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[nwboater]

Our Windows Home Server system (Ver 1) has gone flaky on us and needs a reinstall. The problems were most likely caused by adding and deleting data from shares in an improper manner.

About the same time I have been trying to get TV working in MC on the Server. This has been unsuccessful. We use an HDPVR and a USBUIRT for blasting. The latter is unsupported by MC and they apparently have had other difficulties with WHS so we are at a dead end. (Long thread in the TV section of Forum.) I'm certain that the WHS hard drive issues I'm having are unrelated to the TV install issues.

In reading other threads it seems that some have had good success with TV on a server, Matt being one of them. I'm wondering what Operating System others are using on their Server, especially those that have TV running?

The gist of this is that I would consider installing a Server OS other than WHS if I thought I could get TV working successfully.

Would very much appreciate your feedback on this.

Thanks,
Rod

[JimH]

Win7 Home Premium would be fine.  64 bit if your processor is 64 bit.

[AndyCircuit]

2008 R2 here, but this is a very special setup not recommended for home use. Mostly because it isn't meant for multimedia and thus lacking hardware drivers.
If you buy hardware that comes without 64 Bit drivers because those are in Win7 already you are in for a surprise. Got an IR device like the Media Center Remote, only by HP, and wasn't able to find a driver yet, for example.
Like Jim said Win7 /64 is fine. You don't need server features for multimedia distribution

[nwboater]

Jim And Andy,

Thanks very much for your responses. Using Win7 as a server has a lot of merits I believe. Andy driver software you are mentioning is I believe part of the reason we couldn't get MC TV going on our WHS.

Guess I should explain a bit about our present system to see what might be a good approach for changing it. At present our WHS system does the following:

1.Stores audio, video and photos. These are served to 3 Clients one of which is our HTPC. Sage TV with its HDPVR tuner is on the Server and we are able to look at the aforementioned multimedia as well as  Sage TV on the HTPC in the HT Room and a SageTV extender in the living room.

2. My wife has about 30,000 photos on the server that she manages with Photoshop Elements on her Client.

3. Automatic backup of the Clients.

4. Automatic backup of the shares where desired.

5. The ability to add a new hard drive to the server without making any software changes. WHS adds the drive to the pool and I don't need to tell Sage, JRiver, or Photoshop Elements which drive any of the files are on. Lots of convenience there.

6. Probably many other features I'm not thinking about now.

1 & 2 could probably done easily with a Win7 Server. 3 & 4 could be done with some backup software. I think 5 gets more complicated. Perhaps I need some kind of NAS? 6 might need more thought.

One approach I'm thinking of taking is to use our existing Win7 fairly fast quad core HTPC as the new Win7 Server. It's 32 bits, but hopefully will be okay for what I'm doing. It would eliminate the need for our existing dual core Server. I could put Win7 on the old server and give it to my wife who needs a replacement for her old XP machine.

Only downside is the always on quad core (new server) would consume more power than our existing dual core server. The upside is we will have greatly minimized the overall system complexity and perhaps be able to use TV on the new server since it will be Win7 and doesn't need to serve TV to any other computers. We can live without the Sage TV extender in the living room.

Sound workable?

Thanks for any ideas.

Rod

[AndyCircuit]

1 & 2 could probably done easily with a Win7 Server. 3 & 4 could be done with some backup software. I think 5 gets more complicated. Perhaps I need some kind of NAS? 6 might need more thought.


Rod

Again, you don't need a "server", or better: a server OS. Just use Win7 and share folders/map drives. The advantage over a server OS is that you can use your "server" for multimedia purposes more easily. My Server is HTPC as well, but as I wrote my system is special. I use a limited account on my 2008 R2 for this because the machine runs 24/7 anyway and is one story below in the basement (= total silent, let it roar downstairs), making connections to TV and stereo etc easy. Only doable because there are no real security issues with this machine, though. Saves me a dedicated HTPC that looks good, is powerful but silent etc.

As for power consumption, until recently mine was a quad core AMD Phenom II 965 (now six core). I checked consumption for a week ( 6 drives - spin down after 60mins, 9500gt passive)..200W in average. Calculated electicity costs per anno: €220 (bet our prices are way higher than yours).
Don't think the numbers of cores really make a difference because the CPU powers down cores when idle

[nwboater]

Again, you don't need a "server", or better: a server OS. Just use Win7 and share folders/map drives.

