# Let's Build a Media Server



## wbassett

Okay this has been a long thing coming.

Way back when in the 1980's, around 1985 to be exact I sat on a couch with my brother telling him of a day when computers and TV would merge. I predicted all in one units- TVs that were also computers. Well that day is almost here. Along with that day is a lot of changes in the industry. Nowdays we have media extenders, media players, HTPCs... you name it, it's out there.

One thing that will be needed no matter what the ultimate end device will be some sort of way for people to manage their digital media. 

Just like I showed people how to use a PS3 as a media device and not just a game console, I am going to show everyone how to make it easy to build a media server that will serve up all your media to not just a PS3, but any media extender device... a Popcorn Hour... WDTV... ASUS O!Play... Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ ... Patriot Box Office ... Netgear Digital Entertainer Live ... and many many more media extenders.

What is a media extender without media? And we all know media can take up a boat load of storage space. So this thread is all about building the ultimate media server!

I have my components and will be doing my build this coming week. We'll go through everything from what to order and why, to how to put it together and make it work.

This post will be like all my other threads and serve as an index to the rest of the thread. We will cover the following:


What is a Media Server?
What components are needed for a Media Server?
How to put it together
Sound, and not DTS or TRUEHD but taming a PC/Server that sounds like a C110 taking off
What OS to use?
What extender to use?

There certainly is going to be a lot of questions I'm sure, I know I had a lot of questions when I started my build and adventure. 

Ultimately we will see HDTVs that act as media extenders, but we will still need to serve up the media. For now we have a myriad of options as well as extenders... and the extenders... whew! Fanboys abound! In the end though the average Joe has his head spinning and just wants to know what works.

Well hopefully we'll make that question easy with this thread. :bigsmile:


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## wbassett

*What is a Media Server?*

First what is a media server?

Pretty much it's anything that stores your media and provides a way to display or stream it to at least one, but typically multiple devices throughout the house. 

Most people have their computers networked together, and most already share files or folders between PCs. Well this is pretty much the same thing except the end device may or may not be a PC. Simply put, a media server is any device that stores and shares media.

What we're going to build is a server, but the same motherboard, CPU, Ram and everything other than the case can be used for a regular build in a normal PC case.

Now the monstrosity that I am about to build in this thread may be overkill for a lot of people, however the principles are going to be the same. A lot of people are also going to be surprised at the price when I tell them everything I bought minus the drives tags in at $1200, and that includes the server case with 20 hot swappable drive bays, 2GB of Ram, a dual core 3Ghz CPU, motherboard, 850W power supply, extra/quieter fans, SATA Port multipliers (aside from the case, the most expensive component), a slimline DVD rom, 320GB system drive, and Windows Home Server. I think that's everything.


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## wbassett

*What components are needed for a Media Server?*

We mentioned what a media server is, now lets talk about what components are needed to build one.

Unlike an HTPC a media server doesn't need a lot of fancy components. Pretty much you need storage, storage, and more storage. CPU, graphics, ram... all are minor requirements. Pretty much whatever minimum requirements the OS calls for is all thats needed. This pretty much holds true with one exception- If you have to transcode your files on the fly then you will want a bit beefier CPU. I went with an AMD dual core 3Ghz processor. I won't need that much power, but it wasn't expensive so I said why not?

I personally do not want any degradation of video/audio so everything on my drives are uncompressed and in the native file format it was on disc. The nice thing is these files are natively supported by my PS3 and the O!Play so no transcoding is needed... just streaming bandwidth.

Which brings us to the one thing that is crucial, your network connection. Many people try it... some say it works for them... but the one thing you want to stay away from, and that isn't a friend of media servers and streaming is wifi. You may be able to use it for standard def, or even AVCHD files or M2TS files from a Hauppauge PVR-1212, but when you start getting to true HD content, sooner or later there will be stuttering and drop outs.

Do you need Gigabit ethernet? Depends. 
Some will say no matter what you need Gigabit, however if you're only streaming to one or two end units at a time then 100baseT should be more than enough bandwidth even for Bluray streaming. Of course if you are running your network cable now as part of your welcome to the 21st Century home renovation project... might as well go with Gigabit. Why not? If you already have your house wired for 100baseT I wouldn't sweat it. Just don't plan on streaming 40GB Bluray files to every HDTV in your house!

Now for the number one biggest component NOT TO SKIMP ON- The Power Supply.

The more drives you intend on running, the bigger PS you'll need. A 750W PS is the minimum I'd use for a 20 drive server. I actually went with an 850W PS.

Here are the invoices for the components I purchased. As I mentioned, this doesn't count the drives. I already had 8TB and did buy four 1.5TB drives. The reason why I am not including drives in the cost is this will be up to the user on how many, what size and besides, you can add them as you need them. 

I ordered from various companies. Initially my urge was to try and order everything from one place to save on shipping as well as have minimal packages I had to wait on. In the end I found certain items were significantly lower at different online stores. If you can get your favorite store to price match that would be great! 

Here is my NewEgg order.
​
Right off the bat it's pretty easy to see the big ticket item on that shopping list is the Norco RPC-4020. For those that don't need 20 drives, or need hot swappable drives, I recommend the Norco RPC-450B. This is a really nice case for $79 that has room for 11 drives, and you can even convert the case to hot-swappable drives.

A lot of people are jumping on the newer model 20 drive case, the RPC-4220 but do some planning before you jump head first. The 4220 is a whopping 19" wide whereas the 4020 is 16.9" wide. I was just about to pull the trigger on the 4220 until I measured my rack, which is 18" wide! No dice on jamming a 4220 in there. Functionally the 4020 and 4220 are the same... they both are ginormous computer cases that will hold 20 drives.

[MOUSE]Update: I spoke to NorcoTek. Someone told me both the 4220 and the 4020 are the same size. It's not that I didn't believe him, however the spec sheets did call out different dimensions, plus the guy that was reporting the sizes were the same also referenced the RPC-4224, Which doesn't exist. So the best way to find out the facts is to call the source [/MOUSE]​

If anyone is looking based on size, these cases are indeed the same size. There are a lot of updates to the 4220 however there is one change that could have a bearing on whether someone gets the 4020 or the 4220. The 4220 uses a 2.5 inch system drive over a regular sized 3.5 inch drive. No biggy, but to some that have a 3.5 drive they planned on using they will have to buy a different drive.

[img]http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l190/wbassett/HTS/MediaServerBuild/024.jpg[/img]
So how big is this puppy? For size perspective that's a normal size PC case compared to the box the 4020 shipped in. The three coconuts are my son and two of my grandsons.

The first thing you'll notice after the size is the packing. It comes double boxed and nestled safely in Styrofoam. It weighs in at 38lbs and when I say it's big... and as you can see from the first picture... when it arrived my wife yelled upstairs and told me my refrigerator showed up!
[img]http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l190/wbassett/HTS/MediaServerBuild/027.jpg[/img]


Below is a shot of all the drive bays popped out. This seems to be a mandatory gratuitous shot 
[img]http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l190/wbassett/HTS/MediaServerBuild/030.jpg[/img]



















Here is a shot of the case with the top off and the system drive and slimline DVD drive mounted. Below them is where the 20 hot swappable drives reside. The area to the back is for the PS and motherboard. As it can be seen there is more than enough room inside for any board you want to throw in there.









And another shot giving some size perspective-







Also on this order was the motherboard, CPU and Ram. This is a killer motherboard and really is overkill for a media server. In fact this motherboard could function for an entry level HTPC build! Why did I get it then when I said we don't need a bunch of fancy and expensive components? Well for this particular setup you need a SATA port multiplier since no motherboards out there come with 20 SATA II connectors. It just happens that the interface cards I went with needs PCI-E x4 slots. You can also use PCI Express x16 slots. 


Next is the invoice from my TigerDirect order-







At the time I placed my order they had a slightly better price for Widows Home Server, and the 120mm fans were significantly less than they were on Newegg. Also I thought they had better prices on Power Supplies. 


And the last invoice is from SuperBiiz







SuperBiiz had the best prices on the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 Sata port multiplier cards. They also smoked everyone on the SFF-8087 to Discrete Forward Breakout Cables. 

If you get these cards be careful on what cables you get because the reverse breakout cables look the same in the pictures but they won't work.

So really the expensive items for me were the case and the port multiplier cards. I showed one alternative case, and there are many options out there if you don't need 20 drives. As far as port multipliers, there really aren't that many options out there. Addonics does have a 5X1 Internal SATA Port Multiplier (PM) for $69, however I haven't used one of these before and haven't read any reviews of anyone that has used one. 

That's about it as far as the components. Oh... I'm sure people have noticed all those fans I bought... Well they were .99¢ each when you buy a lot of 10 so I said why not. I will always need a fan for future builds. 

I'll take plenty of pictures when I go through my build.


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## wbassett

*How to put it together*

Since 99% of the parts are the what is used in a PC, putting this together really isn't any harder than building a regular PC.

The sound dampening material was an extra step, as was making a new fan housing, but both were very straight forward. 

Overall I would rate this as an intermediate skill level project. Anyone that is familiar with the insides of a PC can build one of these very easily.


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## wbassett

*Sound, and not DTS or TRUEHD but taming a PC/Server that sounds like a C110 taking off*

If you have a server room this part can be skipped, but most people don't have a server room and have to live with their gear. 

The Norco 4020 is definitely a business grade server case, meaning it isn't pretty (well... it is in a geeky sort of way!) and it isn't quiet! It does however do the job and the stock fans move a tremendous amount of air. The 'cost' of that type of air volume to keep things cool is they are not quiet by anyone's standards. These are like buzz saws running.

So the first thing that needs to be done is all the stock fans have to go!
I replaced the seven 80mm screamers with three 120mm 19dBA and two 80mm 25dBA rear case fans. These fans are more than twice as quite as what was originally in the Norco.

Next was to try and kill the sound even more. For this I went with a sound deadening/dampening neoprene rubber foam used for sound dampening. I used 1/16" material from TheFoamFactory.
Unfortunately it isn't self adhesive. Granted you can get it that has peel off backing and is self adhesive, but it's like 10 times the price. 

TheFoamFactory has great prices, but customer service isn't exactly what I call top notch. You'll get your order and they won't steal your money or anything like that... they are just a bit slow processing and shipping your order.

Craft glue, or plain old Elmer's glue and an old stiff brush to spread it around on the back of the foam works great and it's not going to come up.

The fan assembly is made out of light weight styrofoam wrapped in black electrical tape and then covered with the sound dampening neoprene rubber sheeting. The new fan housing is very light weight and it slides in and is held in place by pressure. Trust me, it isn't going anywhere. It's a tight fit but the styrofoam is flexible and compresses a bit and it's this pressure that keeps in in place. Also the riser has some unused motherboard standoffs that push into the styrofoam and help keep it in place. It know it sounds all monkey rigged but it doesn't look bad and it fits great.



















Followed by sound dampening material on the riser... then the mother board...

















Fast forward to an added Power Supply and lots and lots of annoying cables, and then a new set of three 120mm fans and a new fan housing.






















