Any input on this - NEW HTPC - Page 8

Hello Toys,

Congrats! Looks like you got a good one. I was considering the same case for a HTPC home build but decided against that (or any Silverstone HTPC case) because of the awful BIG, WHITE, GLARING LOGO!!! (The same reason I avoid buying Rosewill rebranded products .. the dad-gum big, awful logos!) It's a personal thing of course; aesthetic is something I'm pretty picky about.

On that note, I'm curious if you or anyone knows if the black front panel finish is "annodized aluminum" or some other spray-on finish?

If annodized, that might suggest that with the appropriate solvent (such as denatured alcohol, mineral spirits, acetone, etc.) that awful Silverstone logo could be carefully removed, without damaging the finish .... leaving an all black professional looking faceplate?

Do you ... or does anyone on this thread know the specifics of the Silverstone face panel finish (such as annodized or painted)?

Cheers!
Robert.

PS. With an eight (8) 3.5" HDD capacity you might want to consider building a 'RAID6' array using the newest generation green drives (about 5 to 6 watts per HDD in idle, auto spool-down and only about 7 to10 watts per HDD in full spin/search/read-write load). The new green drives are also ultra quiet.

'RAID6' is "Block-level striping with double distributed parity", a minimum of four (4) HDDs. With a 2-drive fault tolerance, it's a good choice for building a large collection of media files, music, movies, etc.,.... and the avoidance of the anxiety and heartache from loss of all or part of your collection from drive failure.

Your OS Boot drive would be separate of the 'RAID' array, of course (a SATA III SSD on one of the 6GB/s SATA3 ports on your motherboard would be a good choice). Some motherboards now offer 8+ SATA ports on the motherboard, but you can also add SATA ports with expansion slot controller cards (many provide four (4) SATA ports on the controller card, allowing you to run a 4-drive 'RAID6' array on each controller card. And the controller cards cost as little as $15 on eBay and at Meritline)

http://www.enhance-tech.com/press/Press%20How%20RAID%206%20Work.htm

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/RAID6-Advantages-Over-RAID0-and-RAID5/314

Nice box. Logo is a tad big for my taste as well, but it wouldn't be a deal-stopper - I've sure seen much worse.

Ah, excellent. Of course we'll let YOU try it FIRST. Ha!

Seriously, though, if it is annodized, then the back side of the panel will match the front, and the back side would be a good place to test different solvents to make certain they wouldn't affect the faceplate finish before trying them for removal of the logo.

My Sony VGX-XL2 HTPC came with no fewer than three gummed adhesive advertising logo stickers on the clear aluminum front panel. The whole HTPC was a beautiful styling effort by Sony, and then they buggered it up with stckers adverising the OS, the Intel CPU and Nvida Video/Graphics card that were inside the system (sort of like the sponsor stickers on a NASCAR race car!)

The day I learned how to remove those stupid stickers from my beautiful HTPC case without damaging the finish was like being reborn!

Cheers!
Robert.

Rubbing alcohol is where its at, never had it damage any case. For the really sticky ones you can also use lighter fluid but dont use that on a painted case

That SilverStone looks really nice though, would certainly blend right in with my gear though I think personally its a little big. Or at least it looks big.

Hi Toys,
There were so many posts about hardware raid v software raid including Flexraid Unraid etc that it made my head spin when reading through, however I dont think anyone has mentiond Drivebender from DivisonM

I come from a Windows Home Server v1 scenario on which I stored all my photos, home video, documents and ripped DVD and MKV collections, and when Microsoft withdrew Drive Extender from WHS2011 a lot of disgruntled users such as myself were looking for an alternative. The beauty of drive extender was that you can add hard drives of any size and create a single large data pool. Also files are duplicated across all drives (depending on number of drives installed) which allows you to rebuild the missing data should a drive fail.

Drivebender came in to replace MS drive extender and rather than just written for WHS2011 it will run on any modern version of Windows from XP. I moved from my existing WHS v1 box which had 4 TB of storage to a Windows7 64bit HTPC running Drivebender on which I created a 10TB pool from the 5 2TB samsung hard drives. It has much more flexibility than Drive extender and you can control the duplication down to folder or file level. I have higher duplication set on my personal video and photo collection than my ripped DVD/Bluerays etc as they are more precious. It happily streams around my network using Serviio to network ready TVs and PCs is directly connected by HDMI to my main TV. It plays Blu Rays without stutter and I am only using a first generation i5 2.4ghz. It cost me $28 for a lifetime subscription of Drivebender which is great value. I dont know if you have finished and configured your system and if you purchased rocket raid or other controller cards but setting up your drives as JOBD and installing Drivebender will give you a single massive data pool or multiple data pools such is your need.
I am no expert when it comes to HTPC and there are far more knowledgeable people on this forum, but it works great for me.
Fozzie