Yes, that's what I had in mind - guess I shouldn't have called it a Win7 'Server'. So it sounds like you think my approach of eliminating the WHS computer completely and using the quad core WI7 HTPC to 'share' files is good? Also wont MC be set up as a 'Server' in its options so that I can share a common library?

As I alluded to in my previous post I think the biggest hassle is the mapping of drives/Folders on the clients, especially when I add additional drives.

Thanks again for all your helpful input Andy.

Anybody else care to comment on how they do this?

Thanks,
Rod

[AndyCircuit]

As I alluded to in my previous post I think the biggest hassle is the mapping of drives/Folders on the clients, especially when I add additional drives.

Tricky
You could use RAID 5 to begin with which would show up as one drive (= one share if you want) but:
You can't add additional drives  without using some pricey hardware RAID controller and some deeper knowledge of the subject if you want to do this without wiping and rebuilding the existing RAID
You can swap old small drives with new big one though easily (still a risk, better have a backup)
Or no RAID and you just create another share for the new drive

[nwboater]

Andy,

Thanks for all your good explanations.

Don't think I want to get into all the RAID complications, expenses and learning curve. The only difficulty I see with the simple Win7 Share approach is that as I add drives the various types of media will get distributed over several hard drives. When one looks at files with Windows Explorer it would appear very disorganized. I know that to a program like MC it doesn't matter where things are, or how disorganized they are. It's just that I like to see things in some kind of logical order and to be able to find them fairly easily.

However, there is a lot of advantage to KISS and I would certainly be gaining that in this whole approach.

Rod

[glynor]

Drobo = easy.

They're not really high performance, but that doesn't much matter for media storage (particularly if you are going to mainly access it served over the network).  If you want the convenience of a RAID5 setup in an external enclosure, but don't want to deal with the hassle of assembling one yourself, a Drobo can be an awesome little piece of kit.  About the only thing I'd do is if you are going to use MC or some other software to record TV via a tuner card or capture device, I'd record directly onto a fast internal disk, and then move things over to the Drobo later for long-term storage.  For live video capture, I've had some issues recording directly onto our Drobos (though I was trying to capture very high bitrates, 100mbps and higher, so YMMV).

The nicest thing about them is the fault tolerance and the easy capacity upgrade path.  Basically, you just pull out a drive and put a new bigger one in.  It'll automatically rebuild the volume (online, so you can still access your files while it completes, just lower performance while it runs), and then poof... More storage space (you do need to tell Windows to expand the volume in the Disk Management utility, but you can do this without reformatting with Vista and later versions of Windows).  Since they have hot swap drive drawers, you literally never need to even turn the thing off.  We upgrade ours all the time.

By the way... You don't need the Drobo that can serve itself directly over the network.  Just get a regular one, and then share the drive via Windows on the computer it's attached to.  The network-capable Drobos are much more expensive, and I've seen some flakiness with the older ones (the sharing is basically SAMBA underneath, and SAMBA can be a bit fiddly in certain cases).  The newer ones might be better, but frankly... For the price, if you're going to run a Win7 "server" next to it anyway, just do it that way.

While I don't use one at home (I have a self-built high-performance RAID5 volume in an external enclosure), we have a number of them at the office and they're great.  You can, of course, build something similar (probably "better" in many ways) yourself using Addonics parts and something like FreeNAS, then you're getting into all the complexity you want to avoid.

[AndyCircuit]

Before I go to bed some final thoughts on RAID:
Never forget that you swap the risk of drive failure with the risk of controller failure. If your RAID is destroyed for whatever reason all is gone. (been there, done that)
Never forget that the usual file rescue tools don't work on RAID... much less with EXT3 on a NAS
Whatever you do in the end, combine it with a reliable backup strategy.

[gtgray]

I have Windows Home Server 2011 running. Right now it is just doing client backups. The biggest drawback to WHS2011 is the included Server Backup. It is limited to 2 TB for both the source and the destination. It does not even accept a 2 TB partition on a larger physical drive. You can buy something like Acronis 2012 which supports large drives, it will run on WHS 2011 but it is $80 or so and yet another interface learn and manage. Oh and I hate the WHS2011 Dashboard. I have never run WHS 1 but my brother has it, and for the most part it is completely simple. I have considered moving backward to WHS ver 1. I have a technet ISO so it is still in the back of my mind.

