Need help with my xbmc/server setup

Hi all i need a little help with my home setup. Atm i have an itx htpc with an amd fusion e-350 inside a foxconn a3500 box,4gb ram,60 gb agility 3 ssd and a Hama MCE remote.

I'm using xbmc with windows 7 64 bit and i'm quite pleased of the result

I'm out of space now so i ordered a new pc with the initial intent of setting up an unraid server. It's a fractal r3 case, pentium g620, 4 gb ram and 4 2tb disks


In 3 days i will receive my stuff but i'm now wondering : why not just use xbmc + NAS in the same pc ? Both are in the same room!

I'm thinking about these possible solutions :

1- windows+ xbmc + flexraid

2- ubuntu + xbmc + flexraid


Will xbmc be better quality wise than my fusion ?

Will this monster be' able to sleep and wake up from sleep without problems of raid or disks ?


I really only want parity protection and a server with a lot of space for my movies that i can switch on to view a movie once a day


Is the separate solution still the best solution in your opinion ?


Edit : I'm reading that flexraid with ubuntu has a lot of problems (like license and write performance) so i think that option is out..maybe ubuntu + xbmc + snapraid? Any experience to share?

Separate is always best if you have the space (separate room/basement), LAN network wiring, and the $$$.

Have you considered unRaid. Even if you try the free 3-Disk version,..it may give you a good idea if that's the solution to use.

I have the space in the same room and i'm surely considering unraid as my first option (as i wrote all began with the idea of an unraid server )
I'm just thinking that maybe a sandy bridge pentium g620 will have a lot more power than my fusion maybe resulting in a quality improvement using software decoding instead of amd acceleration... Is this true ?

What about WHS2011 and FlexRaid? Cheaper than a copy of Win7.

That's what I use and I am extremely happy with it for HTPC.

Do you mean as a separate file server or whs 2011 + xbmc + flexraid ?
As a separate file server i have my doubts : a complete os to care about (that i do not want),a parity solution not adopted by a lot of people and without the history of unraid etc etc

Another thing of course is to use xbmc on it too...but i read that flrxraid resume from a complete sleep with a bsod a lot,as written in the wiki...so not a viable solution for me i think

unRAID is great..... you can make your build on the cheap.
You can start with the 3 disk free version.

http://lime-technology.com

I will try unraid for sure.I think i will go for separate xbmc player and fileserver

(2012-07-05 19:02)zirconicus Wrote:  Do you mean as a separate file server or whs 2011 + xbmc + flexraid ?
As a separate file server i have my doubts : a complete os to care about (that i do not want),a parity solution not adopted by a lot of people and without the history of unraid etc etc

Another thing of course is to use xbmc on it too...but i read that flrxraid resume from a complete sleep with a bsod a lot,as written in the wiki...so not a viable solution for me i think

Interesting concerns. Let me just say that both UnRaid and FlexRaid are excellent for HTPC. I prefer FlexRaid over UnRaid.

I, and many others, have used FlexRaid without any issue for many months now. FlexRaid is 4 years old so its not exactly a newcomer. Also, FlexRaid supports up to 3 hard drive failures compared to UnRaid's 1. I have no experience on using XBMC on WHS but obviously you could use FlexRaid on Win7. FlexRaid also supports starting with a full or partially full disk which is a potentially huge advantage. FlexRaid also is the only all in one solution if you want software raid and pooling --- both of which I think are essential for HTPC.

As for sleep I don't allow my server to sleep as it is constantly at work (client backups, downloads, etc). FlexRaid allows you to "spin down" any and all drives that aren't in use so my server typically runs under 50 watts.