Not only does the case now have sound dampening material, high volume, low DB fans... I think it looks pretty cool too!


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## wbassett

*What OS to use?*

This is a matter of personal preference. 

You could use any OS that allows drive/file sharing. Some people prefer Linux, others may want to use FreeNAS, and some like me will opt for a server OS like 2003, 2008, or the new Server 2010. I went with the original WHS which is based on Server 2003. There is a newer version that is based on 2008 and one coming out that uses Server 2010, but both of those were more expensive.

Also there is the debate about backing up your data and protecting it. Some people swear by RAID, and if you have hardware RAID it is a very viable option. Software RAID though has its drawbacks. The SATA extender cards I got are not hardware RAID, which was also a factor in my decision to go with WHS.

Again though, this will be more of a personal preference. I happen to like how WHS handles file sharing and duplication. With RAID you backup on the drive level, WHS backs up on the folder level. This gives a bit more flexibility in my opinion and saves drive space too. Ideally I wish I could backup on a file by file basis and not just at the folder level! Someday I am sure that will be an option


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## wbassett

*What extender to use?*

Most motherboards have at least 4 SATA connections, some have 6-8 and a rare few have 10. The more connections usually means the MB costs more too.

The first decision to be made is whether you want hardware RAID support or not. The difference in price is astronomical. A SATA card with hardware RAID support can cost anywhere from several hundred dollars to over a thousand dollars a card. Thus most people opt for non-hardware RAID cards.

I opted for Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 SATA port multiplier cards that cost around $100 each. Two cards are needed for a 20 drive setup as outlined in this thread.

Addonics has a 5x1 SATA port expander that runs $62. No special breakout cables are required, but you will need 4 cards... 4 x $62= $248, so the AOC-SASLP-MV8 with the breakout cables is around the same price so it's a wash. I went with the Supermicro extenders because they are well known and are used in commercial server builds so I know the quality was dependable. Not that the Addonics isn't, I just don't know anyone that's used them. I probably will use one when I build a 10 drive media server for my son.

These are not the only options out there either. Supermicro has another card that will work in a PCI slot (with some bandwidth loss) and uses regular SATA cables. Google around and check out the various options but this will at least get people started and in the right direction.


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## wbassett

*Conclusions and Comments*

All in all this was a fun project and I keep asking myself why I didn't do it sooner!

I plan on building another one, plus a smaller 10 drive server for my son.

Things I might do different: For the most part I would do the build exactly the same with the exception I probably would go with a modular PS next time. Other than that, the Norco cases are a definite thumbs up!


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## wbassett

I got tied up with work, that and I was waiting for the rest of my parts to come in. 

I have everything now, well... I don't have 20 of those 2TB drives I have been drooling over! 

Right now I am working on a fan mod for the case that will be light weight and silent. I already plugged it in and you can't hear the three 120mm fans, yet cfm air volume is still up there and they push a lot of air. I'll probably start the build tomorrow and should have it functioning by the weekend. I'm still waiting for my power adapters for my Verizon Actiontec MI424WR's. I may have to pick up a cheap hub and test it out in the same room as the PS3 until I get my adapters.


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## patchesj

Wondering if you looked at running FreeNAS instead of Windows?


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## wbassett

No I haven't looked at that. Are you using it or have any experience with it?


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## patchesj

I'm running FreeNAS now at home. Super easy to setup and configure. Tons of options for streaming protocols, speaks just about everything out there. Oh, and it's FREE. I'm running a NORCO RPC-470 chassis. NORCO makes great chassis for this type of setup (Media server, not HTPC)


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## mechman

I had FreeNAS setup for awhile but it wasn't all that friendly with my network. I tried for several weeks to get it to work with my PS3 and my DirecTV HR receivers, but it just refused to talk to those no matter what I enabled/disabled. I since went with Windows Home Server and I'm very happy with that. Installation was a breeze, including setting up the client computers. Plus, it worked with everything from the get go.

FreeNAS is nice and it's cheap (free). It just requires quite a bit more to get it to do what you want it to do. And I could never get it there. But if you've got the time to tinker FreeNAS can be a plus. :T


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## mechman

patchesj said:


> I'm running FreeNAS now at home. Super easy to setup and configure. Tons of options for streaming protocols, speaks just about everything out there. Oh, and it's FREE. I'm running a NORCO RPC-470 chassis. NORCO makes great chassis for this type of setup (Media server, not HTPC)


I wish I would have found you when I was pulling hair out of my head! How about a write up on FreeNAS in a new thread? :bigsmile: We could use one here at the Shack. :T


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## patchesj

I would love to help with a write up, but don't have the time to get anything put together soon... I'm getting ready to start my room-in-room theater construction too!!


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## Toby Jack

patchesj said:


> Wondering if you looked at running FreeNAS instead of Windows?


I would love to build a media server. The biggest thing stopping me is having to run Windows. I have been so spoiled with macs for so many years it makes me nauseous just thinking about virus protection & the other inefficiencies of Windows. I'll have to look into FreeNAS.


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## wbassett

Toby Jack said:


> I would love to build a media server. The biggest thing stopping me is having to run Windows. I have been so spoiled with macs for so many years it makes me nauseous just thinking about virus protection & the other inefficiencies of Windows. I'll have to look into FreeNAS.


Toby sorry.... but that is a bit fanboyish in my opinion. Mac is geat when it comes to video editing... but before the MAC was the Amiga. When it comes to PCs though, and media servers, I do have to say that Windows applications far exceed MacIntosh applications. 

Mac definitely has Final Cut Pro, which is the best editing suite out there, but for a media server I can't say that a Mac is better at serving up content than any other OS. You may be 'spoiled' by Macs, but that doesn't mean Macs are better or meet everyone's needs better than Windows or Linux. 

Let's not make this a fanboy thread or even a specific OS thread. I respect your opinions... respect mine and others. If you can present a Mac alternative that costs the same and provides the same support and functionality with the same hardware then that is perfectly fine with me for this thread. 

If you can't, then please start your own thread and present a complete and indexed way of setting things up.


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## wbassett

Toby Jack said:


> I would love to build a media server. The biggest thing stopping me is having to run Windows. I have been so spoiled with macs for so many years it makes me nauseous just thinking about virus protection & the other inefficiencies of Windows. I'll have to look into FreeNAS.


Jack just for the record, it also makes me nauseous that people write websites that attack Internet Explorer based sites just because they hate MS. I certainly am not a fanboy of any OS or company, but there definitely are people that attack other companies and claim one is better or more 'moral' than the other when they are guilty of internet attacks. Let's keep this thread and any thread here on HTS out of that type of thing.

If you can present a MAC alternative then that is perfectly acceptable with me. If you can't present an alternative then don't make negative statements just to make them.


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## Toby Jack

wbassett said:


> Jack just for the record, it also makes me nauseous that people write websites that attack Internet Explorer based sites just because they hate MS. I certainly am not a fanboy of any OS or company, but there definitely are people that attack other companies and claim one is better or more 'moral' than the other when they are guilty of internet attacks. Let's keep this thread and any thread here on HTS out of that type of thing.
> 
> If you can present a MAC alternative then that is perfectly acceptable with me. If you can't present an alternative then don't make negative statements just to make them.


Lets try this from a different angle. The largest obstacle to my building a media server is that all of my media content is encoded for iTunes (AAC, M4V, etc), which, you're right, doesn't offer the best interface for media consumption. My ideal media server would be a small, attractive, compact box (like the mac mini) that I could sit in my entertainment center that i could upgrade with new components over time (not like the mac mini) as I got the money. The ideal operating system would be one that is media-centric and simple. 

I really didn't mean to step on anybody's toes with my OS preference. Personally, I really do find the newer versions of Media Center quite appealing. Is this what you will be using on your new rig? 

P.S. I'll be sure to keep the inner fanboy at bay.


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## wbassett

I've used Macs, Amigas, Linux, Unix, Vax... and yes of course Windows (DR DOS too  )

I do think a Mac thread would be a great addition to things I currently don't have a Mac though and when I was looking at components and sourcing everything for this Media Server build... well honestly Mac never even came to mind. I'm not even sure if it would be possible to build a Mac with this many drives would it? Maybe a dual boot Hackintosh though... now that could be interesting! 

My mindset is everything has it's place and purpose. No one thing ever does everything the best and I do acknowledge that Macs do certain things extremely well. For instance I want one for video editing. For a server though I don't think it would be ideal.


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## Toby Jack

You'd probably have to run Mac OS X Server Edition with that many drives which would be way more money than it's worth for the project at hand. Hope everything is coming together nicely.


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## wbassett

My 2TB drives showed up. For now I ordered 2 just to get things going. They are the WD EADS drives. If they work out okay I'll start populating the rest if the unoccupied slots with them 

So the loadout for now will be two WD 2TB drives, four Samsung 1.5TB drives, and six WD 1TB EADS drives. 16TB is a good start I think.  
This also leaves me with two 1TB My Books for staging and PVRing from the Hauppauge 1212.

I'm finishing up the internal build. Right now I have the sound proofing/dampening material installed and I'm putting the finishing touches on the 120mm fan mod. If this works, and it's looking good, this is a mod anyone can do without any tools!

Oh, the 1TB drives are coming from my WD My Book external USB drives. I'll throw something together on how to take the My Book case apart. The interface is pretty nice and there is no reason why the cases and interfaces can't be reused with smaller drives.


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## chrapladm

I have read this thread quite a few times and have priced things for here in Australia.

I had looked at getting a mini mac before because I have used a Imac for awhile. BUT then mine crashed because of a broken PS or something. Now I am not dissing any brand eher but I was disheartened by this.

And now I wish I had a tower so that I could easily do all the work or upgrades for my computer. So that is why I want to build a PC again. PLUS there are alot more free programs and trial games to use. HAHAH

Anyways I love your chasis that thing is huge and exactly what I have in mind. I intend on doing almost exactly the same thing but I was wondering how would the cpu handle audio mixing and production?

I wont be using this as a full time audio production just the "amatuer," occasional music production from my HT and the rest just like you, I think.

Oh and do you have any more pictures or updates?


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## Harpmaker

Hi Papi,

I quite sure if the CPU can serve video streams it would work like a charm for editing audio as well. :T


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## Whsperz

I am in the process of building two of these with some slight variations (I don't want to intrude too much on your build thread). The reason for two of them is due to the fact that they will not be using raid. They will be in two different locations serving the same media, so backup is in the other respective location.

Some of the differences that I went with:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Model BX80580Q8300 - $149.99
SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SBE LGA 775 Intel 3210 ATX Intel Xeon/Core 2/Pentium/Celeron Server Motherboard - $249.99
SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card x2 - $99.99 x2 - $199.98
Kingston 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) ECC Unbuffered Desktop Memory Model KVR800D2E6K2/4G - $127.99
Xigmatek XLF-F1253 120mm 61 CFM and <20 dBA x3 - $8.99 x 3 - $26.97
Nexus PWM Series SP802512H-03PWM 80mm Case Fan 38 CFM and 16 dBA x2 - $8.99 x2 - $17.98
Everything else is pretty much on the level or is inconsequential to mention. 