I have been futzing with 2011 awhile. You have to have a pretty light duty retention policy or with half a dozen clients you will have space problems right away. I have been running it a couple of months and now am debating whether to hang additional storage off it for media or just take the Win 7 PC that hosts my Ceton and make it the media server. That box is on 24x7 anyway. Hard to justify the WHS 2011 just for client backups. It does a nice quick job of restoring a client though. I must give it credit for that.

[glynor]

Never forget that you swap the risk of drive failure with the risk of controller failure. If your RAID is destroyed for whatever reason all is gone. (been there, done that)

While this is a definite risk, many modern RAID controller cards do allow you to migrate an existing RAID volume over to a new device (so long as it is a "similar" device, typically a newer model from the same manufacturer).  Mine does.  But, there is an easy solution to that as well... Buy two.

I buy cheaper-but-not-crappy RAID cards.  My current one is a HighPoint RocketRAID 2680 which I got on a ridiculously awesome Newegg sale for $49.99 (after a $50 rebate, which I finally got 2 months later), so I bought two.  I set up the RAID volume using the first one, and tested it for a bit, then I pulled it out and swapped in the other one, which is what I'm running now, and it is working great.  The backup is packed away nicely for a rainy day that hopefully never comes.

Whatever you do in the end, combine it with a reliable backup strategy.

Completely agree here though.

There's really no excuse not to anymore when you can get a nice 3TB drive for $130 and one of those handy-dandy drive docks.  And it even gives you the side benefit of being able to carry all of your media around with you much more conveniently.  Just get an external case, and when you need to, swap the 3TB drive into the case and throw it in a bag.

[AndyCircuit]

While this is a definite risk, many modern RAID controller cards do allow you to migrate an existing RAID volume over to a new device (so long as it is a "similar" device, typically a newer model from the same manufacturer).  Mine does.  But, there is an easy solution to that as well... Buy two.

I buy cheaper-but-not-crappy RAID cards.  My current one is a HighPoint RocketRAID 2680 which I got on a ridiculously awesome Newegg sale for $49.99 (after a $50 rebate, which I finally got 2 months later), so I bought two.  I set up the RAID volume using the first one, and tested it for a bit, then I pulled it out and swapped in the other one, which is what I'm running now, and it is working great.  The backup is packed away nicely for a rainy day that hopefully never comes

And what do you do if the controller, like in my case, silently "stutters" which meant that during a copy of all files to a bigger drive some blocks simply weren't written without error message of any kind, leaving me with 400 defective flac files which I noticed weeks later, when those defective files were written to backup already, of course?
Luckily there is some software (audiotester) to help finding those files with CRC Errors, else I wouldn't know today if I fixed all mess or not.
It's not that I'm new to computers, that why I learned the hard way over the years that in some cases enterprise grade is the better way to go.
1.30am...gotta go

[nwboater]

WOW!!! Thanks very much Andy, Glynor and gtgray for all the discussion. I was kind of hoping this thread would morph into that.

The drobo looks really cool. I can see where it would be a good answer here, but unfortunately budget doesn't allow for more such goodies at this point. Darn! Maybe down the road. And Glynor, thanks for the link to the 3 tb drive. But what is the "handy dandy drive dock" that you refer to?

I know I don't want to upgrade to WHS 2011.

Do any of you see any problems with my above mentioned strategy of just using the  existing quad core HTPC for the media storage. It's presently in a fairly small Silverstone case. I could move the HTPC MOBO to the larger nicer Antec 300 case and just eliminate the whole WHS server PC. Put its MOBO in the smaller case, add Win7 and give it to my wife as a PC upgrade over her old XP machine. No cost so far except for Win7 for my wife.

A good backup policy will certainly become necessary. I presently have several large USB drives that can be used to back up the HTPC that will now have all media files, and our 2 office PCs.

I know I'll miss some of the conveniences of WHS, but certainly not some of the grief that has developed with it. Perhaps later in the future I can get a drobo, or similar type system.

