Storage Advice + HTPC

[stixx]

Hi

So I had a hard drive crash on me and decided to rebuild my storage server. I am looking at a NAS solution, something that can hold in excess of 20TB (I currently have 10TB, so future proofing myself). I also want to build a HTPC for as little as possible, the requirements are that it needs to have HDMI, optical out for sound, be able to play 1080p MKV files, and be able to access the storage server over wifi for streaming movies and series.

Can anyone advise me on this, especially the NAS setup? I'm looking for brands, prices and places where I can get the components for a good price!

Thanks in advance people!

 

[Speedster]

Hi

So I had a hard drive crash on me and decided to rebuild my storage server. I am looking at a NAS solution, something that can hold in excess of 20TB (I currently have 10TB, so future proofing myself). I also want to build a HTPC for as little as possible, the requirements are that it needs to have HDMI, optical out for sound, be able to play 1080p MKV files, and be able to access the storage server over wifi for streaming movies and series.

Can anyone advise me on this, especially the NAS setup? I'm looking for brands, prices and places where I can get the components for a good price!

Thanks in advance people!

Cheap HTPC = Raspberry Pi

 

[Napalm2880]

I'm running a Popcornhour A-210 which has a little more beef than the Raspberry Pi and allows me to run SABNZBd, Sickbeard and CouchPotato for my downloads on top of being an HTPC.

Raspberry Pi looks pretty impressive though. It's cheap, and it can run XBMC (the Popcornhour cannot). Speedster have you set this up?

The other option that I would really recommend worth looking at is the HP Micro Server. There are many tutorials online on how to set this up as an HTPC/NAS.

 

[Speedster]

I'm running a Popcornhour A-210 which has a little more beef than the Raspberry Pi and allows me to run SABNZBd, Sickbeard and CouchPotato for my downloads on top of being an HTPC.

Raspberry Pi looks pretty impressive though. It's cheap, and it can run XBMC (the Popcornhour cannot). Speedster have you set this up?

The other option that I would really recommend worth looking at is the HP Micro Server. There are many tutorials online on how to set this up as an HTPC/NAS.

I played around with a friend's Pi a couple of weeks back and got it working as a HTPC pretty easily. Ordered my own two weeks ago, so now I'm just waiting for that to arrive. The HP Micro Server will no doubt be a much better PC but obviously at significantly higher price. The Pi cost R163 plus a case for R66 makes a cost of R229 so far. I still need to get a SD card so total cost will be in the region of R300 (I already have a 1TB external HDD).

Esquire are running a special on the HP Microserver for R1199 (ex vat, I think) and then you'd still need to add graphics card.

 

[Tim the Techxpert]

Hi There,
The microserver seems to be at a good price.
But you question was to use the raspberry as a NAS. So have a look at this article or even this

You should be able to get what you need here

Good luck

Tim

 

[stixx]

Thanks for the responses! I ordered a Raspberry today! That is going to be my HTPC. Will RaspBMC be able to use a USB WiFi dongle? Want to use that as my OS on the Pi, and stream media. I have a 1Tb portable drive, but i would prefer to stream.

I still am looking for something on a storage server, I looked at the HP Microserver, unfortunately it doesnt have enough internal hard drive slots for me. I currently have 5 drives that I will move into the server, and the HP only has 4 drive slots.

 

[Soul Assassin]

You can use the optical drive bay of the HP for the 5th drive.

 

[Napalm2880]

Could you then run raid across all 5 drives?

Stixx I'm interested to know what the performance of the Raspberry Pi is like when running RaspBMC? Please let me know. I might ditch my Popcornhour in favour of a nicer UI. Also what are you planning to use as a remote control?

 

[stixx]

Once I receive and setup my Pi I can tell you about the performance of RaspBMC. It's going to arrive either next week or in March next year I havent looked at the remote control options, is there anything available for iPad?

Yeah, with the server I want to run Raid across all drives. A little bit of a technical question here, can I use 2 or more HP servers and connect them into a single raid array? So basically 2*5 drives, and get them to show up as one huge Raid array?

Has anyone tried using the Pi as the basis for a NAS server?

 

[Speedster]

Once I receive and setup my Pi I can tell you about the performance of RaspBMC. It's going to arrive either next week or in March next year I havent looked at the remote control options, is there anything available for iPad?

I'd wouldn't get my hopes up for before March. I know there is a really nice XBMC Android remote, not sure about iOS. When I played around with the Pi a couple of weeks ago I settled on Openelec - it seemed the best bet for HTPC purposes.