Best way to store a large media library?

I plan on building an XBMC rig in the near future and just wanted to see how people manage their media.

I was considering using an Acer Aspire revo for playback and storing my music and movies on an external hard drive, but purchasing anything over 2gb doesn't seem cost effective.

So far I've heard of people using networked drives, servers, and other options.

So in your experiences what works best for you? I'd like to be able to store a large library of HD quality movies and TV shows in particular, but I'm not sure of the best means for storage and playback. Would 2gb be enough, or are there more effective and/or efficient ways I should consider?

Mods, I'm sorry in advance if you feel this is better suited in the Hardware discussion area.

2GB isn't going to do much for you....
On the other hand, 2TB would be a good start. ;-)

Personally, I went with the NAS option. My Thecus N4100Pro is a four bay BYOD and ir cost about $400. Once I added 4 1TB drives in a Raid5 array ($100 a pop), I had 3TB of redundant storage for $800.
Have a look at www.smallnetbuilder.com if you want to learn more about NAS options. They have a ton of info.

Another good option is FreeNas, if you are of a mind to build a home brew solution.

unRAID is a good option for media if you don't mind building something yourself. Similar to RAID 5 but without the equal-sized disk requirement, and it has better recovery if 2 disks die at once (all disks other than parity are readable outside the array). Another benefit is you only ever read from the data drives - so only one data drive needs to be spun up at a time, and it's just as fast as a normal non-RAID drive in terms of read speed.

Cheers,
Jonathan

My solution for over 6 TB of DVD and CD content was the Acer EasyStore H340 running Windows Home Server. I picked it up for $300 (included a 1 TB HD), and added three 2TB HDs.

It's been solid for the past three months; have it networked to my Zotac Ion HTPC with no issues.

jmarshall Wrote:unRAID is a good option for media if you don't mind building something yourself. Similar to RAID 5 but without the equal-sized disk requirement, and it has better recovery if 2 disks die at once (all disks other than parity are readable outside the array). Another benefit is you only ever read from the data drives - so only one data drive needs to be spun up at a time, and it's just as fast as a normal non-RAID drive in terms of read speed.

Cheers,
Jonathan

unRaid is good. I was going to go with that, but it has 1 major disadvantage; it needs a dedicated machine.

I found FlexRAID. Same premise as unRaid, works in the same way, except that it sits on top of whatever OS you're running, I have it running on my torrenting, blu-ray ripping machine.

Another difference is that it doesn't do real time parity sync; it does it on a schedule or manually. For me, this is a feature, because it means I can en external drive for the parity, leaving my 8 sata ports free for data storage.

Agreed, it definitely pays to have a dedicated box if you want to use unRAID. It is possible, but fiddly, to install unRAID on an existing slackware setup though. Alternatively, it's pretty easy to get torrent/nzb or whatever running on an unRAID box, but again, it's definitely something for those who want to set it up themselves - if you want an out of the box system, then something like windows home server (which is also an unraid type system) or some other type of pre-built NAS might be more appropriate.

Cheers,
Jonathan

jpc-s4 Wrote:My solution for over 6 TB of DVD and CD content was the Acer EasyStore H340 running Windows Home Server. I picked it up for $300 (included a 1 TB HD), and added three 2TB HDs.

It's been solid for the past three months; have it networked to my Zotac Ion HTPC with no issues.

This is a great option, very cost effective compared to a dedicated noisy machine. Looks good as well.

jpc-s4 Wrote:My solution for over 6 TB of DVD and CD content was the Acer EasyStore H340 running Windows Home Server. I picked it up for $300 (included a 1 TB HD), and added three 2TB HDs.

It's been solid for the past three months; have it networked to my Zotac Ion HTPC with no issues.

i had an h340 for about a year, i just sold mine. it was an awesome little box but i just needed something with a little more cpu power as i have lots of other stuff running on my nas., i was also running out of storage space, i had all four bays full, and a 4 bay eSATA enclosure filled as well.

the H340 is a great machine for storing media.

$100 Atom board + old PC tower. Add disks as you go.

I have a readynas nv+ and now a pro business that I am re-consolidating my library around.