Thanks again for everybody's ideas here.

Rod

[jmone]

My setup is as follows:
"Main PC" - This is a i7-920 box with 5 x 2TB HDD that contain all the media.  I now use "Drive Bender" to present them as one "Drive" and this is then shared on the NW under a single UNC Share that the clients all use.  I use the box as it has lots of grunt and hence good for any on the fly transcoding tasks

"WHS 2011" - This is a Tranquil Headless PC with 5 x 2TB HDD that contain a backup of all PC's + I use SyncToy to periodically sync all my Media from the Main PC to the WHS box.  I also use Drive Bender on this box to present the 2TB drives as one.  The benefit of this is I have a complete backup of every PC + all media in one small box that can be used for DR and even taken off site when we are away (or I even considered putting this WHS box in a fire resistant safe).

[nwboater]

jmone - Thanks for explaining your system which is quite interesting.

Apparently Drive Bender has been in Beta and you must be one of their testers. It's going to be released this Friday at a price I can't determine. They advertize it as being used with WHS, but you are also using it on your "Main PC", Win7 I assume. I really like that approach as it presents the media to the network as 1 drive. Any difficulties using it on a non WHS OS?

Also why do you use SyncToy to sync your media to the WHS as opposed to letting WHS do the media backup?

Rod

[glynor]

And what do you do if the controller, like in my case, silently "stutters" which meant that during a copy of all files to a bigger drive some blocks simply weren't written without error message of any kind, leaving me with 400 defective flac files which I noticed weeks later, when those defective files were written to backup already, of course?
Luckily there is some software (audiotester) to help finding those files with CRC Errors, else I wouldn't know today if I fixed all mess or not.
It's not that I'm new to computers, that why I learned the hard way over the years that in some cases enterprise grade is the better way to go.

I've been using RAID5 (but never motherboard RAID5) for five or six years now, and nothing of the sort has ever happened to me (actually, I just checked my Newegg history, and my first Promise RAID5 card was bought way back in 2002).

BUT... I agree with you completely (hat's why I said that before).  That's why you need a robust backup strategy.

My setup has changed a bit since I wrote this (my RAID volume is bigger so I have a second "part" of the external drive system), but this describes my setup and my backup strategy.  That system would protect against an event like you described, so long as you noticed the error before you swapped the drives (or they weren't all new files, and if so, the loss isn't as bad).

But what is the "handy dandy drive dock" that you refer to?

Described and linked in the thread above.

They now have a Duet USB3.0 model too.

Do any of you see any problems with my above mentioned strategy of just using the  existing quad core HTPC for the media storage. It's presently in a fairly small Silverstone case. I could move the HTPC MOBO to the larger nicer Antec 300 case and just eliminate the whole WHS server PC.

Just a recommendation for the future long-term?  I just recently moved my HTPC from a tower-style "regular" case to a Lian-Li PC-34F case.  I love it.  And the Wife Acceptance Factor was eased by the "it'll look so much nicer in the living room" argument!

PS. While searching my Newegg history, I found where I bought those new HighPoint RAID cards.  They were $99 each, but had a $25 rebate for each, so they were $148 total (assuming you eventually got the check, which I did).  But I had a $50 Newegg gift card at the time from Christmas (awesome relative!!!) so it only actually cost me about $100 for both.  So I was a little off before, but close enough for comfort.  These aren't regular cheapo cards though, they are $137 each on Newegg right now.  They do put them on awesome sales from time to time, though.

But, they weren't the $400-500 "enterprise" class cards in the same range with the same features.  So, I wouldn't call them high-end.  And, no, I don't completely trust them (but I wouldn't the enterprise ones either, I've sure seen plenty of supposed high-end "enterprise" class hardware flake out at the office)...

Trust, but verify.

[jmone]

Hi Rod

Apparently Drive Bender has been in Beta and you must be one of their testers. It's going to be released this Friday at a price I can't determine. They advertise it as being used with WHS, but you are also using it on your "Main PC", Win7 I assume. I really like that approach as it presents the media to the network as 1 drive. Any difficulties using it on a non WHS OS?