It ends up being a little more than you spent but I opted to go with Intel because, historically, Intel's run a little cooler (I am not trying to start anything with AMD/Intel). Since I am a MSCE, I have multiple licenses for 2008 Server x64 that I will be running, since they are legal and free (well now they are with my MSDN sub). Also I wanted the extra power for transcoding my Blu-Rays (since Blu-Ray was the reason I got started doing this in the first place - My kids decided they were just like DVDs and mistreated them, I started transcoding to the hard drive to keep them from ruining them).

Some quick questions and comments for you and your build. I obviously have been doing the same homework you had been doing about the 120mm fan swap. Since you have already done yours, is it possible you have some before and after shots of the fan plate with/without the fans attached? Possibly a write up on how it was done without tools?

When you are up and running (ideally with a system drive and a couple of drives in) do you have a way of measuring the various temps in the case and around the hard drives. Possibly a way of measuring the dBA? The only other variable is that I will be running a 600Gb Raptor as the boot drive and 1 x 1Tb as transcoding drive, all remaining drives will be 20 x 32Mb 2Tb WD EADs. I would be very interested to see what numbers you are pushing and I will be glad to supply mine (still waiting for the case to get here... Shipping to Alaska takes FOREVER).

I hesitated a little bit when I saw that you plan on running Windows Home Server. Assuming that you will be similarly serving media as I will you will probably be okay, however WHS is quite problematic when you get this large in scale. I am sure you did your homework before deciding and I applaud you for that. What made you decide to go with it? Cost? Ease of use? 

Oh and can't go wrong with lots of pictures. Even though they may not interest you, others like me and potential people considering this can use your ideas to help determine what they may run into. I look forward to reading your build as you complete it.


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## wbassett

Whsperz said:


> I hesitated a little bit when I saw that you plan on running Windows Home Server. Assuming that you will be similarly serving media as I will you will probably be okay, however WHS is quite problematic when you get this large in scale. I am sure you did your homework before deciding and I applaud you for that. What made you decide to go with it? Cost? Ease of use?


First I have to say work and health have caused things to come to a crawl, but I am slowly getting back on track.


I went with WHS because many are using it for the same type of builds and I have heard some positive things about it. Yes there are cons, but I have also heard of some cons for 2008. I guess it all boils down to you have to listen to what people are saying and then decide and try it yourself. 

I rip my blurays on another PC and shouldn't need to transcode since my playback devices support the file formats natively. 

I also prefer Intel over AMD but the MoBo with the slots I needed and the 3GHz dual core AMD CPU was a great price.

You have the advantage of being able to test and try various operating systems at no cost. I am not sold on WHS yet, but it sounds like it will do what I need and without costing an arm and a leg.


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## kareface

Whsperz said:


> The only other variable is that I will be running a 600Gb Raptor as the boot drive and 1 x 1Tb as transcoding drive, all remaining drives will be 20 x 32Mb 2Tb WD EADs. I would be very interested to see what numbers you are pushing and I will be glad to supply mine (still waiting for the case to get here... Shipping to Alaska takes FOREVER).


WD green drivers aren't designed to be used in a raid setup, you'll end up with drives dropping out (the 2tb greens have a lot of trouble with this). If you plan to go that route I'd suggest looking into their raid line of drives which have a shorter error recovery period so you don't constantly have the array kicking drives off.

One of the many people who ran into issues:


> The green drives do not work with RAID. I had RAID 10 (mirrored and striped) and I lost EVERYTHING, programs and data. Before I lost everything I had failures about 3 times before the final crash. For a high end machine that cost over $2000, I will spend 5 times of that for my time getting back to speed and that does not include the data lost, or lost billings. I had 4 tetrabyte drives. According to my geek, even the blacks are not recommended by Western Digital with RAID, only the servers.


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## jlp_2908

I just kinda copied your build part from part (dont wanna get anything that isnt compatible etc I never built anything like this before).

However, I cant get everything on your list.

Diablotek 850watt powersupply
and everything on the superbiiz invoice....

What parts should I order from newegg.ca(dont really care about the price plus it would be nice to have everything from one place) that would work just as well?????

If anyone can give me some advice id really appreciate it.


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## Whsperz

kareface said:


> WD green drivers aren't designed to be used in a raid setup, you'll end up with drives dropping out (the 2tb greens have a lot of trouble with this). If you plan to go that route I'd suggest looking into their raid line of drives which have a shorter error recovery period so you don't constantly have the array kicking drives off.


Yeah I did the research on that. I really didn't desire to run RAID on this system since I am building two identical systems in two different locations. Items will be transferred between the two via a 4TB eSATA MyWorld. The whole idea of the system was to not break the bank, yes I could have gone the raid route, but max storage plus 2 locations with identical content was appealing to me. 

Besides, I have another MORE expensive hobby that really supersedes my home theater project (well until I move away from Alaska). My Jeep


----------



## wbassett

jlp_2908 said:


> I just kinda copied your build part from part (dont wanna get anything that isnt compatible etc I never built anything like this before).
> 
> However, I cant get everything on your list.
> 
> Diablotek 850watt powersupply
> and everything on the superbiiz invoice....
> 
> What parts should I order from newegg.ca(dont really care about the price plus it would be nice to have everything from one place) that would work just as well?????
> 
> If anyone can give me some advice id really appreciate it.


The one item I know you aren't going to find on newegg is the Supermicro's SASLP-MV8 controller. One thing to be very careful is this card needs the forward breakout cable. Newegg has it as well as the reverse breakout cable and they both look the same by they are not interchangeable. Newegg doesn't have the controller card, so you'll have to get that elsewhere as well.

I totally agree about wanting to get everything from the same place to save on shipping and hassle, but like shopping anywhere I have found that some things are significantly less expensive on one site while everything else is more expensive. If the shipping negated the cost savings yeah sure I'd go with just one site. Also some items aren't available on every site, so what I tried to do was order several things off each site I dealt with to try and not have shipping for just one item and orders from a dozen sites.

As far as the power supply, I went with that one because I got a great price for it. 850W is borderline overkill, a 750W PS should be fine. The main thing aside from making sure the PS has the proper power connectors for the motherboard is to make sure you have plenty of molex periph connectors. A total of 8 are needed, 10 if you are connecting the rear case fans to them and not the motherboard. If you can get a modular PS even better. The fewer wires you have to deal with the better the air flow will be and the cleaner the build will look when done.


----------



## Whsperz

wbassett said:


> You have the advantage of being able to test and try various operating systems at no cost. I am not sold on WHS yet, but it sounds like it will do what I need and without costing an arm and a leg.


Since Ubuntu 1004 comes out tomorrow, I may be doing a test phase with 64bit Server to see if I can do everything I want with it (Comfortably).


----------



## Whsperz

jlp_2908 said:


> I just kinda copied your build part from part (dont wanna get anything that isnt compatible etc I never built anything like this before).
> 
> However, I cant get everything on your list.
> 
> Diablotek 850watt powersupply
> and everything on the superbiiz invoice....
> 
> What parts should I order from newegg.ca(dont really care about the price plus it would be nice to have everything from one place) that would work just as well?????
> 
> If anyone can give me some advice id really appreciate it.


I haven't really perused NewEggs .ca site, but for the most part you can follow either build to the letter from one site (something I typically like to do since I pay a huge amount for shipping to Alaska). The biggest factor(s) that you need to be aware of are:

Which controller card are wanting to go with? This leads to which motherboard supports it. As you can see wbassett and I strayed away from each other on this. My cards require PCI-X Slots (64-bit 133MHz) and to support my drives with those cards, I need two of them, which means two slots that can handle it. wbasset went with cards that require PCI-E x4 slots, again he needs two to support the drives. Keep in mind neither one of those cards support "Hardware" raid. Software raid, when you spend this kind of money can and usually bites you in the butt (as kareface referenced earlier). If you want raid, the preferred cards are 3Ware and Areca at the moment, but they are over a $1000 US.

I didn't go with the same Power Supply as wbassett but I am sure he made sure there was enough power/connectors/single rail to supply the backplane for the Norco 4020. I opted for a Corsair 850.

After you have picked your cards and mobo, then it boils down to preference of CPU, what speed you want, and RAM. Depending on where you place the case, may determine if you want to quiet it down. The default fans in the Norco 4020 are screamers 50-75 dBA. Since this planned for my AV area, I wanted to keep it a dull roar at 25 dBA or lower.

Hopefully this helps you out a little bit.


----------



## wbassett

Whsperz said:


> Yeah I did the research on that. I really didn't desire to run RAID on this system since I am building two identical systems in two different locations. Items will be transferred between the two via a 4TB eSATA MyWorld. The whole idea of the system was to not break the bank, yes I could have gone the raid route, but max storage plus 2 locations with identical content was appealing to me.
> 
> Besides, I have another MORE expensive hobby that really supersedes my home theater project (well until I move away from Alaska). My Jeep


You asked earlier why I went with WHS, and one reason is that I don't plan on using RAID but do like the idea of being able to selectively backup certain folders.

If I understand WHS right (haven't gotten to the install yet) it is more along the line of JBOD (Just a Bunch of Drives) setup than RAID. Originally I didn't like the JBOD method but the more and more I thought about it the more I decided I don't need 1 for 1 backup. It's expensive and wastes a lot of space. Since I own all the DVDs and Blurays I archived to drives, if a hard drive fails I have the originals that I can rerip. Yeah I know that's a lot of time, but I'd rather have more movies on my drives than redundancy.

Now for things that I don't have hard copies yet, which are HD items from my Hauppauge PVR 1212, those I can't replace. As they become available on DVD or Bluray I pick them up, but not all movies I PVR'd are available on disc yet. Same goes with most of the TV series I have from the PVR. So those will be in folders that are backed up by WHS.

I have a question, you mentioned you wanted extra power for transcoding your Blurays... Do you mean ripping them from disc to hard drive or transcoding to play them? All the media devices I have seen will play Bluray files natively without any need to convert them. If you mean so you can rip them, how do you plan on reading the disc? Reason I ask is because you can't fit a normal size drive in this case, only a slimline DVD drive.


----------



## Whsperz

wbassett said:


> I have a question, you mentioned you wanted extra power for transcoding your Blurays... Do you mean ripping them from disc to hard drive or transcoding to play them? All the media devices I have seen will play Bluray files natively without any need to convert them. If you mean so you can rip them, how do you plan on reading the disc? Reason I ask is because you can't fit a normal size drive in this case, only a slimline DVD drive.


In due time, there should be a slimline Blu-Ray drive (I hope!).

I have another machine that I plan on using for ripping my HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays to the Hard Drive. I will be converting them to 1080p mkv's on the Norco, rather than transporting the media between sites to watch movies, they will be in both locations at a push of the button. In theory, I could do them on the machine with the drive in it, although we want to get away from all the little various computers running all around the house and just have on what needs to be on all the time. 

This was my plan initially, to justify to the wife the small amount more for the extra horsepower. But honestly, I plan for growth and other uses (even if they are unknown at the time) when purchasing servers and machines in a corporate environment, it sorta leaks over into my personal life.


