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facesnorth
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2007
- Messages
- 240
Not sure which subforum is best to post this in since it addresses mutliple issues, but this seems like as good as any.
We cancelled satellite TV a year ago and I have a 7 yr old Dell Inspiron 531 I've been using to stream my parents Xfinity on demand and Netflix for TV. Quality is a bit pixelated sometimes, even with 15MB down cable Internet. Not sure if the hardware is playing a part in that. In any event, I'm looking to replace this with something that I can use mostly to stream these video services, as well as play pandora, hopefully without pixellation. Secondarily, we like to play games sometimes but nothing too graphics intensive, just stuff like Civ IV and V.
Now here is why this is in this subforum. For 2 years I have been keeping my family photos, music, and any ripped movies that I have on a 3TB Seagate GoFlex external hard drive connected to this PC. I've always intended to create a better backup solution, I just kept putting it off. Now the last time I booted up this PC, Windows (Vista) said there were errors on the external HD and it needed to perform some sort of scan on it, I believe it was chkdsk. It took a long time, and after it was finished my music files were still there, but my photos, personal documents, and the backed up hard drive of every PC I've ever owned was no longer there. The folders just didn't exist anymore. I immediately tried installing some free data recovery software on the Vista PC and running it, even performing a deep scan, and it only recovered a few files, not much. First of all, is there anything else I can do to recover this data?
But second of all, I am looking to create some kind of storage solution that is fast enough to serve stored HD videos and music over ethernet without any lag, and has a reasonable amount of redundancy that it would at least be unlikely that I should lose any data short of a house fire. I had been thinking WHS until they cancelled Drive Extender, and then the whole product. I'd consider Windows Server, but I'm not sure I share Microsoft's vision for this product. I'd always respected ZFS from reading about it here, although the one thing that scares me a bit is the inability to grow the size of an array. However, it seems reasonable to just add a new 6 drive array when it comes time to increase. So when I heard that FreeNAS had ZFS built in now, I thought this might be the way to go.
Then fInally, I'm also trying to build a machine to host PBX in a Flash, just for my family's personal use. So my question is, how many machines realistically should I expect to build for these various purposes? Should I be just building one big machine and running all of these systems on it virtually (PBX in a Flash, FreeNAS/ZFS, and a media server slash client slash game box combo)? I'm looking for suggestions on the most cost effective way to meet my goals without making sacrifices on the way it should be done. Basically, I don't mind spending some money, just don't want to waste any money when it could have been done in a more efficient way.
I have 4 brand new Samsung EcoGreen F2 2TB HD's that are 4 years old and I've never used them. I bought them intending to make a backup solution, and ran into money issues and never got around to doing anything with the drives. Can I utilize these drives in this system? Obviously the age will reduce their longevity, but they've never been powered up. I know a 6 drive array is ideal with raidz2, would 2 larger HD's be wasted, should I just buy 2 more 2TB drives for this? I feel stupid enough having bought these and not used them for 4 years, and having lost data as a result. I'd at least like to use them now if possible. But if it's just a bad idea to use drives this old, even unused then just let me know.
We cancelled satellite TV a year ago and I have a 7 yr old Dell Inspiron 531 I've been using to stream my parents Xfinity on demand and Netflix for TV. Quality is a bit pixelated sometimes, even with 15MB down cable Internet. Not sure if the hardware is playing a part in that. In any event, I'm looking to replace this with something that I can use mostly to stream these video services, as well as play pandora, hopefully without pixellation. Secondarily, we like to play games sometimes but nothing too graphics intensive, just stuff like Civ IV and V.
Now here is why this is in this subforum. For 2 years I have been keeping my family photos, music, and any ripped movies that I have on a 3TB Seagate GoFlex external hard drive connected to this PC. I've always intended to create a better backup solution, I just kept putting it off. Now the last time I booted up this PC, Windows (Vista) said there were errors on the external HD and it needed to perform some sort of scan on it, I believe it was chkdsk. It took a long time, and after it was finished my music files were still there, but my photos, personal documents, and the backed up hard drive of every PC I've ever owned was no longer there. The folders just didn't exist anymore. I immediately tried installing some free data recovery software on the Vista PC and running it, even performing a deep scan, and it only recovered a few files, not much. First of all, is there anything else I can do to recover this data?
But second of all, I am looking to create some kind of storage solution that is fast enough to serve stored HD videos and music over ethernet without any lag, and has a reasonable amount of redundancy that it would at least be unlikely that I should lose any data short of a house fire. I had been thinking WHS until they cancelled Drive Extender, and then the whole product. I'd consider Windows Server, but I'm not sure I share Microsoft's vision for this product. I'd always respected ZFS from reading about it here, although the one thing that scares me a bit is the inability to grow the size of an array. However, it seems reasonable to just add a new 6 drive array when it comes time to increase. So when I heard that FreeNAS had ZFS built in now, I thought this might be the way to go.
Then fInally, I'm also trying to build a machine to host PBX in a Flash, just for my family's personal use. So my question is, how many machines realistically should I expect to build for these various purposes? Should I be just building one big machine and running all of these systems on it virtually (PBX in a Flash, FreeNAS/ZFS, and a media server slash client slash game box combo)? I'm looking for suggestions on the most cost effective way to meet my goals without making sacrifices on the way it should be done. Basically, I don't mind spending some money, just don't want to waste any money when it could have been done in a more efficient way.
I have 4 brand new Samsung EcoGreen F2 2TB HD's that are 4 years old and I've never used them. I bought them intending to make a backup solution, and ran into money issues and never got around to doing anything with the drives. Can I utilize these drives in this system? Obviously the age will reduce their longevity, but they've never been powered up. I know a 6 drive array is ideal with raidz2, would 2 larger HD's be wasted, should I just buy 2 more 2TB drives for this? I feel stupid enough having bought these and not used them for 4 years, and having lost data as a result. I'd at least like to use them now if possible. But if it's just a bad idea to use drives this old, even unused then just let me know.
