disks.

Did they try all four brands? And how long ago was that? And did the problems go away when they went to 7200RPM drives?

My impression is that the problems have been model-specific rather than "no green drives work with any RAID", but since I haven't tried it myself, that's only based on what I've read about it.

If one is not setting up a RAID, green drives are certainly suitable for storing media.

It was about six months ago, involving just one brand of drive (Western Digital; I just now asked, but couldn't get the guy to stop talking about all the variables, so I've forgotten exactly which model already! 2TB Caviar sounds right.) It also was using USB (surely a contributing issue) with Linux software RAID (whatever's included with Scientific Linux 6, which is a recompiled Red Hat Enterprise 6). FWIW, the dozen production Linux RAID servers use relatively expensive "enterprise class" drives because of the longer warranty (5 years) and pre-testing which that includes. The failure rate for "consumer class" drives is too high in that environment.

Those considerations would not matter so much for a single entertainment server where the heads are not continuously seeking.

Note that if you are prone to lightning strikes in your area, I would recommend getting surge protectors between the adapter and the ethernet card, i.e.:
http://www.amazon.com/APC-PNET1GB-Pr...=15U2YF730GN8D

I am using an NSK2480 case with 2 120mm Noiseblocker M12-P case fans. A Seasonic X-660 PSU. An I7-2600k CPU. CPU Cooler Thermalright AXP-140 RT with Noiseblocker M12-P fan. I have not measured the power consumption lately. last time it was about 45 watts when playing a blu-ray. The HTPC is sitting on an open shelf with no other stuff on it.

If you know how exactly these work, could you explain? Do they broadcast your connection wirelessly?

they transmit network data through the electrical wiring in your walls.

And as a side effect, you have to make sure the two transceivers are plugged into outlets powered from the same AC phase. Most homes in the U.S. are supplied from two of the three AC power phases coming from the power company, and the two phases are electrically isolated from one another. (Connecting different pieces of equipment to two different phases is a common cause of hum in audio systems.)

You're sh*itting me...

BRB building a server.

Nope, he's not. Of course, there are all sorts of limitations to such a transmission method. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_l...king_.28LAN.29