Drobo
Out of context: Reply #4
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- Boz0
Here's what I posted somewhere else:
I made this the other day cause I want to make a separate media server and completely ditch HTPC but have that 1 server store full HD content and music and everything and just use extenders (Xbox 360 or PS3) around the house as I have it already set up like that.. but then I realized that I have a full HTPC build set here and I have older very expensive Lian Li case.. so I'll just buy the swappable HDD cages..
But here's for your info:
ASUS M4A78LT-M LE AM3 AMD 780L Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pr…Antec BP550 Plus 550W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pr…2x SNT SNT-SAC2131B 3x3.5" Hard drive in 2x5.25" Bay Hot Swap SAS/SATA Backplane RAID cage (6 HDDs overall capacity)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pr…AMD Athlon II X3 450 Rana 3.2GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Desktop Processor ADX450WFGMBOX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pr…Mushkin Enhanced Essentials 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pr…Whole setup - with no HDDs is $439.93 and you have the expandability up to 9 or even 10 more hard drives.. for total of 13 SATA HDDs not to mention full gigabit ethernet and expandability to eSATA or whatever you really want..
If you have Windows 7 you can just install that.. otherwise there are some free NAS OS available out there but I would advise Windows 7 regardless because you can configure it however you like and you will have Windows Media Center as well and you can even install PS3 Media Server to serve to your PS3 with all the covers and nice stuff.
When you connect drives you connect them as RAID 5 and since we got these swappable cages it's perfect. I think the motherboard supports only 6 SATA drives though.. so later if you want to go over 6 HDDs you might have to buy a cheap 4-port or 6-port SATA controller but those are getting cheaper every day.. I mean in the end though, it's very easily upgradable, which is what's the most important thing for me.
The AMD Triple Core AM3 processor there is actually very nice and can handle quite a bit of beating up.. full HD 1080p is really no issue whatsoever. It can encode and transcode or whatever you need it to do as well..
So this setup ends up doing A LOT more then you actually need.. which is only a good thing.
To be perfectly honest, I could have built this for about $100 cheaper but then it would be just pure NAS, not like Media Server that can process full HD content and run WMC7.