Mass Storage

[JohnnyJazz]

The home theatre project is going fine. I'm really impressed by XBMC. But now I realize that if I want to include my DVD collection on top of the few TV shows that I've recorded, I'll need to invest in some bigger hard disks

If I'm not wrong with my calculation, 1 TB is good for 500 to 1,000 movies (DVD). For TV shows one more TB, maybe 2. One more for miscellaneous files. We are already at 4 TB and then we need to add the back up.

For people who already have a running home theater, what are your solution ?

[Chicog]

Drobo 5N with 5 x 4TB disks (although I only have 4 in it at the moment).

[thaimite]

As per m,y post in the other thread. If you can afford to go for a full RAID 5 array that would be good, NOTE RAID 5 is not a true backup but it does protect you against a single disk failure.

A typical movie is 1 to 2GB depending on the format you like so your estimate of 500 to 1000 movies perTB is fair enough. However if you download blueray rips which can be 4 to 10Gb depending on the resolution then of course you will be not be able to store as many movies

If you want to add disks to your current PC and one have some protection against disk failure look at Snapraid

[dave_boo]

I use TB+ 2.5" external drives. That way they are portable and can keep them on a rotation. An rsync -avr --progress from my main Linux laptop gets everything mirrored over to all drives.

[Saradoc1972]

A (re-)writable DVD stores 4,7 GB (decadic), however a pressed DVD can store up to 5,4 GB. Depending on your ripping software you might be able to bring down the amount of data required, such as cutting out German/Spanish/Cantonese subtitles and audio-tracks and some bonus material on the DVD.

So 1 TB might give you something round 200-350 DVDs. Available 4 TB are cheap enough and will be absolutely plenty.

You might also opt to pack your movies into some sort of an .avi container file and sacrifice some quality for size, if that is all you need. Ripped Blue-rays will be anything frrom 4.5 GB to 8,2 GB

As for mass storage, it really depends on what you're after and willing to pay.

I got a 4 TB WD-harddisk in my PC, movies (mostly matroska avi) take up a bit less that 1 decadic TB. It's a 7.2k rpm 24/7 harddisk because I use it for everything, including games, to my full satisfaction. Should be around 300 $.

If you are just looking for storage space for movies and mp3, a 4 TB 5.4k rpm will do you, eg. a WD-green for around 190 $. Place one in your PC used to play-back the files, get another one for periodic backups in an eSata or USB3 case. Store apart from PC, connect when needed, done. These are very reliable, back up your PC's OS and personal files on it as well, weekly or monthly.

The more posh solution would be a NAS (network attached storage), most usually a ready made box that might contain some Linux filesystem able to stream content to TVs and the like and would be "on" 24/7, hopefully with an energy-conserving stand-by feature that is yet usable when requests for datas come by some appliance. The better ones might even allow password protected access to some data over the internet, like .mp3s for you tablet, or have a peer-to-peer client running in the background.

Those come with1 to 4 drive bays, anthing with 5+ bays will be enterprise and might be a tad expensive. Check out what size of harddrives they accept, might only be 2 TB, unless they come fitted with drives.

A RAID-1 (aka disk-mirroring) will effectively half the size available from the 2 disks connected. Make sure the disks are preferably the same build but from different dates of production, i.e. not from the same batch, to minimize the chance of both failing around the same time. They should be 24/7 if your NAS will be on continuously, these got the better and more reliable components inside.

A RAID-5 will need between 3 and 5 disks and make better use of space, i.e. with 4x 2TB drives you get 6 TB space and one disk can fail, to be rebuilt later. Will cost lots of electricity, be somewhat noisy from all the cooling, and it's actually overkill. It's not like you are running an enterprise server with all high-redundacy, high-availability jingles and bells for business-critcal data.

So if you want a NAS, fit it with 2x 4TB 5.4k rpm 24/7 disks in a RAID 1 and regularly backup on an USB3 external HD with 4 TB 5,4k rpm. Get some 2 GB cloud-storage (free on dropbox, with your virus-scan package and even some bank accounts) for scans of your most important documents and personal data, encrypt those files.

That's waaaaayyyyyy more than most people got.

