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-- Need Help setting Up Bank of Hard Drives in Multiple Towers (http://www.vcdhq.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=79005)

Need Help setting Up Bank of Hard Drives in Multiple Towers

I Download near 250Gigabytes Per Week worth of Anything & Everything. Tons of DVD Movies, DIVX Television Series & Movies and Lots of Music & Karaoke Files, just to name a few.

Up untill now I have Archived everything onto DVD Disc, but due to the Cost Involved for 100 Premium Quality TayoYuden "WaterShield" Glossy InkJet "HUB" Printable DVD-R Discs ***(( At $0.60 per Disc I have determined that the cost would not be too much more for a 750gb SATA-II HD which will hold the same number of DVD Movies as 175 DVD-R Discs which I could hopefully arrainge around 8 per Tower and Tie Several Towers together so that all HD's would be accessable across a Single Network to be Streamed Live to my Television through my XBOX ** XBMC ** MEDIA CENTER ))*** which seems to work better and is compatible with more audio and video formats than any media player or media center software I have EVER Seen. Heck the XBMC MEDIA CENTER will even play a DVD Movie that is Double Archived ((1 ISO Image Movie File Archived into 92 50mb RAR Files and those 92 RAR Files Zipped into 3 Zip Files @ 1.8gb/1.8gb/.8gb in size WITHOUT HAVING TO EXTRACT ANY FILES AT ALL)) It will click right through the First Zip File and Through the First of the RAR Files to allow you to mount the ISO Image file and immed start playing the Movie. THAT IS ONE OF THE MOST INCREDIBLE THINGS I HAVE SEEN IN A LONG TIME IN REGARDS TO MEDIA PLAYERS CAPABILITIES OR FORMAT COMPATABILITY... Just Awesome...

And also Largely Due to the Tremendous Time and Effort Involved to actually Archive everything onto Disc / Search for and obtain DVD Label Scans for each individual title / Print each Disc with it's appropriate Label and arrainge in either paper sleeves or CD/DVD Folders. I really think that it would be so incredible to be able to start Archiving everything to HD rather than DVD-R, but also eventually Rip my entire collection of near 5000 DVD Movie Titles back to HD's from Disc to connect to the Network... It would also make it much easier if I wanted to Duplicate a large number of DVD Movies with little effort I could just Clone the HD's and stick in another system, for instance, at my Cabin. To have access to every single DVD Movie title in my collection at every one of my residences as well as share with family members or friends who wanted to set up the same type of ""Networked Hard Drive Bank consisting of multiple Hard Drives in 2, 3 or even more Towers..."" It would be so much easier to Categorize and or even Custom Search all your titles by Alpha/Genre/Actor... Not to mention that I am a ThirdShare Owner in a Nursing Home in Utah (I currently Live in Mesa, Az but my dad in Utah manages the Nursing home for us and I eventually plan to move back with my Son **I am a Single Father** sometime over the next year before my son "Tanner" Starts KinderGarten Next Fall) It would be incredible to be able to set up Networked MediaPlayers in each room of the Nursing Home and tie everything into a large Network with a couple dozen 750gb SATA-II HD's between 3 towers with 8 HD's per Tower and holding just over Four Thousand Movies people could choose from to que up and play any one at a moments notice...

If you have any knowledge or knowhow as to the best way to do what I am speaking of please PLEASE feel free to give me some advice as to what the best route to Set up a large BANK of HD's in multiple towers to be accessed through a network. Would it be Necessary for ea tower to have seperate MOBO w/Processor & RAM ??? I know that this would probably be the easiest way to do it if I just built multiple full blown Computers each capable of stand alone use and each with either a MotherBoard that will allow 8 SATA-II Connections or atleast 4 SATA-II Connections and an installed PCI Card with 4 more SATA-II Connections... Is this going to be the only way possible to do it? Or possibly the BEST way to do it??? Or is there such thing as some kind of PC Interface Card that installed in each Tower and would be simply for BANKING Hard Drives together and Providing a Data Throughput to connect to the other Towers and eventually to the Main CPU that could possibly access ALL HD's in all towers as if they were connected to that ""ONE"" PC ??? Even though ea Tower would definately require it's own PowerSupply and Cooling, Would this even be possible??? Is there something out there that would facilitate what I am trying to do at a lower cost than having to build an entirely New Computer System from the Ground Up for ea set of 7 or 8 HD's (Also is my idea of putting 8 HD's in ea Tower FEASEABLE or Out of Reach Realisticly??? Please any info or advice is greatly appreciated...

That was a lot of words to ask about drives. Damn Son, gots to get that under control.


You can put 8 drives into a machine without issue. I have an ftp server in a rack across town with 12 drives in it, all SATAII on controller cards.

Heat is an issue and most cases with the capability for 5+ drives do not have the cooling or heat dissipation required for that scenario. Just because you can, don't mean its a good thing. Then there is the question of to RAID or not to RAID and if you RAID, what RAID level do you use.

If you aren't building a machine specifically for this task, with proper cooling and heat dissipation for the ENTIRE system, then I would forget it and consider removables with eSATA capabiltiy.

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Get yourself a Lian-Li v2100+ server case and some Lian-Li ex34 modules. Upgrade all fans to ones with a higher CFM. This setup allows 21 hdds with excellent cooling. You could try some other hdd modules and maybe get up to 24 hdds at a push. You'll need a decent psu with multiple 12v rails else there won't be enough for the initial spike when you power up. As its just for streaming get yourself an average Intel core 2 CPU and GB of memory (though at this time ram is so cheap get as much and the motherboard you choose can handle). When choosing the motherboard try to get one that doesn't use the silicon image chip set for extra SATA ports. The JMicron chip set seems to be fine along with Intel's own. You'll obviously need at least 1 more adapter card for the SATA drives so take at look at what Adaptec/3ware/Highpoint have to offer. Ensure these cards are PCI-E. Most motherboards come with a gbit NIC so that bit is taken care of. Your only limitation on this project is your budget for doing this.

Have fun!

Why not buy a NAS,http://www.infrant.com/products/pro...adyNAS%20NVPlus ,this ones hot swappable,also you can buy 500gig drives for 100$ each.

I'd see a doctor, a terrabyte of data a month is probably going into 'overkill'. I've cut down on what I grab/keep because at the end of the day most of the shit I grab (and I would grab 'complete sets' of things absolutely randomly just to 'have') was just taking up space and eventually got binned in moments of sanity. You'll have to retire aged 17 in order to actually watch/listen to everything you grab

Something to look into is this Silverstone case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16817256018 not cheap, but holds 5 SATA drives and connects via ESATA to your main box.

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quote:

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Originally posted by pHo
I'd see a doctor.

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not sure if you guys have a "big lots" where you are, but they have 50 disc spindles for $15.

i think these guys had it right when they said to be picky when choosing what to dl. i don't watch half the crap i get, but i do still get about 3-4 gigs a day.

raid is a good idea. prolly wanna raid5 that kind of setup to provide ease of use (1 drive listed in the OS) and recovery capabilities.

seriously tho, see a doctor.

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just pretend i said something smart and funny...

I achieved my own personal record the other day... ~130GB in 24 hours \o/ Typically it's about 5GB a day though - rising and falling depending on the number of Wii releases.

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