----------



## wbassett

I know they have slim BD drives because laptops have them, I just haven't seen any for sale. Actually, I haven't looked but I suspect they aren't going to be cheap!


----------



## Whsperz

wbassett said:


> I know they have slim BD drives because laptops have them, I just haven't seen any for sale. Actually, I haven't looked but I suspect they aren't going to be cheap!


I totally concur with not going to be cheap. The way I look at it is, I can yank the older HD-DVD/Blu-Ray burner which was quite costly when I got it out of that machine, slide in a DVD burner and sell the machine, therefore reducing the computer mess in the house and the power that it uses 

Just to cut this off at the pass, the reason the Blu-Ray burner is in a different machine is because it was a first generation. My main computer, at the time, couldn't boot off the mobo and I didn't want to add a controller card just for that. In my current media server it works fine and since I have replaced my main computer, it will be able to handle it... just been too lazy to swap it out.

I figure, with the mini computers coming out in force, it's only a matter of time. Notebooks are running them and, although I am not completely sure, PS3 slims might be as well.


----------



## jlp_2908

wbassett said:


> I totally agree about wanting to get everything from the same place to save on shipping and hassle, but like shopping anywhere I have found that some things are significantly less expensive on one site while everything else is more expensive. If the shipping negated the cost savings yeah sure I'd go with just one site. Also some items aren't available on every site, so what I tried to do was order several things off each site I dealt with to try and not have shipping for just one item and orders from a dozen sites.
> 
> As far as the power supply, I went with that one because I got a great price for it. 850W is borderline overkill, a 750W PS should be fine. The main thing aside from making sure the PS has the proper power connectors for the motherboard is to make sure you have plenty of molex periph connectors. A total of 8 are needed, 10 if you are connecting the rear case fans to them and not the motherboard. If you can get a modular PS even better. The fewer wires you have to deal with the better the air flow will be and the cleaner the build will look when done.


Ok will this work fine for a power supply?
Thermaltake TR2 TRX-750M 750W ATX 12V v2.3 / EPS 12V v2.91 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply 
(I cant post the link cause of spam filter and my post count....

I cant find any place that sells the card/breakout cable/imicro stuff all at the same place...some of its out of stock etc Is there a site that would sell everything like superbiiz?? superbiiz is out of the cards


----------



## Whsperz

jlp_2908 said:


> Ok will this work fine for a power supply?
> Thermaltake TR2 TRX-750M 750W ATX 12V v2.3 / EPS 12V v2.91 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
> (I cant post the link cause of spam filter and my post count....
> 
> I cant find any place that sells the card/breakout cable/imicro stuff all at the same place...some of its out of stock etc Is there a site that would sell everything like superbiiz?? superbiiz is out of the cards


I had a reply for your previous question but it got flagged for a moderator to look at so I am sure it's somewhere in LALA land. The P/S should work for anything you want. Are you planning on running a Norco 4020? If so, you can "technically" run the backplane with only five MOLEX peripheral connectors ( I prefer to use all ten). You may need to buy some Y-splitters or get some SATA to MOLEX power adapters to get all that you need.

As far as the card goes. Amazon has it in stock (they are just a frontend for Buy.com). http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-Ad...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1272492855&sr=8-1


----------



## jlp_2908

Whsperz said:


> I had a reply for your previous question but it got flagged for a moderator to look at so I am sure it's somewhere in LALA land. The P/S should work for anything you want. Are you planning on running a Norco 4020? If so, you can "technically" run the backplane with only five MOLEX peripheral connectors ( I prefer to use all ten). You may need to buy some Y-splitters or get some SATA to MOLEX power adapters to get all that you need.


Im getting the norco 4220
SFF-8087 is that the "forward" version of those cables???


----------



## jlp_2908

jlp_2908 said:


> Im getting the norco 4220
> SFF-8087 is that the "forward" version of those cables???


nevermind, i found the forward cables....
do we really need the imicro usb docking station?


----------



## wbassett

jlp_2908 said:


> nevermind, i found the forward cables....
> do we really need the imicro usb docking station?


No, and sorry about that, I never thought about that when I posted the scans. 

I got it because the price was good and I wanted something I could quickly swap SATA drives in and out to copy things down. I cracked open my My Book drives and took the 1TB drives out and the docking station lets me still access the bare drive.


----------



## wbassett

Whsperz said:


> I had a reply for your previous question but it got flagged for a moderator to look at so I am sure it's somewhere in LALA land. The P/S should work for anything you want. Are you planning on running a Norco 4020? If so, you can "technically" run the backplane with only five MOLEX peripheral connectors ( I prefer to use all ten). You may need to buy some Y-splitters or get some SATA to MOLEX power adapters to get all that you need.
> 
> As far as the card goes. Amazon has it in stock (they are just a frontend for Buy.com). http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-Ad...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1272492855&sr=8-1


There is a lot of debate and question about the ten backplane connections. You only need to connect five, the other five are for a second power supply. Connecting all ten to the same PS really isn't giving you any added protection or performance. It won't hurt if you do connect them, so if you have enough molex connectors go for it!


----------



## Whsperz

wbassett said:


> There is a lot of debate and question about the ten backplane connections. You only need to connect five, the other five are for a second power supply. Connecting all ten to the same PS really isn't giving you any added protection or performance. It won't hurt if you do connect them, so if you have enough molex connectors go for it!


Yeah there is a lot of debate on that whole issue. I have read about the backplane being cheap with the SATA connections and MOLEX connections. If there was a chance of a bad solder on the MOLEX at least I would have another one connected. I agree with the secondary P/S and haven't ruled out going that route. I am just trying to prepare myself for some failure as I don't want to have to wait for a warranty replacement considering how long it takes to get stuff here


----------



## wbassett

Very good point, in that sense then it makes perfect sense to me. At least you're aware of that, some people think it is required to connect all 10 and I was just pointing out it isn't.

As far as build, I've had the backplane tore completely down and the boards look pretty good to me. The one area I seriously question though is the drive bays and cooling. Once you put a drive in the sled and slid it in the server, it basically seals the opening in the back. If anything we're talking 10ths of an inch clearance for airflow. I just can't see how any air can be sucked through the front grill of each sled no matter how big or powerful the fans are. If a drive runs hot it is going to cook that's for sure, although people that have this case haven't reported over heating issues as long as they either kept the stock screamers or replaced them with comparable cfm rated fans.

More pics of my build are coming tonight, I am uploading them now.


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## jlp_2908

Cool looking forward to it
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## wbassett

First was to prep the case for the sound deadening/dampening material. To do that I needed to remove the fan shroud and the motherboard riser. The fan shroud assembly was coming out anyway to make way for the new 120mm fans that would be replacing the super loud 80mm screamers that were in there from the factory. The riser- some cases have one, others don't. Originally I would have liked to leave mine out but the mother board screw downs only screwed in the riser and not in the case bottom. That and without the riser the mother board slots wouldn't match the opening in the back of the case.

Here is the riser coming out and then the gutted case. 


















Next I installed the sound dampening material on the bottom and sides of the case, and then remounted the riser.


















Followed by sound dampening material on the riser... then the mother board...

















Fast forward to an added Power Supply and lots and lots of annoying cables, and then a new set of three 120mm fans and a new fan housing.






















I moved the fan assembly back and to do so makes it hit the motherboard riser. The new housing is cut like an 'L' and then I make cable notches for the cables to fit through. Once the sound deadening/dampening material was applied, the notches were hidded but the cables still easily fit under the assembly. The material seals off the opening so the only airflow is through the fans and no secondary paths for eddies to form. Any hot air by the backplane is definitely going to be sucked to the main area where the rear exhaust fans will do their job and push everything out the back.

Now to get it formatted and start dumping my movies over to it!

Coming up soon- using your cable TV system for your home network and to stream video! Hey... it works for your high speed internet, and HD cable channels... there is plenty of bandwidth there to use to stream your movies too!


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## wbassett

Something tells me you guys are going to want a detailed step by step photo op of the fan assembly, aren't you? 

I'll put a tutorial together but it really is pretty easy. It even uses the original fan power strip!

I promise to get pictures of a step by step tutorial, but in the meantime here is a list if materials, and as promised... no tools other than a razor knife/exacto was needed!


Black Posterboard- Any store like Walmart carries it.
3/4" styrofoam- Check your packing boxes, you probably already have exactly what you need! If not, Lowes and Home Depot have it.
Electrical Tape and Black Duct Tape
Liquid Nails

The only thing missing from the ultimate man kit is the WD-40!

If you did your job right, it's a snug fit and isn't going anywhere yet you can still remove the fans in the event one ever fails and needs to be replaced.


----------



## chrapladm

Sorry for the ignorance but what dampening material are you using?

Is it a material with self adhesive already applied or no?

And is installing the fan shroud easy? As in there are plenty of holes on the sides for where it can go.

I was just trying to look at yours and see the sides but could not. And I am assuming that you can install rack ears to the 4020 or 4220 so it will fit in a 19" rack?

I will be building my own rack unit for the HT electronics and I will be placing my media server there.

Just trying to understand everything because I will probably be copying your exact model.

Thanks for such a detailed build. Learning alot and even more since I can see it.:bigsmile::T


----------



## wbassett

Oh, the reason I moved the fan assembly back was because I had a bazillion SATA power connections so I got SATA to MOLEX adapters and I needed just a touch extra room, so the fans had to come back a bit...


----------



## wbassett

chrapladm said:


> Sorry for the ignorance but what dampening material are you using?
> 
> Is it a material with self adhesive already applied or no?
> 
> And is installing the fan shroud easy? As in there are plenty of holes on the sides for where it can go.
> 
> I was just trying to look at yours and see the sides but could not. And I am assuming that you can install rack ears to the 4020 or 4220 so it will fit in a 19" rack?
> 
> I will be building my own rack unit for the HT electronics and I will be placing my media server there.
> 
> Just trying to understand everything because I will probably be copying your exact model.
> 
> Thanks for such a detailed build. Learning alot and even more since I can see it.:bigsmile::T


The material is sound deadening/dampening rubber, and unfortunately no it isn't self adhesive. Granted you can get it that has peel off backing and is self adhesive, but it's like 100 times the price. 

Here is a place that has great prices, but customer service isn't exactly what I call top notch. You'll get your order and they won't steal your money or anything like that... they are just a bit slow processing and shipping your order.

http://www.closedcellfoams.com/volara.html

Craft glue, or... plain old Elmer's glue and an old stiff brush to spread it around on the back of the foam works great and it's not going to come up.

The fan assembly slides in and is held in place by pressure. Trust me, it isn't going anywhere. It's a tight fit but the styrofoam is flexible and compresses a bit and it's this pressure that keeps in in place. Also the riser has some unused motherboard standoffs that push into the styrofoam and help keep it in place. It know it sounds all monkey rigged but it doesn't look bad and it fits great.

As far as rack mounting, the case comes with front handles and 19" rack mounts. The only thing extra you'd need would be slide rails. I know for awhile Newegg was including slide rails for free with the 4220.