One of the reasons I picked DB was it works on a range of Win OS (and yes my "Main" is Win7 64-Bit).  I like it as it is non destructive, you can expand, shrink etc etc.  I'm only a recent tester and it has some oddities but it does just work (& I've setup and ripped down drive pools, swapped discs and data around and setup them up just fine).

Also why do you use SyncToy to sync your media to the WHS as opposed to letting WHS do the media backup?

So (as you know) WHS works by taking and keeping snapshots based at the unique cluster level so you can roll back and forward in your backups to find various versions of document etc from different time periods as well as enabling a complete restore for each time period.  After a lot of toing and froing I decided I did not need (or want the space O'Head) of keeping versions of my media, so I decided to make a periodic sync (I do a preview to see if anything has changed that I was not expecting, then commit the changes).

[imugli]

My file server is Ubuntu 11.04 server running on a C2D (really just an old PC in a server case in the garage) with samba file share. 2 * 500gb (software RAID1), 2 * 1tb (software RAID1).

MC Server runs off the HTPC in the lounge room (Atom / ION, nothing special) and about to configure miniDLNA on server.

[jmone]

One other thing with WHS Setup that I did change (hence the setting up, ripping down etc of the Drive Pools) was that I also divided to exclude using any of Disc0 as part of the Drive Pool (including the folders with the Client Computer Backups) making the WHSBackUp task (to the USB drive) completely standalone from the DB Drive Pool holding the Media Copy:
  - Disc0 (2TB): 100MB NTFS System Partition, C:\ 60GB NTFS Boot (WHS) Partition, D:\ 1802GB NTFS Data Partition (holds the traditional WHS shares and the Client Computer Backups)
  - DB Drive Pool: E:\ 7,452GB comprising of Disc1,2,3,4 (all 2TB but they can be any size, make or model)
  - Disk5 (1TB): USB Disc for WHSBackUp + a 2gb USB Recovery Key

[AndyCircuit]

I've been using RAID5 (but never motherboard RAID5) for five or six years now, and nothing of the sort has ever happened to me (actually, I just checked my Newegg history, and my first Promise RAID5 card was bought way back in 2002).

A serious car accident never happened to me as well, still no reason to drive some old beater with defective breaks without saefty belt...you can be lucky, of course. Most are after all.
It depends on the value of your data. If your wife will not divorce you because her 20k pictures are scrambled and you only have a backup with the same scrambled data (because you noticed too late), well, OK. Wouldn't bet on it, though
But I have two customers alone where a single CRC error in their main app database not just brings the entire company to a screeching halt but also the tax and SS transfers of hundreds of clients. It would cause a phonecall I don't want to pick up, actually I would prefer my wife divorce me instead...less hassle.
How do you say? Oh yes: just my two cents

[nwboater]

My setup is as follows:
"Main PC" - This is a i7-920 box with 5 x 2TB HDD that contain all the media.  I now use "Drive Bender" to present them as one "Drive" and this is then shared on the NW under a single UNC Share that the clients all use.  I use the box as it has lots of grunt and hence good for any on the fly transcoding tasks

"WHS 2011" - This is a Tranquil Headless PC with 5 x 2TB HDD that contain a backup of all PC's + I use SyncToy to periodically sync all my Media from the Main PC to the WHS box.  I also use Drive Bender on this box to present the 2TB drives as one.  The benefit of this is I have a complete backup of every PC + all media in one small box that can be used for DR and even taken off site when we are away (or I even considered putting this WHS box in a fire resistant safe).

I'm seriously considering changing my existing setup with a WHS storing all media that serves our HTPC  and other Clients to a similar approach that jmone has as outlined in the quote above. At first it seemed odd to use a WHS for just backup but after a lot of thinking about it the whole approach is looking good for our situation.

I would use our HTPC in a similar manner to jmone's "Main PC', ie it will store all media and serve it. I need to be certain that it has enough 'grunt' for the required tasks. What would seem to take the most at one time would be when I am recording a HDTV show and watching a blue Ray at the same time. Or maybe there are some other combinations that could put more of a load on the system.

Our HTPC specs are: Win7/32, AMD Athlon II X4 635 CPU, MOBO Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H, 4 GB DDR3 and graphics card Asus 550Ti. I'll move our HDPVR from the WHS to the HTPC. It is the primary playback computer and feeds our 55" plasma. Maybe with the tuner in the Win7 HTPC instead of the WHS we can get TV to work in MC.

