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facesnorth
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2007
- Messages
- 240
Here's the deal. I am fairly computer literate, not up to most of your levels, but certainly proficient. I have worked as a junior system admin at an ISP operating freeBSD years ago but have only used Windows in the last 8 years and forget a lot of that stuff. Basically now I'm an average geek, a bit lazy, and not very motivated tech-wise. My job has majorly cut my hours, so I'm not rolling in dough or anything, so cost is a factor, but I want something quality.
I've been running an nforce4/Opteron 180 based system for about 4 years now (been through several upgrades). I don't overclock or anything like that....tried it and burned through too much hardware so I decided it wasn't for me.
Recently I went through a phase where I ripped my 500+ cd collection to mp3's (high quality lame VBR's), as well as many of my DVD's, etc. I also downloaded a lot of music. I have a hard drive with about 1TB of media on it. I don't backup ever, and I'm worried about losing it.
I've been considering the various options, NAS, RAID 1, 5, 6, 10, etc. And of course many people suggest that RAID is not equal to backing up. So basically I want to know what you would do in my position.
Currently I have the 37" Westy hooked up to my PC, and I also have a 46" Sharp LCD in my living room. I have cat-5e wired there, plugged into a gigabit hub. I have an Onkyo 905 as a receiver, a PS3, a 360, and an OPPO BDP-83 blu ray player, all with ethernet.
I frequently listen to Internet radio on the 905, and I sometimes use the 360 to stream music or videos, but not often. Video, especially HD video in particular does not come out smoothly when I do so.
I do like to look at photos through my 360 as well. I want to be able to show photo slideshows to friends and family from my PC.
I also want to be able to watch DVD's on my HDTV that I have stored on a hard drive. Or Blu Ray's for that matter.
And of course I want to be able to listen to MP3 or FLAC playlists.
I want good performance, but mostly I need help figuring out how to make sure my data is safe. What would be the best method for me to setup some kind of a large storage system that is speedy and will stream HD video smoothly, etc, and then what kind of a backup system should I apply to this to have easy backups where I don't have to run something every day or week, preferably not have to use tape or disc media, etc, and know that if a hard drive or 2 fails, that I will still have my data safe?
Am I looking at a NAS with some kind of RAID setup? What about the backup? Should I use my present motherboard/CPU to control the NAS and get a whole new PC for myself? It's almost time I believe for me to start building a new PC anyway..... Keep in mind this is for a home setup, and I don't want to overkill, but I want a quality solution that will provide what I want. I realize I've painted kind of a broad picture here, so I'm not dead set on any specific solution. To be honest I feel like a fish out of water so whatever advice you can give me and as many steps you can lay out as possible as to what you would do if you were in my situation I would be tremendously grateful.
I've been running an nforce4/Opteron 180 based system for about 4 years now (been through several upgrades). I don't overclock or anything like that....tried it and burned through too much hardware so I decided it wasn't for me.
Recently I went through a phase where I ripped my 500+ cd collection to mp3's (high quality lame VBR's), as well as many of my DVD's, etc. I also downloaded a lot of music. I have a hard drive with about 1TB of media on it. I don't backup ever, and I'm worried about losing it.
I've been considering the various options, NAS, RAID 1, 5, 6, 10, etc. And of course many people suggest that RAID is not equal to backing up. So basically I want to know what you would do in my position.
Currently I have the 37" Westy hooked up to my PC, and I also have a 46" Sharp LCD in my living room. I have cat-5e wired there, plugged into a gigabit hub. I have an Onkyo 905 as a receiver, a PS3, a 360, and an OPPO BDP-83 blu ray player, all with ethernet.
I frequently listen to Internet radio on the 905, and I sometimes use the 360 to stream music or videos, but not often. Video, especially HD video in particular does not come out smoothly when I do so.
I do like to look at photos through my 360 as well. I want to be able to show photo slideshows to friends and family from my PC.
I also want to be able to watch DVD's on my HDTV that I have stored on a hard drive. Or Blu Ray's for that matter.
And of course I want to be able to listen to MP3 or FLAC playlists.
I want good performance, but mostly I need help figuring out how to make sure my data is safe. What would be the best method for me to setup some kind of a large storage system that is speedy and will stream HD video smoothly, etc, and then what kind of a backup system should I apply to this to have easy backups where I don't have to run something every day or week, preferably not have to use tape or disc media, etc, and know that if a hard drive or 2 fails, that I will still have my data safe?
Am I looking at a NAS with some kind of RAID setup? What about the backup? Should I use my present motherboard/CPU to control the NAS and get a whole new PC for myself? It's almost time I believe for me to start building a new PC anyway..... Keep in mind this is for a home setup, and I don't want to overkill, but I want a quality solution that will provide what I want. I realize I've painted kind of a broad picture here, so I'm not dead set on any specific solution. To be honest I feel like a fish out of water so whatever advice you can give me and as many steps you can lay out as possible as to what you would do if you were in my situation I would be tremendously grateful.
Newegg, Fry's, and ZZF all list the 1TB and 500GB versions, although ZZF doesn't have stock of the 1TB.