[DogNo1]

I suppose many people have had success with rebuilding RAID arrays after a disk has gone bad. It's never worked for me. I just copy one external disk to another then turn it off. Haven't lost any data since I started that. Of course, I also have Windows Home Server 2011 and Bitcasa so I have copies everywhere. I also copy important files that I will use on the road to Google Drive and One Drive. With an Office 365 subscription you get an extra 25 GB on One Drive. Bitcasa is great but the initial copy over can take days, especially if you have a lot of TB+ drives. After that, it's quick as it only copies over new files. I like it because for a set fee, I get unlimited storage.

[DogNo1]

Does anyone use Acronis online backup? How do you like it? I have too many machines for it to be cost effective for me but I had the old HP WHS go down on me once and lost everything. Since then I have built my own server and it's worked OK with WHS 2011. I'm looking for online backup at a price I can afford.

[Saradoc1972]

I suppose many people have had success with rebuilding RAID arrays after a disk has gone bad. It's never worked for me. I just copy one external disk to another then turn it off. Haven't lost any data since I started that. Of course, I also have Windows Home Server 2011 and Bitcasa so I have copies everywhere. I also copy important files that I will use on the road to Google Drive and One Drive. With an Office 365 subscription you get an extra 25 GB on One Drive. Bitcasa is great but the initial copy over can take days, especially if you have a lot of TB+ drives. After that, it's quick as it only copies over new files. I like it because for a set fee, I get unlimited storage.

Weeeeellll... rebuilding raids is tricky, I recommend going about it like a chess-player.

I.e.: literally sit on your hands, concentrate, read every notice on the the screen twice, and only move when you are feeling absolutely confident. This is not for everybody, this is actual engineering work, you could sell those skills for money (and take out a business insurance in case things go very wrong and your customer comes after you with a baseball bat). Our OP does not strike me that technical, so anything beyond raid-1 might not cut it.

The same goes for incremental or differencial back-ups, unless the accompanying software is a breeze to use.

So, as we both said, external harddrive and some online backup will do the trick. Its not like the loss of private data, especially movies, would be life-crushing. And those really important data can be stored online. How much is that going to be? 10 GB at most for most people. The tax consultant I worked for had some 6.5 GB on the server for some 200 clients.

Existing Mp3s, even self-ripped ones, can be "registered" with Amazone or itunes and will never be lost. Get your games on Steam. Might take ages to re-download, but they will never be lost.

Acronis works marvelous. I got an enterprise copy on the sneak, it can back-up the whole OS and is the only software on the market where you can push drivers into the backup before restoring the OS, server or not, onto a new platform.

[dave_boo]

A (re-)writable DVD stores 4,7 GB (decadic), however a pressed DVD can store up to 5,4 GB. Depending on your ripping software you might be able to bring down the amount of data required, such as cutting out German/Spanish/Cantonese subtitles and audio-tracks and some bonus material on the DVD.

So 1 TB might give you something round 200-350 DVDs. Available 4 TB are cheap enough and will be absolutely plenty.

You might also opt to pack your movies into some sort of an .avi container file and sacrifice some quality for size, if that is all you need. Ripped Blue-rays will be anything frrom 4.5 GB to 8,2 GB

As for mass storage, it really depends on what you're after and willing to pay.

I got a 4 TB WD-harddisk in my PC, movies (mostly matroska avi) take up a bit less that 1 decadic TB. It's a 7.2k rpm 24/7 harddisk because I use it for everything, including games, to my full satisfaction. Should be around 300 $.

If you are just looking for storage space for movies and mp3, a 4 TB 5.4k rpm will do you, eg. a WD-green for around 190 $. Place one in your PC used to play-back the files, get another one for periodic backups in an eSata or USB3 case. Store apart from PC, connect when needed, done. These are very reliable, back up your PC's OS and personal files on it as well, weekly or monthly.

The more posh solution would be a NAS (network attached storage), most usually a ready made box that might contain some Linux filesystem able to stream content to TVs and the like and would be "on" 24/7, hopefully with an energy-conserving stand-by feature that is yet usable when requests for datas come by some appliance. The better ones might even allow password protected access to some data over the internet, like .mp3s for you tablet, or have a peer-to-peer client running in the background.

