Null Modem Cable?

[Hookup]

The surface scan took about 3 hours...

The raid rebuild was started last night at 8pm, I'll go check soon on it and see where I'm at.  I hope to be done.

There are 8 500gb drives in the array, no spares. There are 6 empty slots, that would not be empty if I could find the drive-chassis but so far no luck.  In the current configuration, RAID5, I have 3.5TB (3.21 actually) of space available to the MacMINI, and as Stussie613 said, from the Mac's point of view it looks like a second internal hard disk.  It's using a 1000Mbps LAN and associated cisco 16port switch to serve-up the data.

When it's all setup, I'll have about 2.5TB used, maybe a bit more or less.

The future plan is to locate the 6 missing drive chassis and fill them with 2TB drives.  One will be a spare leaving 5drives in RAID5 for a working size of approximately 8TB.


Some math;
   4 movies per month takes 3 years to get 1 TB of space  (7gb each * 4 * 12months = ~336gb)
   Add in other media, mainly HD TV seasons and I should consume about 1TB/year of space


SLYSOFT is the product I use and I've started to rip down my 100+ DVD collection and 40+ bluray collection, which BTW, is 100% legal in Canada but not in the US.

[Stussi613]

Keep an eye on eBay, you might lucky on the drive carriers...Most vendors don't sell the drive carriers separate since they can hook you for more money for the drives if you buy them from them. No slight against the unit you've got, but it's not really Tier 1 so you might have an easier time finding them.

It's nice to have other geeks to talk to for a change

I've currently got about 40TB of addressable space in my lab in the basement, but unfortunately I can't stick any of my media files on those units.

[Hookup]

40TB wow... of course, if it's all work related it's less fun... but fun none the less.

This until can get up to 28TB of addressable space (14x2TB) but I'd be getting way ahead of myself...

I'm just happy it's finally on-line (Thanks for the Null Modem Cable!) and the data copy is in progress...

[dan2x38]

This is all a wireless set-up or ethernet? I want to stay totally woreless where possible. I just moved and have more PCs then space now been wondering what to do with them all. In the past 5 years being more centred on aquaia let my techy know how slid some what but now with one tank I want to get back at my system and clean things up plus become more courrent myself.

Have one system up to date & my laptop both are quad systems with 4gb RAM the other 3 are older but 2 are little older dual core and the last is out of date needs replacing - still have my older laptop too not sure if it is a door stop or usable? Either way flat screen & Blu-Ray are compatible via internet and LAN plus we have the PS3 so can link most of these. I have been thinking of doing a file/media server with one of the boxes and upgrading all my wireless what is the best route to go for the wireless standard? The price of TB HDD are so cheap I can fill a box with a whack of those and use an external for back up and a void a more costly RAID to save me a little cost. Guys think that is doable on a poor aquarist's budget?

By the way Tim is this thread jacking or cool since it is geek-talk? Sort of on topic isn't it. Just checking with the OP here... 

[Hookup]

jack away, i got the null cable.. ;0

I see a few flaws in your approach....

wireless is not yet able to transmit enough data at speeds capable of displaying 1080p video (bluray/hd), so for that content you'll want/need to have it on a wire or better still, in box. 

Slappn a few harddrives into an old box will work, however most HD's are not designed for perpetual use 24x7x365... so they do ware out and break.  Hence going to some kind of RAID solution that uses multiple HD's such that any one can fail without loss of data. 

Raid can be done via either HW or SW.  I'm not current, but SW Raid was v.slow and not really an option in the past.

[omarh]

I'm with tim on the HD content and wireless streaming.  ALthough i was able to stream a 1080P Blur ray rip wirelessly from my home server to my laptop with no issues. i've only done it once, on a wireless N network. i'm not too sure how reliable this is in the long run so i usually prefer wired connections wherever possible.

[dan2x38]

I hear you on the RAID and didn't consider SW RAID b/c past experience it was brutally slow! With N wireless in home it wouldn't be reliable enough? Just the idea of adding wires back in is such a drag. What about NetFlix? Don't they download in HD? I was wondering how that would work on XBox or Wii without HDMI though. We have them all so would use either PS3 or my Laptop since I can connect it to the Panel by HDMI.

[Hookup]

HD content from Netflix, etc comes in from your ISP... no issues there..     If you chose to go wireless internally that's another matter...

Sorry, until a new wireless standard evolves, or a different type of movie compression etc reduces the bandwidth requirement, i think we're looking at hard-wires...

[JetJumper]

Netflix with very the quality of the stream based upon a seamless playback.  If it detects things are starting to fall behind the quality will change if I am not mistaken.  So if you do it via wireless it maybe downsampling the video.

[Stussi613]

The only difference with software RAID vs. Hardware RAID is whether the OS or a controller is calculating the parity information.  In either scenario an algorithm is calculating the parity information (assuming RAID 5 or 6 since 0 is just a stripe, 1 is a mirror and 10 is a stripe with a mirror). A hardware controller moves the processing off host onto purpose built logic that has its own cache and is optimized for RAID operations  The drawback to software RAID is that the algorithm is running as a process on the host and should it become busy, or god forbid crash, performance will be limited...or the data will be corrupted. Traditionally software based RAID is not recommended for enterprise environments but would likely not affect performance in a media streaming environment.

Wireless technology has a long way to come in order to wirelessly stream 1080p. 10GB Ethernet is a reality today and 40GB is in the process of being ratified. You don't get 1080p from your cable provider today because even coax based switching environments can't handle the data end to end based on current compression technology. I routinely stream via netflix on my apple tv, but wireless N is nowhere near what would be required for BluRay.

[dan2x38]

I knew about the Rogers 1080p myth. What is NetFlix quality like we've been thinking of doing it?

[JetJumper]

I knew about the Rogers 1080p myth. What is NetFlix quality like we've been thinking of doing it?

I find there is a lacking of programming on Netflix in Canada.

[dan2x38]

I find there is a lacking of programming on Netflix in Canada.

Is it worth $8/mon.? i.e. selection How long before new releases hit the select list? What is vid. quality like?

[Hookup]

http://app.whatsnewonnetflix.com/

check that out.. you can scroll back enuf to see if it's worth it for you.

updates every day

[Stussi613]

Is it worth $8/mon.? i.e. selection How long before new releases hit the select list? What is vid. quality like?

I travel allot so it's worth it for me. I watch stuff on my ipad in hotels all the time.   It's mostly back catalogue stuff since the CRTC is still hell bent on shoving terrible Canadian content down our throats...whether we want it or not. They have WAY more programming in the US since their system is based on free market democracy, not the for every non-Canadian show you want to have you need 500 Canadian shows we have here.