Any thoughts on whether it should be able to handle everything?

Thanks very much.

Rod

[jmone]

For my HTPC I went for a small and quiet build (Shuttle SH67H7) that has one smallish laptop HDD, and a blu ray drive and this can be power down when not in use.  My "Main PC" is literally the one that runs all the time in the study (I'm using it now), has a motherboard with lots of SATA ports and drive bays where noise, heat etc is not an issue (though I did add one of these 5 drive in 3 bay expansion units to get easy external access to the hdd).  The thing that pushes a CPU in the media server will be if it need to do any realtime transcoding (eg streaming to DLNA devices), the rest is just disc and network transfer rates so you have plenty of overhead for servering multiple streams just fine.

[MrHaugen]

I'm running on a Windows 2008 server. Just be very aware of the problem with no sound and RDP connections (only bring to this computer works). It's by design and can not be fixed in other ways than to drop RDP connections overall. You'll have to use VNC or similar if you want to leave sound at remote computer.

[nwboater]

For my HTPC I went for a small and quiet build (Shuttle SH67H7) that has one smallish laptop HDD, and a blu ray drive and this can be power down when not in use.  My "Main PC" is literally the one that runs all the time in the study (I'm using it now), has a motherboard with lots of SATA ports and drive bays where noise, heat etc is not an issue (though I did add one of these 5 drive in 3 bay expansion units to get easy external access to the hdd).  The thing that pushes a CPU in the media server will be if it need to do any realtime transcoding (eg streaming to DLNA devices), the rest is just disc and network transfer rates so you have plenty of overhead for servering multiple streams just fine.

Okay, now I understand your configuration better. Ours will be simpler it seems.

I'm not aware of any realtime transcoding we would be doing - no DLNA devices. So looks like I should be in good shape, eh. (I'm an American married to a Canadian 7 years ago and living in Canada, so trying to slip in the 'eh' now and then.)

Thanks again for your help.

Rod

[nwboater]

I'm running on a Windows 2008 server. Just be very aware of the problem with no sound and RDP connections (only bring to this computer works). It's by design and can not be fixed in other ways than to drop RDP connections overall. You'll have to use VNC or similar if you want to leave sound at remote computer.

Actually our present system has the HDPVR tuner in the WHS. I'm not able to get TV to work in MC, partially because of this configuration.

With the new arrangement the tuner and our Asus Essence sound card (already in the HTPC) will be in the HTPC. Our WHS will only be used for backup, not serving anything. And on our present WHS I have a screen, keyboard and mouse hooked up. They all work fine, but I often remote in from my office PC.

Rod

[newsposter]

Can we define what the minimum server capabilities might be?

Not in terms of flashy cpu/ram 'speeds & feeds', but in terms of what MC needs.

Things like i/o rates for disk, sustained and peak network bandwidth, needed shared disk protocols, IP ports in use, etc.

[glynor]

For my HTPC I went for a small and quiet build (Shuttle SH67H7) that has one smallish laptop HDD, and a blu ray drive and this can be power down when not in use.  My "Main PC" is literally the one that runs all the time in the study (I'm using it now), has a motherboard with lots of SATA ports and drive bays where noise, heat etc is not an issue (though I did add one of these 5 drive in 3 bay expansion units to get easy external access to the hdd).  The thing that pushes a CPU in the media server will be if it need to do any realtime transcoding (eg streaming to DLNA devices), the rest is just disc and network transfer rates so you have plenty of overhead for servering multiple streams just fine.

Same here, basically... Except my server is in the basement.

Even though my HTPC is in a larger case, because I like to have a good graphics card in it for gaming, I want to keep it relatively quiet, and more importantly, when I leave on vacation or whatever, I need to be able to shut it off and still have access to all my media remotely.

My setup allows me to power EVERYTHING on my network down except my main server, my firewall, and one switch and still have access to all of my essential services remotely.

[JimH]

Same here, basically... Except my server is in the basement.

Don't forget to change your clothes washer's hoses every few years.  My dad went away for a couple of weeks one time and came back to three feet of water in the basement.