Those come with1 to 4 drive bays, anthing with 5+ bays will be enterprise and might be a tad expensive. Check out what size of harddrives they accept, might only be 2 TB, unless they come fitted with drives.

A RAID-1 (aka disk-mirroring) will effectively half the size available from the 2 disks connected. Make sure the disks are preferably the same build but from different dates of production, i.e. not from the same batch, to minimize the chance of both failing around the same time. They should be 24/7 if your NAS will be on continuously, these got the better and more reliable components inside.

A RAID-5 will need between 3 and 5 disks and make better use of space, i.e. with 4x 2TB drives you get 6 TB space and one disk can fail, to be rebuilt later. Will cost lots of electricity, be somewhat noisy from all the cooling, and it's actually overkill. It's not like you are running an enterprise server with all high-redundacy, high-availability jingles and bells for business-critcal data.

So if you want a NAS, fit it with 2x 4TB 5.4k rpm 24/7 disks in a RAID 1 and regularly backup on an USB3 external HD with 4 TB 5,4k rpm. Get some 2 GB cloud-storage (free on dropbox, with your virus-scan package and even some bank accounts) for scans of your most important documents and personal data, encrypt those files.

That's waaaaayyyyyy more than most people got.

Just a couple of points. A pressed DL DVD can hold a bit over 9GB. A DL burnable dvd-granted not very common-can hold essentially the same.

Using the mpeg-2 compression, your estimates aren't too far off. Looking at whether or not ac-3 (the 5.1 sound) is required can free up a bunch of space also. I would personally recommend going with Handbrake, using whatever 'Devices' preset suits you (I use iPad for a lot of the transcodes I do as the Apple products are popular in the family) and if the 5.1 surround sound is important to you make sure on the "Audio" tab that you change the "Mix" to 5.1 Channels. There is no way I can recommend the avi container; there are serious limitations to that (even the mp4 has problems with subtitles amongst other things).

Good recommendation about going with an internal 5.4K drive for mass storage; less noise during media playback. Also way to recommend the separate keeping of the backup (my last point in regards to recommending RAID) as if it is in the same place and something goes wrong than both the primary and backups are toast...aren't they?

I suppose many people have had success with rebuilding RAID arrays after a disk has gone bad. It's never worked for me. I just copy one external disk to another then turn it off. Haven't lost any data since I started that. Of course, I also have Windows Home Server 2011 and Bitcasa so I have copies everywhere. I also copy important files that I will use on the road to Google Drive and One Drive. With an Office 365 subscription you get an extra 25 GB on One Drive. Bitcasa is great but the initial copy over can take days, especially if you have a lot of TB+ drives. After that, it's quick as it only copies over new files. I like it because for a set fee, I get unlimited storage.

I never expect to rebuild a RAID array. However, even degraded, it will still be able to be read from. Synching the data over to another array and then attempting a rebuild is the best one can hope for. Or, if it is the second time an array is rebuilt in, say, as many weeks, perhaps the copy over should occur and then a new set of drives be installed and a brand spanking new array be built. You ARE keeping the partitions separate...aren't you?

[Saradoc1972]

RAID drives (apart from possibly "0") will in all likelyhood not fail you for anything up to 10y. For business-platforms it's recommended to swap harddrives every 5 years, but in 25 years, since I dabbled in PCs when a teenager, I had only one harddrive fail completely. And that was not my own, it was cheap, and god knows for how long it had been running.

I had one or two drives (of likely a hundred over time) showing bad sectors after some 5y, but everything on there was perfectly recoverable. As long as you at least got some back-up, don't bother your barney.

So go with Raid 1, if one drives goes belly-up just forget about the raid-setup and copy files manually before rebuilding a different raid-1 on different drives.

2,5" hd might be more portable, but they are not as reliable as 3,5" ones. Might also need 2 USB-ports or a separate 5v supply. For back-ups once a month or so, they are certainly ok. Use two, alternating, and even this is probably overkill.

Oh, and for that small amount of really personal data, how about a blue-ray burner for 25 GB of storage once a month for 2 € per disk?

[khunron13]

How/where do you want to store your data? You could store internally in your PC/MAC by installing multiple HDDs or use an external Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. Personally, I think a Drobo is the way to go. You decide how much storage you want/need and the redundancy is built-in. There are plenty of other options to include the WD MyCloud.