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## wbassett

*Minor Burp...*

It happens...

I've seen this in the IT world many times and it is something that just happens and doesn't mean a company is bad or anything like that- But sometimes things arrive broke.

My Gigabyte MA785GT-UD3H had a problem. The PCIex4 slot was bad. What this meant was I couldn't install the second AOC-SASLP-MV8 card. No worries though... the board comes with a 3 year warranty and RMAing it is a snap.

I got the new board and everything came up fine, including the second AOC-SASLP-MV8 card!


----------



## wbassett

One thing nice about the AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards is that they spin the drives up one at a time. What this means is it doesn't do a max pull on your hard drive and PS.

Once a drive is spun up and recognized it goes to idle state and its power consumption is greatly reduced. If all 20 drives spun up at the same time upon system boot... well it would take a pretty beefy PS to handle that type of load. A 750 will be more than adequate for a 4020 or 4022 setup.


----------



## cdaicl6

*Re: How to put it together*

Hi, Thanks for such an informative thread! I am new the site and was wondering why under some of the topics (such as "How to put it together") it says "-Reserved-"? 
Since I'm new to all this, I would love to see how you put it all together!
Thanks again!
Casey


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## cdaicl6

*Re: How to put it together*

oops! sorry for my ignorance! I guess I needed to read a bit further. Again, thanks for such a detailed guide for us to follow!


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## wbassett

I need to swing back around and either update those or remove them. They were intended as place holders for the buildout.


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## wbassett

By the way Casey...

Welcome to the Shack!!


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## wbassett

Okay... I have 16TB installed.

I think this is a pet peev of just about everyone, and that is advertized storage vs actual storage. 16TB is actually 14.85TB of usable space. Oh well! It's a start!

Right now I have used 7.99TB. That includes my duplicated (backup) folders. From here on out I shouldn't have any duplication except for what I pull from the Hauppauge. I have 8 empty slots yet and I plan on replacing the 1TB drives with at least 1.5TB drives as soon as I can.

WHS is working like a champ too.


----------



## mechman

Finally got around to catching up on this thread... Sounds like everything is working good Bill. Is WHS working the way you would like it to? 

I recently installed Twonky to my WHS to get things to stream to my DLNA TV. WHS isn't DLNA compliant I guess so I needed Twonky. :foottap:


----------



## wbassett

Yeah so far so good with WHS.

Until I installed it and started using it, based on all the write ups and features I read I wasn't sure about the part when you put a new drive in it formats it and adds it to the drive pool. That scared me because obviously I didn't want my movies formatted before I could put them in the drive pool!

Fortunately when you first plug in a USB drive, or add a new drive via internal motherboard SATA connection it adds it as a regular drive and lets you move your files before you add the drive to the pool.

So far so good too. Streaming DVD archives and HD movies and BD archives over the 100BT network functions fine, no skips or stuttering.

The only problem I really see right now is that WHS doesn't have a very good method of identifying hard drives. Most people recommend writing down the drive serial numbers and what hotswappable slot they are in. Sound advice except WHS doesn't show the serial numbers for all the drives. It shows some, but not all and that's a major problem if you want to remove a drive and replace it with a larger capacity drive later on. This is something I really would not want to do hit or miss style because if you remove a drive from the WHS console but then physically pop out the wrong drive- Well I can see lost data happening.

I found a program for $10 that I am going to try unless I can find the same type of addin from MS for free. Personally it's this type of stuff that upsets me with big companies like Microsoft... leave out very important functionality only to charge for it as an add on.

I am still ripping away! I have 6TB left out of 16TB (14.85 actual TB) and I still have around 5 1/2 shelves full of DVDs plus boxes upstairs! I guess I'm saying I think I need to buy more drives already!


----------



## wbassett

Bit of an update on the progress of things...

Okay so far I have approximately 85 High Def discs, 228 HD PVR movies and 735 Standard Def discs worth moved over to the server for a total of 10.6TB of space used- That breaks down to 7.5TB for all the movies and 3.1TB of items that are backed up. I'm done with my High Def content with the exception of the Bond flicks on Bluray and my blurays of the Rocky movies! That puts me around 60-70% done with only SD content (and whatever HD I PVR from here on out) remaining to archive. There is a bit over 4TB of space remaining, but I still have 8 empty bays to populate so I am not going to run out of room anytime soon.

I have one drive that I am having a minor issue with. It could be the drive or could be the controller port. I haven't had time to trouble shoot it yet. The issue is only during bootup. When the server is up and running everything is fine and has perfect health. The problem is during the spin up cycle the one drive/port comes on and stays on and the system will not boot. Once I pop the drive out it boots properly and then I can add the drive once everything is back up. I'll post an update when I get time to isolate it to the drive or controller.

One thing about network speeds... 
I see lots of talk about negatives on things. Everything has its pros and cons.
Most people are not going to have runs the length we see in office buildings, although there can be some pretty long runs to the extreme ends of a big house. Of course there are going to be a lot of variables that can and will degrade performance.



kareface said:


> That's not to say it's not possible to do over 100bt, but if you do don't plan on running anywhere near 100 meters between repeaters and make sure you're using good quality cabling and a decent switch.


Good advice and I totally agree with the use of repeaters for extended runs. One comment though...
Unless a person is using a HTPC on the recieving end, most of the media devices out there right now are only 100bt. Only a few are Gigabit. Based on that... some of the comments are a bit of a moot point, meaning 100BT is the best some people can even hope to get. Now... you are totally right about using quality components making a huge difference. Keep in mind though that there are a lot of people out there with the 100BT devices that are able to do 1080p content with no problems at all. I'm sure though that they aren't at the end of a 300' run or trying to stream multiple movies at the same time. So I'd say it is definitely possible over 100BT and I haven't had a problem with my setup yet... knock on wood!

My advice to people is if they don't have a network and are running cable, you might as well go Gigabit even if your end devices don't currently support it. Just because they don't now doesn't mean the next gizmo coming in six month won't. Might as well try to future proof as much as possible. Kinda like the old commercial that said "You can pay me now, or pay me later..."

As far as I am concerned, wifi is not even a question. Unless you are transmitting in the same room and only a few feet apart don't expect High Def content to work without problems and skipping and stuttering. And if you are in the same room... just run a cable! Wifi will work for standard def, but also keep in mind if there are a lot of people all connected and wanting to watch things in different rooms all at the same time, even SD content is going to have issues on wifi. Personally... I have no intentions of even thinking about wifi in my setup.

Last- Quality...
This is one area where I won't compromise on when it comes to the media. I do no conversions, no compression, no transcoding... nothing. Everything is one for one the same as having the disc in. As mentioned, there will always be a weak link in the mix somewhere but I want to make sure it's not the media itself. Now before anyone spins up, let me state this is my preference and that I can and do see a difference with compression as well as other file format conversions. My thoughts are to go with whatever you personally find acceptable. As far as quality and performance by using the native WHS folder system setup... it works fine. 

I've done a lot of checking into this too and I have to say there are just as many people that swear by RAID as there are that don't, especially when it comes to software RAID. WHS isn't setup to use RAID so it is an added layer of potential issues. That's not to say it can't be done or shouldn't be done, but it doesn't need to be done. As far as space, as I mentioned at the begining of this post I am not using double the room for backups. I only backup what I want backed up, which is my Hauppauge PVR content because if that is lost I don't have a hard copy of it and I have to wait until the next time it airs. However with that said, the duplication folders is only 20% of my total storage and it will continue to decrease in size.

How will it decrease in size you may ask? Good question! As I replace PVR content with BD versions, I remove the PVR file and hence its duplication. Perfect example: I have all of Clint's spaghetti westerns in HD from the Hauppauge, Fist Full of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good The Bad, and The Ugly. All three of these take up 52GB of space, over 100GB when you take duplication into account. Up until just recently these were not available on Bluray so this was the only HD versions available. Now they are out on BD and I just picked up the Man With No Name Trilogy set, so they will be archived and the PVR versions will get deleted along with their backup. Same goes for shows like Spartacus Blood and Sand... right now the only HD version is what I have from the PVR1212. When it comes out on Bluray I'll get the box set and then delete the PVR versions and free up more space and reduce my duplication even more.

Is this method perfect? Never said it was and I am sure to some it is far from ideal to them, but it works for me.
Now granted sometimes the BD file is just as big as both the PVR file and the backup, but usually that's not the case.

My personal opinion and preference is this... WHS works and works well at what it is intended to do. Originally I was going to go with RAID myself, but hardware RAID is pretty expensive and probably would have at least doubled the cost of this project. Software RAID has it's own set of problems, performance being one of them. So with that said, I decided to go with how WHS natively handles things and I must say I like it so far. Will everyone? Do I even need to answer that?! People fight over which is the best streaming device so there is no way everyone is going to agree with one way of doing things over another. Again my advice to people is to use what works for them or what they feel the most comfortable with.


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## PnoT

I'm building a similar system with some different requirements and wanted to know if you could do test on your array and post up some numbers on read/write speeds?

I'm debating going hardware RAID but if software can achieve what i need there's no point in spending the money.

I need to be able to stream to 2-5 machines at any given time and have 6 Samsung F3 2TB drives at the moment.


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## wbassett

PnoT said:


> I'm building a similar system with some different requirements and wanted to know if you could do test on your array and post up some numbers on read/write speeds?
> 
> I'm debating going hardware RAID but if software can achieve what i need there's no point in spending the money.
> 
> I need to be able to stream to 2-5 machines at any given time and have 6 Samsung F3 2TB drives at the moment.


I can tell you that I am using Windows Home Server (WHS) and I love it!

I can stream dvds and HD content without a burp. It utilizes a unique type of drive system that is partially JBOD (Just A Bunch Of Drives) along with redundancy backup capability as well. What I like about it is you can select a folder to backup, and don't have to do an entire drive.

Is it perfect? Nothing is, not even RAID- be it hardware or software. Does it work? Yes!


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## wbassett

I have been testing my server with a Playon!HD and I have to say I am loving everything!

I also have to say I really needed to put everything on a server like this. Quite simply put if I waited any longer I would have to buy new DVDs because some are getting worn out or damaged from use and abuse. Also I have so many DVDs (no joke, literally thousands of movies) I lost many of them. As I went through and archived to my server I realized I had missing movies. Some were empty cases and some were flicks that I absolutely know I have/had but we couldn't find them, case or disc... so this really was a necessity in my situation. Do it or lose a third of my collection and have to repurchase the same movies! On a caveat, now most of the DVDs are in the $5 bin or $7.50... but still... I already own them so I don't like the idea of repurchasing what I already own.

Some people have made comments about 'being lazy' and 'just walk across the room and put the DVD in!'. Well even my wife likes being able to click through a menu and pick anything at the flick of a button. If I had 200 DVDs then I may agree, just put the disc in... but we have over 1800 now, probably more like pushing 2000 movies. So far everything is fitting nicely on 18TB! Before anyone freaks, that includes backup of my Haupaugue PVR-1212 flicks.