[MrHaugen]

Here's what I have picked up to be something like a minimum.

Disk: Normal 5400 RPM disk or better
Network: 100Mbit wired or 54 Mbit G wireless
Network Protocols: SMB/CIFS (Windows Network Share), DLNA
IP Ports:
Server Functionality - TCP 80, 52199 TCP (configurable), DLNA high ports
Web Access - TCP 80

[glynor]

Don't forget to change your clothes washer's hoses every few years.  My dad went away for a couple of weeks one time and came back to three feet of water in the basement.

Yeah... That happened to my parents one time when I was a kid.  I went downstairs to get something to drink in the middle of the night, stepped off the landing from the stairs, and my feet went "splosh" into the 5" or so of water on our first floor.

In my case, it'd take more than 3 feet to wipe out my system, but 4.5 or so would kill it good and proper.

[Bizarroterl]

Don't forget to change your clothes washer's hoses every few years.  My dad went away for a couple of weeks one time and came back to three feet of water in the basement.

With 3 feet it ceases to be a basement and becomes a built in swimming pool. 

[fitbrit]

I use unRAID and recommend it highly. Maybe one day we'll see a Linux port for MC's MediaServer.

[JustinChase]

Don't forget to change your clothes washer's hoses every few years.  My dad went away for a couple of weeks one time and came back to three feet of water in the basement.

They make hoses with a "fitting" that automatically closes off the hose if/when the pressure drops significantly due to a rupture.  I have them on all my toilet supply lines also.  Floods are BAD!

I use unRAID and recommend it highly. Maybe one day we'll see a Linux port for MC's MediaServer.

I concur.  I finally finished setting up/tweaking my unRAID box last week, and so far, AWESOME!

It will automatically spin down any/all drives for you that are not in use (you determine how long after idle), and allows me to sleep all my other machines in the house but still have full-time access to all my media from anywhere.

It allows different sized hard drives to be used, can be expanded to allow up to 21 drives in total, and is plenty fast enough to serve HD video to 2 machines at once (maybe more).  The latest beta (5b13) added network bonding, allowing you to connect 2 (more?) NIC's in the box to the network, and get even faster thruput.  I haven't tested this yet, but others report it working great.  That should allow HD streaming to plenty of locations simultaneously I imagine

It took 45 hours to pre-clear my 3TB drives, and another couple of days to copy all my files onto it, but now that's done, it's been great.

FYI, SABnzbd, CouchPotato and SickBeard are an outstanding trio of plugins if you have newsgroup subscription and want to grab some TV shows, or movies easily!!   I set SickBeard to scan my TV directory, and it found all my shows, and offered to find/get any/all missing episodes, in the quality I specify.  It will then rename them for you, and put them into the proper folders when it's all done, and MC will auto-import them, and with the new import rules (which I still have to setup) it will just present you with your new media when it's all done, easy!!

I need more hard disk space

[fitbrit]

I need more hard disk space

35 TB on 20 data drives... and I'm fast running out of space - under 1 TB left, spread over all 20 drives!

[glynor]

They make hoses with a "fitting" that automatically closes off the hose if/when the pressure drops significantly due to a rupture.  I have them on all my toilet supply lines also.  Floods are BAD!

I keep forgetting about those.

I really need to get some of them for the washer and utility sink downstairs.

My main issue with unRAID currently is that it would require another always-on box.  I have the main server, which is Windows, and right now that and my Firewall are the only always-on systems I have.  I'm not going to shut down the server, because it is what runs MC and AirVideo and a bunch of other services I use remotely.

unRAID would be a third.  I actually have a PC I could use, so that's not the issue.  I still have 1TB free on my RAID though, and another empty bay in my Addonics enclosure box.  With my method of using SATA drives in a drive dock for offline "archive" storage, I don't know that I'm going to run out of online storage anytime soon.  But, if I do, that is probably going to be my solution.

[MrHaugen]

If you don't want another server, then check out Norco's SAS expanders. They are a delight It would need to be on most of the time of course, buy with some energy efficient disks, it's not that bad. I'm using a Norco DS-24E. Filled it up with 24 2TB drives now. Running two Raid 6 arrays of 24 TB each Secure as heck and plenty space for a year or two without deleting a thing.