You've also got to figure out how you're getting that data from the storage device into your TV. Do you have a "smart TV" that will accept streaming media or are you planning to connect the storage device straight to the TV via USB?

There are many of options and decisions to make, but again I would recommend a Drobo device connected to your network and streamed wirelessly to your TV.

[IMHO]

Just buy an 8TB one of these:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1200

~3.7TB of actual formatted storage space, built in DLNA server, file server and RAID1 security, with the ability to also add 2 more USB3 drives later (or just add another mycloud to your network).

[thaimite]

A few general comments on the above posts.

Ripping a DVD wiill greatly reduce the size. I use Handbrake and prefer the .mkv format although .mp4 works well too. Typical size is just over 1GB with default options although higher quality settings will need more space.

Cloud backup when you have several TB of data is not practical and expensive.

Standard RAID 5 in my opinion is overkill for a home theatre setup as the disks are spinning all the time and it can be both noisy and hard on the disks unless you buy high quality ones. If a disk in RAID 5 fails you can still get your data but it is with degraded performance. RAID 1 or mirroring is expensive and has no real advantage over other RAID solutions in HTPC applications

SnapRAID has many advantages over a standard RAID and is great for home media files that rarely change. This is why I use it:

• SnapRAID (link in an earlier post) is so called because it builds the parity on a snapshot basis and is designed to be run after new files have been added or deleted.
• SnapRAID can mix and match drives of any size, format and performance although it is preferable if they all use the same format.. The only criteria is that the Parity drive must be as big as or bigger than the largest data drive. My array has 4 data drives which are a mixture of WD and Seagate drives ranging in size from 750GB to 2TB. The parity is a 2TB Seagate drive.
• You do not need to reformat the drives, Just use them as is and add them to the array in a configuration file. . If a disk fails all the other drives are readable as normal with no performance degradation. If you have not taken a recent snapshot The WORST case is that you will loose any files on the failed drive added since the last snapshot.
• Building the parity disk can initially take a long time and you should not write any new information to the data disks while this is ongoing but after that updating the party is after new movies etc are added is much quicker. Typically after adding a few movies and a couple of TV episodes I can update my parity disk in less than 10 minutes. The SnapRAID sync command can be run on a timed basis or be set to run automatically after X number of files have changed.
• As for rebuilding the RAID, last week I had a 1TB WD drive fail. Fortunately I had taken a snapshot the day before. I replaced the almost full failed 1TB WD with a new 2TB Seagate and the data was restored in about 5 hours. Of course all the data on the other drives was available prior to the restore as noted above. NOTE I have had many more WD drives than Seagate drives fail and will no longer buy them
• There is an option to use SnapRAID in a RAID 6 configuration but I have not tried it. RAID 6 can withstand 2 simultaneous drive failures but requires extra space. RAID5 is n+1 drives and RAID 6 is n+2 drives where n is the number of data drives
• Finally SnapRAID is free open source in active development with Windoze and Linux and MAC versions. I have no connection with the project but do like to recommend good products when I find them. I believe it can be run on some commercial NAS boxes but that would need to be checked. IMHO It is ideal for a HTPC and this product certainly saved me a large loss of data. I do have several 1TB 2.5" drives with various shows on but they are used for when I am travelling and could not be considered a recent backup
• There are many other RAID software solutions such as FlexRAID and unRAID, but this is the first one I have used and see no need to try others.
• NOTE RAID should not be considered a true backup as it will not protect you against data corruption or loss of your PC etc, but it will protect you against drive (or is that disk ) failure

Edit. One last thing which for me is a biggie.

With a standard RAID box if you need more storage you need to upgrade ALL the drives, backup up your data reformat and reload. This is a major time consuming exercise. With SnapRAID you can either replace an existing drive with one of a larger capacity (as I did) or just add another drive to the configuration.

In some cases drives can be pooled making several disks appear as one big disk. I have not tried this feature.

[IMHO]

A few general comments on the above posts.

Ripping a DVD wiill greatly reduce the size. I use Handbrake and prefer the .mkv format although .mp4 works well too. Typical size is just over 1GB with default options although higher quality settings will need more space.