As far as performance, it really depends on your end unit media player. My HTPC plays everything, even Avatar in Bluray at full bitrate... I'm having some tweaking issues with my streaming devices but hope to have that resolved soon. I can watch a movie and upload content to the server over the network at the same time and there isn't a blip, glitch, stutter or error. Right now I am watching Heartbreak Ridge from the Eastwood Collection Box Set and uploading 120GB of kids cartoons over the network at the same time and everything is working just fine.

I haven't tested wifi... and honestly... I really don't plan on even trying wifi for video/HD for at least a couple more years. It can work in a limited capacity but there is nothing like a hard wired lan.

As far as I am concerned... this build was a 1000% success


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## mechman

:clap: Good to hear Bill!! :clap:


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## Lucky7!

I've found this thread interesting as I've been wondering which path to take with regard to HTPC build and storage. A simpler HTPC build than I'd planned and an external server might not cost all that much more but I still need to do the pricing to confirm and I could add drives as required and finances permit. I have nowhere near the number of discs you do (maybe 250 DVD+BR), but I buy lots secondhand and ripping them to a server via DVDShrink stripping off all the extras I don't want would be a very good option.

Still pondering possibilities about how to do it all, but as I would also have all my audio files backed up there too, could a server like yours be moved to another site and interfaced relatively easily with a different PC? We have a big annual GTG and it would be great to take everything.


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## wbassett

Seeing it is a Windows operating system and the drives are all setup as shares it would be accessable from any Windows based PC or any device that can browse a network.


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## Lucky7!

wbassett said:


> Seeing it is a Windows operating system and the drives are all setup as shares it would be accessable from any Windows based PC or any device that can browse a network.


Yup windows based. Excellent and thanks, I just wanted to check first.

I can't seem to find anything like the Norco rack case down here. Best I can find is the Antec 4U22E without PSU. Still early days in the search though and I'm sure others will turn up especially as I am searching for what to use for the HTPC.


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## Whsperz

wbassett, still enjoying your Norco setup? I have filled mine with 44Tbs now and am contemplating buying another Norco case and doing it all over again. All of my Blu-Rays and HDDVDs are on there in perfectly quality, as well as all my DVDs. I have been running on over drive lately converting all equipment. 

My only complaint is pretty trivial. Since changing to the quieter but almost as powerful CFMs, I forget that it's running sometimes and forget to check it for dog and cat hair. That thing sucks a lot air into it.


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## Jamestrix

After 8 months of running it have you had any drives fail ?

A9X I had to move from Sydney to the US just so that I can get access to all nice toys the US has to offer.
Fell in love with some of the home theater builds that where on here in 2005 and have been waiting until I move tot he US to start building some thing nice.


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## chrapladm

Just wondering how the cooling has been working as far as the drivers staying cool?

I would like to build the same exact thing and everytime I look at the Norco unit the reviews all talk about the drivers having no extra room at all.

But that being said I think I will still go ahead with the build.


----------



## wbassett

Whsperz said:


> wbassett, still enjoying your Norco setup? I have filled mine with 44Tbs now and am contemplating buying another Norco case and doing it all over again. All of my Blu-Rays and HDDVDs are on there in perfectly quality, as well as all my DVDs. I have been running on over drive lately converting all equipment.
> 
> My only complaint is pretty trivial. Since changing to the quieter but almost as powerful CFMs, I forget that it's running sometimes and forget to check it for dog and cat hair. That thing sucks a lot air into it.


I absolutely love it and have asked myself many many times why I haven't done this sooner!
One of my original ideas was to just keep buying MyBooks and make 'genre volumes'. I even found clear reusable printer film that is like those window decals that peel on and off. The idea was to make some custom labels for all the MyBooks so I could identify them. I had around 8 of them and after just a couple it is pretty much impossible to know what is on each one without plugging them in.

When I expanded my horizons from just playing in my HT room to wanting access to my drives anywhere in the house, well... the idea of a bazillion MyBooks each with their own power adapter, interface and so on became less attractive. 

...YES... Those fans suck a lot of air don't they? What brand/model did you end up going with? 
I have to wipe down the outside of my case every couple of days because of the dust build up. Someone else asked this too, it was about the drives over heating because of how tight they are and lack of airflow. I was thinking the same when I first built this but there is actually a lot of air flow throw the unit and across the drives. One thing I highly recommend is to get some thin air filters and cut them to the size of the drive sleds and insert them behind the sled handles. This is were all the dust and fuzz will collect and if you have a filter it is easy to clean out and all that junk won't get sucked inside the server. 



Jamestrix said:


> After 8 months of running it have you had any drives fail ?
> 
> A9X I had to move from Sydney to the US just so that I can get access to all nice toys the US has to offer.
> Fell in love with some of the home theater builds that where on here in 2005 and have been waiting until I move tot he US to start building some thing nice.


Yep... You must have jinxed me because I just had a 2TB fail. I want to state though that it was not from over heating. I had actually had some problems with this drive when I first got it and had to run through a full reformat in order for it to even be stable. It seemed okay so I put it in the system Once it hit 50% full it started to die. It periodically wouldn't show up on my system. 

It is a Western Digital EADS drive and if you read the reviews others have had problems with them too. It sounds like it could be due to rough handling on the packing/shipping end. Luckily it is under warranty so all I have to do is RMA it and I'll have another one soon. 

This is exactly why I am waiting on the 3TB drives before I start buying them. I bought my 2TB drives when they were still $150 (or more) a piece, so that was a while ago. Now they seem to be more stable.

Also I want to note that the advance format drives are working fine with WHS. I actually expected issues with them over the EADS since the EADS is the old sector format. All in all what can I say? Drives do fail, and when you have this many of them the odds are higher that eventually you will have one go on you.

Here's the thing though... Make sure you have a good backup strategy and then if you lose a drive hope that it's during the warranty period! If you have things backed up nothing will be lost and it's just a matter of inconvience that a drive needs replace. I still have some bays to fill, but once they are all filled I will keep a spare drive on hand for whenever a drive goes. Kinda the same mentality of having a spare bulb for a front projector... just like hard drives, it's not a matter of if the bulb will blow, but when it will blow!

Again... back up anything you don't want to lose! I probably would be crying if I hadn't.



chrapladm said:


> Just wondering how the cooling has been working as far as the drivers staying cool?
> 
> I would like to build the same exact thing and everytime I look at the Norco unit the reviews all talk about the drivers having no extra room at all.
> 
> But that being said I think I will still go ahead with the build.


I don't have one of those utilities that show all the bays and each drive temp. I originally wanted to get one but honestly I got side tracked and after all this time everything is running fine.

I also have an HD docking port on my main PC. They are nice and I can pop any SATA drive in and access it without having to either open my case or bust out one of my empty MyBook cases and play around with that.

What I see is for normal use the drives remain very cool. Even watching a 3 hour movie there is realitively no heat from the drive. However when I try to copy say a TB of data to or from a docked drive, I can hear it spin up to its faster mode and stay that way. That's when I start to feel some heat coming off the drive.

That's not typically how the drives work in WHS though, so they aren't being used for a massive upload or download of data like I described above. WHS spreads things out across many drives so rarely would any one drive be running long enough to get that hot. Then add in the airflow those big 120mm fans are huffing through the server and everything has stayed nice and cool for me


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## wbassett

Again back to the question of if I am happy and if I am still enjoying my Norco...
I plan on building another one soon as well as a 10 bay version for my son!

I want to get a db meter for my next build. I still have lots of the sound proofing material and I'd like to see if it really is making it quieter or not. It does make the inside of the case look pretty cool though! everything is all matte black and the big fans have red LEDs in them so it looks pretty wild in there when the top is off!


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## Jamestrix

Looking forward to hearing about the second build 

You talked about backups, I guess with all these drives they are in some sort of raid setup is this your only backup ? Or how are you backing ? just the windows OS and system and not the whole dvd/blue raid data to some sort off line storage.


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## wbassett

Jamestrix I let WHS do it's thing. It's kind of like a hybrid RAID backup but you can select thing at the folder level.

WHS also has provisions to backup all the PCs on your network too, including itself. I do feel very safe with my movies.


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## Harpmaker

wbassett said:


> Also I want to note that the advance format drives are working fine with WHS. I actually expected issues with them over the EADS since the EADS is the old sector format.


Are you currently running one of the WD EARS drives Bill? If so did you use the drive jumper method so it will work properly with WHS or did you format the drive using Vista/Win7?

I just got a new 2TB WD EARS drive and since I am using XP is used GPARTED to partition and format it. I've found it is faster at formatting than Windows and it knows about the 4K sectors used by AF and automatically aligns the drive for use with XP and WHS.
http://gparted.org/



> I don't have one of those utilities that show all the bays and each drive temp. I originally wanted to get one but honestly I got side tracked and after all this time everything is running fine.


A free utility that may do this, called Speedfan, can be found here.


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## wbassett

I have EADS, EAVS, EARS and a couple of Samsung drives all co-exhisting nicely 

No jumper changes on any of them. Like I said, I had some trouble with this one 2TB drive since I got it. I was hoping the full format fixed it because it was running okay, but as mentioned once it hit 50% it started acting up again. 1 drive out of 16 isn't bad, especially when I have read reviews where people got 3 dead drives out of 4...


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## wbassett

I RMA'd the bad drive and should have a new one in a few days.

Like I said earlier... I work in the IT field and when it comes to servers and hardware it's not an 'if' something fails, it's 'when' will it fail. Normally with my PC's I rarely have a hard drive crash over the life of a PC, but it does occasionally happen. The reason why it doesn't happen more often is because the odds are in our favor when it comes to PCs. When you have one or two drives in a PC, pretty much they either work or don't. Meaning you'll know almost right away when you install them if there are any problems.

When you have 20 drives in one system though, now the odds are starting to increase that there will be a failure simply because hardware does fail and the more you have, the higher the failure percentage will be.

So it's nothing going on with the case or heat or anything like that. I was originally concerned about airflow, but not anymore! Not after seeing all the dust that gets sucked in through the front and into the inside! I now have filters in each drive sled.

All in all I am very pleased with this build and plan on starting another build after the holidays.


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## wbassett

Black Friday brought some new additions to my server... three more 2TB drives courtesy of Target!

They had Western Digital Element external drives on sale for $69 for 2TB drives. That's a great price, but it got even better when I opened them.

I was expecting the regular run of the mill WD Green drives inside just like all the MyBooks that I cracked open were using. First to my joy is the Element cases are *MUCH* easier to open. My big surprise though was once I got the cover off. No green anywhere! Inside these Black Friday bargin basement priced 2TB external drives were WD Caviar Black 2 TB (model WD2001FASS) drives! These go for $179 each barebones and have dual processers and 64MB of cache! If I would have known this I probably would have bought the whole shelf! In that respect it probably was a good thing I didn't know. 

Once I get my RMA drive back I will be at 24TB and still have four empty drive bays. Once I get those populated with 2TB drives I will start replacing the 1TB drives and then the 1.5TB drives.