Cloud backup when you have several TB of data is not practical and expensive.

Yep, handbrake is relatively easy to use, but If you have any iOS devices you want to stream video to, use an mp4 container, not mkv though.

As for could backup, storing 3.7TB of data in Amazon S3 Glacier will cost you USD $37/mth - not too bad if they're irreplaceable files. Devices like the MyCloud I linked to before support Amazon S3 natively, and allow you to choose what goes into the cloud and what doesn't too - they are avery simple "it just works" solution, and reasonably cost effective overall too.

[thaimite]

A few general comments on the above posts.

Ripping a DVD wiill greatly reduce the size. I use Handbrake and prefer the .mkv format although .mp4 works well too. Typical size is just over 1GB with default options although higher quality settings will need more space.

Cloud backup when you have several TB of data is not practical and expensive.

Yep, handbrake is relatively easy to use, but If you have any iOS devices you want to stream video to, use an mp4 container, not mkv though.

As for could backup, storing 3.7TB of data in Amazon S3 Glacier will cost you USD $37/mth - not too bad if they're irreplaceable files. Devices like the MyCloud I linked to before support Amazon S3 natively, and allow you to choose what goes into the cloud and what doesn't too - they are avery simple "it just works" solution, and reasonably cost effective overall too.

Fair points, but I do not have and will not have any IOS devices You have just added another justification for that stance. I will stick with my .mkv

Apart from the costs, with cloud storage you are at the mercy of the provider and possibly governments. They want to double their prices, you have a headache in finding a new supplier, They are closed down or otherwise go out of business (e.g. megaupload) you are stuffed. They update their terms of service or decide you do not have the rights to your ripped movies they can delete them. For those and privacy concerns I personally put the minimum I need remote access to in the cloud. Call me a Luddite if you wish, but I prefer to have control over my own things. Finally in many of the countries I work the Internet is capped at a few GB per month (even for a DSL) this makes backing up to the cloud even more expensive. For exampe the best ADSL package in Amman Jordan where I have just completed 4 years was 20GB a month and when I arrived 4 years ago it was only 8GB / month Maximum upload speeds on any package is only 1MB/s. Uploading 3TB would probably have taken the full duration of my stay hahaha.

[Spoonman]

I suppose many people have had success with rebuilding RAID arrays after a disk has gone bad. It's never worked for me. I just copy one external disk to another then turn it off. Haven't lost any data since I started that. Of course, I also have Windows Home Server 2011 and Bitcasa so I have copies everywhere. I also copy important files that I will use on the road to Google Drive and One Drive. With an Office 365 subscription you get an extra 25 GB on One Drive. Bitcasa is great but the initial copy over can take days, especially if you have a lot of TB+ drives. After that, it's quick as it only copies over new files. I like it because for a set fee, I get unlimited storage.

I have a Synology DiskStation DS413j and have had to rebuild after a drive failed. Was a very easy process.

[IMHO]

Fair points, but I do not have and will not have any IOS devices You have just added another justification for that stance. I will stick with my .mkv

Umm, mkv and mp4 are just containers - the codecs you use can be exactly the same if you like, so there's absolutely no difference in file size or quality.. So I don't understand the aversion to mp4

It's not just iOS BTW, playstation3 also doesn't support mkv containers, and many smart TV's don't either. Windows and OSX both support mp4 out of the box too, but each requires additional software to play mkv's.

Anyways, if you're happy with mkv go for it

[thaimite]

Fair points, but I do not have and will not have any IOS devices You have just added another justification for that stance. I will stick with my .mkv

Umm, mkv and mp4 are just containers - the codecs you use can be exactly the same if you like, so there's absolutely no difference in file size or quality.. So I don't understand the aversion to mp4

It's not just iOS BTW, playstation3 also doesn't support mkv containers, and many smart TV's don't either. Windows and OSX both support mp4 out of the box too, but each requires additional software to play mkv's.

Anyways, if you're happy with mkv go for it

Fair comment, I think mkv has better subtitle andchapter support, but at the end of the day it is a matter of personal choice and probably either is equally good for most people. I have many mkv files and always choose that format given the option. I do not own any of the devices you mention and they are not currently on my wish list!

[Saradoc1972]

Just buy an 8TB one of these:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1200

~3.7TB of actual formatted storage space, built in DLNA server, file server and RAID1 security, with the ability to also add 2 more USB3 drives later (or just add another mycloud to your network).

I concur, that seems a viable solution.

I am looking that thingy up right now, could be interested myself. Like for a last ditch backup to stay home in Germany with my parents on their internet while I stay in Thailand long term.

Raid 1 is the most practical, as I wrote above. No rebuilding of arrays to pull the data off if 1 disk fails. Those considerations above like raid1 is expensive were viable until early 2000, when disks were mostly far away from TB capacity and really expensive, especially the SCSI-disks for enterprise raids.

Today energy to keep 5 disks running will be more expensive than a "tiny little" 4TB raid 1.

[Saradoc1972]

Fair points, but I do not have and will not have any IOS devices You have just added another justification for that stance. I will stick with my .mkv

Umm, mkv and mp4 are just containers - the codecs you use can be exactly the same if you like, so there's absolutely no difference in file size or quality.. So I don't understand the aversion to mp4

It's not just iOS BTW, playstation3 also doesn't support mkv containers, and many smart TV's don't either. Windows and OSX both support mp4 out of the box too, but each requires additional software to play mkv's.

Anyways, if you're happy with mkv go for it

Fair comment, I think mkv has better subtitle andchapter support, but at the end of the day it is a matter of personal choice and probably either is equally good for most people. I have many mkv files and always choose that format given the option. I do not own any of the devices you mention and they are not currently on my wish list!

If your storage device can stream a file over DLNA the TV won't mind, no matter what format...

[Crossy]

For those with a little DIY computing nouse and some old PC bits knocking around looking for a job (mainboard must support USB boot), UNRAID is worth a look http://lime-technology.com/

RAID-5 like functionality, supports single drive failure without data loss, lose multiple drives and you lose only the data on those drives, and, the big plus (for me anyway), the drives do not have to be the same size, the only constraint is that the parity drive is the biggest (or equal biggest).

[Chicog]

Drobo use their own "RAID" technology. You lose a drive, you replace a drive and just wait until it fixes itself.

[IMHO]

Drobo use their own "RAID" technology. You lose a drive, you replace a drive and just wait until it fixes itself.

What's wrong with good old vanllla RAID 1? you lose a drive and you don't need to rebuild anything.. the other drive has *all* of the data.

Sure, you can argue it's not an efficient use of drive space, but when someone actually does has a drive fail, and they have to wait a couple of days to get a new drive, then another day or two for the array to rebuild - all before they can access their data - they will probably wish they had just used RAID 1

[JesseFrank]

Drobo use their own "RAID" technology. You lose a drive, you replace a drive and just wait until it fixes itself.

What's wrong with good old vanllla RAID 1? you lose a drive and you don't need to rebuild anything.. the other drive has *all* of the data.

Sure, you can argue it's not an efficient use of drive space, but when someone actually does has a drive fail, and they have to wait a couple of days to get a new drive, then another day or two for the array to rebuild - all before they can access their data - they will probably wish they had just used RAID 1

That's the reason why I use WHS with drive extender. No trouble when losing a disk.

[Chicog]

Drobo use their own "RAID" technology. You lose a drive, you replace a drive and just wait until it fixes itself.

What's wrong with good old vanllla RAID 1? you lose a drive and you don't need to rebuild anything.. the other drive has *all* of the data.

Sure, you can argue it's not an efficient use of drive space, but when someone actually does has a drive fail, and they have to wait a couple of days to get a new drive, then another day or two for the array to rebuild - all before they can access their data - they will probably wish they had just used RAID 1

If you can tell me where you can get 16TB Drives, please let me know.

[IMHO]

Drobo use their own "RAID" technology. You lose a drive, you replace a drive and just wait until it fixes itself.

What's wrong with good old vanllla RAID 1? you lose a drive and you don't need to rebuild anything.. the other drive has *all* of the data.

Sure, you can argue it's not an efficient use of drive space, but when someone actually does has a drive fail, and they have to wait a couple of days to get a new drive, then another day or two for the array to rebuild - all before they can access their data - they will probably wish they had just used RAID 1

If you can tell me where you can get 16TB Drives, please let me know.