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## chrapladm

After very slowly trying to buy the parts I would need to build something almost the same as yours Bill I forgot to ask or didn't see if I need anything else to use your type of build as also a storage device for 2 other laptops?

I am not talking about massive amounts of data but maybe around 50gb. I just wanted to be able to have my wifes computer store her pictures and stuff on the media server and let her computer not really use the internal HD.

I have been wanting to build your exact build for a long time but after calculating what I need I think just building your sons future version would be alot more than I need. I know I would slowly start to use all the space with Blu Ray movies but not for a very long time.


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## wbassett

chrapladm said:


> After very slowly trying to buy the parts I would need to build something almost the same as yours Bill I forgot to ask or didn't see if I need anything else to use your type of build as also a storage device for 2 other laptops?
> 
> I am not talking about massive amounts of data but maybe around 50gb. I just wanted to be able to have my wifes computer store her pictures and stuff on the media server and let her computer not really use the internal HD.
> 
> I have been wanting to build your exact build for a long time but after calculating what I need I think just building your sons future version would be alot more than I need. I know I would slowly start to use all the space with Blu Ray movies but not for a very long time.


Yeah sure... just set up a shared folder for that. If you are using WHS you can even have the server backup her laptop too!


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## chrapladm

I will be using WHS. I figured I would just use the same stuff you used. I know abit about computers but I will just trust what others have done because I dont know that much.

Lastly what do you use to download all your movies again?

I dont have anything yet but would like to just be able to put my DVD's(BR or sd) in and they instantly download for future viewing. Being from the USA and now living in OZ my SD movies dont play here. So as soon as I download them they usually become region free.(I hope)

I have had a mac forever but want to go back to a tower and Windows. I loved the Mac but miss the easy option of changing stuff out of a tower case when something goes wrong. And a Mac tower is $$$$. But enough about that.

What did you use for a interface for movie searching?

Its not called interface but I am forgetting what you have for looking at all your movies. I remember I had Plex on my old Mac but only had 2 movies on the computer and I never got around to doing anything with it. Now that my 4 children always watch movies and the youngest 2 are destroying alot of them I want to hurry up and download them so they can still be viewed. I did like how Plex used IMDB and other features. But I am sure by now Windows has something very similar.


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## wbassett

chrapladm said:


> I will be using WHS. I figured I would just use the same stuff you used. I know abit about computers but I will just trust what others have done because I dont know that much.
> 
> Lastly what do you use to download all your movies again?
> 
> Look at the the PS3 Media Server Sticky tutorial. That will help you out with regular DVD content. For BD you will need something like AnyDVD HD.
> 
> I dont have anything yet but would like to just be able to put my DVD's(BR or sd) in and they instantly download for future viewing. Being from the USA and now living in OZ my SD movies dont play here. So as soon as I download them they usually become region free.(I hope)
> 
> Unfortunately there isn't anything 'automatic'. You will need to load your content, but once it is on the server it's done and you can view it from there any time. ANYDVD and Shrink will handle your region problem for you. DVDFab is another good program to look at.
> 
> I have had a mac forever but want to go back to a tower and Windows. I loved the Mac but miss the easy option of changing stuff out of a tower case when something goes wrong. And a Mac tower is $$$$. But enough about that.
> 
> What did you use for a interface for movie searching?
> 
> Its not called interface but I am forgetting what you have for looking at all your movies. I remember I had Plex on my old Mac but only had 2 movies on the computer and I never got around to doing anything with it. Now that my 4 children always watch movies and the youngest 2 are destroying alot of them I want to hurry up and download them so they can still be viewed. I did like how Plex used IMDB and other features. But I am sure by now Windows has something very similar.


Do you mean how do I browse titles?

That is up to the end unit streaming device and whatever type of interface it has and how it connects. I use the PS3 and PlayOn!HD streaming devices. The PlayOn!'s connect just like one PC connecting to another and viewing shared folders. I have things stored by genre, so you select the genre and then each file also has a video thumb nail that plays so you can preview it before you select it. The PS3 runs through it's interface and connects to a media server that has the shares listed.


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## pacAir

Did you mention your file storage method (I read the whole thread over several days but I don't recall any specifics mentioned)?

In other words, when you are ripping BDs (but not transcoding them) are you creating single ISO files of the whole disk or simply "pouring" the BD file structure onto hard drive after "straining" the stream through AnyDVD HD? I do recall a mention that the PlayOn HD players will treat an ISO file as if it was the original disk, menus and all! 

I am in the process of constructing a "temporary" media server using a recently retired PC in a full-size tower case with plenty of fans that should support 4-6 drives if I am careful. I have my OEM copy of WHS at the ready and am waiting for deliver of 2 WD 2TB drives. 

My intention is to ultimately upgrade to a more serious server system not unlike the one you put together. I found this thread most enlightening, informative and relieving (since I can see a lot of my own plans in what you have accomplished with your build).

Great stuff, thanks!


Steve


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## rstevenp

Can you give me any information on what size\type media server rack that I would need for the Norco 4020 case? I am guessing that I will need to purchase rails, but not sure if the depth of the rack needs to be the same size or greater than the case.


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## wbassett

rstevenp said:


> Can you give me any information on what size\type media server rack that I would need for the Norco 4020 case? I am guessing that I will need to purchase rails, but not sure if the depth of the rack needs to be the same size or greater than the case.


Any 19" rack will work. I actually went the route of building my own 19" rack. 

Check Craigs Lists for server racks or consider building your own.


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## wbassett

Well I'm happy to report that my server survived a 250 mile plus move! 

I have to say though that this thing weighs a ton! The server case and motherboard aren't that bad, but 16 drives... Whoa! I removed all the drives and packed them in a 10"x15" box and let's just say my wife could not lift it! After the move I setup my office and slid all the drive trays back in and the server fired right up with no errors or issues at all. Not that I really was expecting any, but with that many drives I really don't like moving things around.

One tip is that I label all my trays (on the inside so it didn't look ugly). That way I knew what slot the drive was originally in. It shouldn't matter, but I changed slots once and the system gave me some strange error messages until I put everything back to normal.


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## mechman

That's good to hear Bill! Settled in yet?


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## wbassett

Still unpacking and I have to make another trip this weekend.

Next will be running cat6 throughout the house down here...


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## MrBobC

Hey, great job on the case! I ordered my foam from foamfactory and will be doing what you have done to my Norco 4220 and 4224. Only thing is, from the pictures I cannot see how you assembled the fan housing. When do you think you might be able to get the instructions out with pictures? I am going to be moving my servers from a homemade rack to an APC rack enclosure in a week or two and would like to do this "remodel" while they are out, as they are SO heavy with 20 HDDs in them.


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## wbassett

I'm still unpacking and as soon as I am done I am going to be building another server. I will take detailed pictures of the fan housing during that build. 

Basically though I made a shroud out of styrofoam and then wrapped that with black electrical tape to hold everything together and give it some rigid support. Then I wrapped that with the sound deadening foam. Sounds all kludgy I know but it works great and is very light weight and easy to cut cable runs through!


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## MrBobC

Thanks for the quick response. That makes sense, the part I was having difficulty understanding is where the posterboard comes in. My understanding is to wrap the 3/4" foam around the 3 fans. Then I would wrap that in black electrical tape, and then wrap over that with the foam from foamfactory? I don't see where the posterboard goes...


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## wbassett

I used the posterboard as a template. Originally I was thinking about using it as the shroud skeleton frame, but the styrofoam ended up being strong enough. Plus it would have ended up too bulky using poster board and styrofoam.

I measured the area and made a template with the posterboard. Then I placed the fans on the template and traced around them and cut out the center. From there I placed the template on my styrofoam sheets and traced an outline and cut it out with a razor knife. Two 1/2 inch styrofoam sheets are the perfect width for the fans. This is where the electrical tape came in. I wrapped the styrofoam with the tape to hold the two pieces together as well as to prevent the styrofoam from breaking apart and making a mess. Once everything is taped and wrapped, it is a flexible yet firm fan housing. I then covered the whole thing with the sound dampinging material and fit the fans in place. They are pressure mounted and are in there very firm. I can report that after a year or more there have been no problems with the fan housing whatsoever.


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## gyrene2083

wbassett

I have to say you have motivated me and taught me so much with this thread.

I have a few questions and I hope you don't mind answering them for me.

I plan on doing the 4220, and this is a silly question I guess, but I want to ask just to be certain before I commit to a purchase. I live in an apartment, and thus have no space for the server in my closet because of the depth. So I was wondering can I put this on it's side, and store it in my closet that I built?

Also, the specs that you have right now were from March 2010. Would you change the mobo now? Or would running the hardware be fine as is?

Lastly, I purchased the WHS2011, it was a steal at 49 bucks I couldn't go wrong with that. I do know they dropped DE from that particular version, but I also read of 3rd party apps, which as you stated earlier, pisses me off cause your going to have to pay for that dag gone add on eventually. I believe the two I have read about are drivebender and stablebit. 

Eventually if these two options don't work I believe you'd have to go with a RAID Array or actually have to look at other options like UnRaid or FlexRaid, none of which I know anything about. Anyway I really hope to hear from you and truly appreciate your project. Please keep it going.


-Semper Fi
gyrene2083


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## wbassett

The specs are still fine however I am not sure they sell that MB anymore... the latest version should be fine as long as it has the same type of card slots.

$49 is a killer price but I still like the old features and file sharing of the older WHS version. It's all a matter of personal preference.


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## JDCaduceus

Hey Wbassett,

I wanted to tell you that I loved your post! I was looking to do a media server project and your post is the most informative yet. I have several questions for you since I have yet to do this but used to build computers and networks while I was in lawschool.

I have over 1000 movies both DVD and Bluray. I love the idea of using this project to rip and store all of them to play at the touch of a button. I have some questions I was hoping you could help me with:

1. What do I use to Rip the Blu Ray/DVDs? Are the ISO files? 
2. I assume my rip simply shows up as a file - is there a program that can read the DVD/Blu Ray metadata (sort of like CDDB for CDs) and recognize the movie then properly place a tag so I know what movie the file is or do I have to individually rename each file after I rip it?
3. I am using a PS3 and I assume I can set up the media server via PS3 interface - how do I do it on my pc? I assume I must attach some monitor and keyboard to make all the changes - once that is done do I simply control my media server via PS3? What does the interface look like? Can I make it look like Apple TV where it shows the image of the movie so I can select it?
4. I am looking at the price of this build I think I can swing it and it would reduce my DVD and Blu Ray space significantly!! - any other suggestions now that you have been running this for a year?

I really appreciate this and would love it if you dont mind helping me through this...

Sincerely
JDCaduceus


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## JDCaduceus

JDCaduceus said:


> Hey Wbassett,
> 
> I wanted to tell you that I loved your post! I was looking to do a media server project and your post is the most informative yet. I have several questions for you since I have yet to do this but used to build computers and networks while I was in lawschool.
> 
> I have over 1000 movies both DVD and Bluray. I love the idea of using this project to rip and store all of them to play at the touch of a button. I have some questions I was hoping you could help me with:
> 
> 1. What do I use to Rip the Blu Ray/DVDs? AnyDVDHDAre the ISO files?
> 2. I assume my rip simply shows up as a file - is there a program that can read the DVD/Blu Ray metadata (sort of like CDDB for CDs) and recognize the movie then properly place a tag so I know what movie the file is or do I have to individually rename each file after I rip it?
> 3. I am using a PS3 and I assume I can set up the media server via PS3 interface - how do I do it on my pc? I assume I must attach some monitor and keyboard to make all the changes - once that is done do I simply control my media server via PS3? What does the interface look like? Can I make it look like Apple TV where it shows the image of the movie so I can select it? Slysoft Clonedrive - can play on PS3?
> 4. I am looking at the price of this build I think I can swing it and it would reduce my DVD and Blu Ray space significantly!! - any other suggestions now that you have been running this for a year?
> 
> I really appreciate this and would love it if you dont mind helping me through this...
> 
> Sincerely
> JDCaduceus


 Some additional questions -
1. If I have PS3 with 1000baseT connection (Giga) can I use the Media Server to directly connect to PS3 for faster transfer? Will I need to output audio at all or since I will burn to ISO files is that necessary to have audio out?

2. What on PS3 do I need to do to set up Media Server (I saw a DLNA setup online is that what I should do?)


thanks


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## wbassett

JDCaduceus said:


> Some additional questions -
> 1. If I have PS3 with 1000baseT connection (Giga) can I use the Media Server to directly connect to PS3 for faster transfer? Will I need to output audio at all or since I will burn to ISO files is that necessary to have audio out?
> 
> I use my PS3 as my media streamer in my HT room. Unfortunately the PS3 doesn't support ISO file playback.
> 
> 2. What on PS3 do I need to do to set up Media Server (I saw a DLNA setup online is that what I should do?)
> 
> Most (including myself) use PS3 Media Server on the PC/Server side and the PS3 will detect it once it is started on the PC. The rest is pretty straight forward.
> 
> thanks


I also use ACRyan's PlayOn!HD. That does support ISO playback, but as mentioned the PS3 doesn't. So that means I have to store things for the least common denominator- meaning in a format that will play on every device. There are Pro's and Con's to everything. ISOs are nice because it is exactly like playing the DVD and makes accessing special features much easier. Individual files have a plus in the sense that most devices can be set to 'auto play', so it will play one file right after the other. This is nice for when you're in the mood to watch a TV series in 'marathon' mode, which I tend to do a lot! I'll fire up Space Above and Beyond, or FireFly... or whatever series I am interested in, and every epispode will play until I stop it! 

As far as ISO's for BDs, that is harder to do and not as many devices support it.


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## JDCaduceus

Bill

Thanks so much for the response. A couple of more questions - if I connect directly to my PS3 RJ45 port for Gigabyte transfer - will that automatically transfer at that rate or do I need to do any changes to either PS3 side or PC/Server side?

Also, I just checked out PS3 media server and found it at:

code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

It says half way down the following:

DVD ISOs images / VIDEO_TS Folder transcoder 

Does this mean that the PS3 can read ISO files now? If that is the case, I can rip ISO files from both BD and DVD material and play on the PS3 media server on my PS3 correct?

Lastly, I checked on PlayonHD! by ACRyan - do you just recommend the Playon HD! Essential and route my ISO files through my PC/Server through PlayonHD to play on PS3? is that a good workaround or simply rip my ISOs to the PlayonHD!?

Thanks
JDCaduceus


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## wbassett

JDCaduceus said:


> Bill
> 
> Thanks so much for the response. A couple of more questions - if I connect directly to my PS3 RJ45 port for Gigabyte transfer - will that automatically transfer at that rate or do I need to do any changes to either PS3 side or PC/Server side?
> 
> Also, I just checked out PS3 media server and found it at:
> 
> code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/
> 
> It says half way down the following:
> 
> DVD ISOs images / VIDEO_TS Folder transcoder
> 
> Does this mean that the PS3 can read ISO files now? If that is the case, I can rip ISO files from both BD and DVD material and play on the PS3 media server on my PS3 correct?
> 
> Thanks
> JDCaduceus


Keep in mind that yes the PS3 can do GB network speeds, but the network itself also needs to support GB. Check your PC/Server and make sure it supports it and then make sure your router does 10/100/1000 and you should be fine.

I haven't tried the above for ISOs. I believe it means that PS3 Media Server is transcoding on the fly. If I recall correctly (and this may have changed since I last was reading about this) it doesn't play the ISO as if the DVD was inserted- it plays the largest file within the ISO, which is usually the main movie. At least that is how it used to work, maybe they worked it out now.


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## JDCaduceus

I will do some research on the PS3 media server - I will share with you my build list and see what you think. Do you mind reviewing to make sure I am purchasing what I need - mind you it has been over 6-8 years since I built a PC but I still remember what to do.

thanks
JDCaduceus


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## JDCaduceus

Bill

Have you thought of simply bypassing the PS3 altogether and and buying a good video card that will output through HDMI straight to your preamp processor HDMI input? You could use the media server as the interface instead of PS3 - that could solve the issue of ISO playback. Your preamp processor would have to handle the HDMI signal from your media server and output to TV. You could use software to build your GUI for how you wanted to play movies. So you TV would essentially be your computer monitor - then you could rip, store, playback movies in ISO format directly from your media server without having to go through PS3. 

Is this possible? I am sure there are video cards that would output 1080p...are there? I am also sure the video cards could handle great audio output through HDMI as well. 

Thoughts?


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## wbassett

If this was a stand alone system feeding one TV then sure, but it feeds up to 4 rooms each with HDTVs.


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## JDCaduceus

Mine would be a stand alone and connected directly to my pre amp processor....thoughts on quality from that standpoint - could then play iso with clone drive correct? What would be a good software interface that I could use to organize, categorize and create thumbnails of box covers so that I could view my media server and choose movies directly from the tv then utiliziing clone drive to play the iso files?

thoughts?
thanks
JDC


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## Rcmuzzy

I am new to this forum and have been looking at this post for a while. I currently have a WHS 2011 server with mymovies and plex installed to transcode and stream my data in my house. The main server is nothing special just a HP quad core from staples with 2gb ram 3 Hds and a blu ray drive. Attached to it via eSATA is a Raid 6 striped array with 4 3tb hard drives that stores and hosts all my media.
I am currently looking at building something similar to your server with the 20x norco case. My question is are you using raid or just jbod if your using raid does the motherboard utilize the sata expansion cards in the raid or is windows handling the jbod? I am looking to use Windows Server 2013 Essentials. I have tried to reach out to ASUS to inquire if the motherboard will allow the sata expansion cards in raid but they were of no help.

Can anyone advise?


Thanks


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## mechman

Bill just used jbod, IIRC.


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## Rcmuzzy

Thank you Steve for the quick reply that is a possibility just to make one gigantic drive I will still look to see if it is possible to utilize RAID, I like the security and do not notice any real lag in reading/streaming to devices since I am using mechanical drives.


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## mechman

I don't believe RAID was an option with the original WHS. The only option we have/had was JBOD. I still run that WHS at home but I've never used it as a media server. I just use it as a backup.


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## pontypool

I just joined to ask a question here : D
OK I wanted to get a dvd player, that supports high res files, like 720 and up. My htc one (or m7) does so quite nice, but goes slow motion when outputting to a big screen (also generates heat)
but I heard that only some blu ray players support "divx plus" or hd divx. 
Which is when I was advised by others to try a media server as it will totally play any kind of file format much more reliably than any blu ray player, also the cost doesn't seem that much different (Which shocked me)
A top end blu ray player capable of divx plus costs around 150 gbp.
as an experienced pc builder my questions are as follows and I didn't see these answered in the pages of this thread I read:

What kind of graphics card would be required for high definition possibly even 3d files? You must surely be looking at something more high end for 3d/div x plus. My pc has a gtx 660 and i think is the first gpu to be able to run 3d. It's not very expensive atm, but it will require a higher end psu and a better cooling system. 
I am trying to compare the cost of a blu ray player that can play everthing with a media server of the same sort.
Capacity isn't that important, it's just for my own personal use and as long as it has over say 100 gig to be able to take basically any kind of file, even a full blu ray movie, I can easily transfer and swap the videos from my pc. 
All I want is something that can play anything, wifi isn't crucial and I want it to save on energy costs and be quieter than my pc.
The main reason for this is that I already have a rather expensive 2000gbp pc that runs up to 650 watts and i want to save wear and tear aswell as cut energy costs while i'm not gaming but just watching videos.

Finally, are you sure your preferred choice of media server software is the best? personally I always found linux infinitely more stable than windows and only use win 7 on my pc due to the fact it's a gaming machine and creates a lot less trouble to play most games.

Thanks in advance guys.


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## NBPk402

pontypool said:


> I just joined to ask a question here : D
> OK I wanted to get a dvd player, that supports high res files, like 720 and up. My htc one (or m7) does so quite nice, but goes slow motion when outputting to a big screen (also generates heat)
> but I heard that only some blu ray players support "divx plus" or hd divx.
> Which is when I was advised by others to try a media server as it will totally play any kind of file format much more reliably than any blu ray player, also the cost doesn't seem that much different (Which shocked me)
> A top end blu ray player capable of divx plus costs around 150 gbp.
> as an experienced pc builder my questions are as follows and I didn't see these answered in the pages of this thread I read:
> 
> What kind of graphics card would be required for high definition possibly even 3d files? You must surely be looking at something more high end for 3d/div x plus. My pc has a gtx 660 and i think is the first gpu to be able to run 3d. It's not very expensive atm, but it will require a higher end psu and a better cooling system.
> I am trying to compare the cost of a blu ray player that can play everthing with a media server of the same sort.
> Capacity isn't that important, it's just for my own personal use and as long as it has over say 100 gig to be able to take basically any kind of file, even a full blu ray movie, I can easily transfer and swap the videos from my pc.
> All I want is something that can play anything, wifi isn't crucial and I want it to save on energy costs and be quieter than my pc.
> The main reason for this is that I already have a rather expensive 2000gbp pc that runs up to 650 watts and i want to save wear and tear aswell as cut energy costs while i'm not gaming but just watching videos.
> 
> Finally, are you sure your preferred choice of media server software is the best? personally I always found linux infinitely more stable than windows and only use win 7 on my pc due to the fact it's a gaming machine and creates a lot less trouble to play most games.
> 
> Thanks in advance guys.


I use a i3NUC for my media player and it streams 1080p and 3d perfectly... The i3NUC uses video on the cpu only. 

Read more: http://www.hometheatershack.com/for...lets-build-media-server-11.html#ixzz2xlKbjaFx


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## packratt

Since it has been 4 years since the original Server was built, if you were building a new system from scratch, would you change anything about the hardware you used (other than parts which have been upgraded by the manufacturer)?


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## wbassett

Not really, like you said, I would just use the current equivalent part from the manufacturer.


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## mechman

wbassett said:


> Not really, like you said, I would just use the current equivalent part from the manufacturer.


Great to see you around Bill!!!


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