If you need 16TB, just could just use 8x 4TB drives, in 4x RAID 1 arrays, no?

It's unlikely anoyone would have a single file that's > 3.7TB, unless they've been making disk images of RAID 0,5,JBOD arrays

[JesseFrank]

Drobo use their own "RAID" technology. You lose a drive, you replace a drive and just wait until it fixes itself.

What's wrong with good old vanllla RAID 1? you lose a drive and you don't need to rebuild anything.. the other drive has *all* of the data.

Sure, you can argue it's not an efficient use of drive space, but when someone actually does has a drive fail, and they have to wait a couple of days to get a new drive, then another day or two for the array to rebuild - all before they can access their data - they will probably wish they had just used RAID 1

If you can tell me where you can get 16TB Drives, please let me know.

Why would you need a 16TB drive to apply raid 1 to 4 x 4TB drives ?

[Chicog]

Drobo use their own "RAID" technology. You lose a drive, you replace a drive and just wait until it fixes itself.

What's wrong with good old vanllla RAID 1? you lose a drive and you don't need to rebuild anything.. the other drive has *all* of the data.

Sure, you can argue it's not an efficient use of drive space, but when someone actually does has a drive fail, and they have to wait a couple of days to get a new drive, then another day or two for the array to rebuild - all before they can access their data - they will probably wish they had just used RAID 1

If you can tell me where you can get 16TB Drives, please let me know.

If you need 16TB, just could just use 8x 4TB drives, in 4x RAID 1 arrays, no?

It's unlikely anoyone would have a single file that's > 3.7TB, unless they've been making disk images of RAID 0,5,JBOD arrays

No, like I said I have 4x4TB drives using Drobo's proprietary protection, with about 11TB of stuff on there at the mo. If I start running out of space I can use the extra bay.

It's a no brainer and requires no effort to be properly protected.

I could have probably saved myself a few quid by faffing about, but I couldn't see the point.

[JohnnyJazz]

So 1 TB might give you something round 200-350 DVDs. Available 4 TB are cheap enough and will be absolutely plenty.

You might also opt to pack your movies into some sort of an .avi container file and sacrifice some quality for size, if that is all you need. Ripped Blue-rays will be anything frrom 4.5 GB to 8,2 GB

I got a 4 TB WD-harddisk in my PC, movies (mostly matroska avi) take up a bit less that 1 decadic TB. It's a 7.2k rpm 24/7 harddisk because I use it for everything, including games, to my full satisfaction. Should be around 300 $.

If you are just looking for storage space for movies and mp3, a 4 TB 5.4k rpm will do you, eg. a WD-green for around 190 $. Place one in your PC used to play-back the files, get another one for periodic backups in an eSata or USB3 case. Store apart from PC, connect when needed, done. These are very reliable, back up your PC's OS and personal files on it as well, weekly or monthly.

Here are some of the prices that I got last Sunday

4 TB SATA III WD (64 MB) 3Y Caviar Green : THB 5,550

4 TB SATA III WD (64 MB) 5Y Caviar Black : THB 8,650

4 TB SATA III WD (SE 64 MB) 5Y Enterprise: THB 9,070

4 TB SATA III WD (SE 64 MB) 5Y Enterprise (14/6/2014) : THB 11,900

A question, why the date of June 14, 2014 makes the drive almost THB 3,000 more ?

[Saradoc1972]

Here are some of the prices that I got last Sunday

4 TB SATA III WD (64 MB) 3Y Caviar Green : THB 5,550

4 TB SATA III WD (64 MB) 5Y Caviar Black : THB 8,650

4 TB SATA III WD (SE 64 MB) 5Y Enterprise: THB 9,070

4 TB SATA III WD (SE 64 MB) 5Y Enterprise (14/6/2014) : THB 11,900

A question, why the date of June 14, 2014 makes the drive almost THB 3,000 more ?

Beats me. Water-Buffalo must be ill.

Well, you get some fluctuation in prices, especially when production broke down around Bangkok round 2012 I believe due to flooding. But that is quite extreme. Prices are some 5-10% cheaper that in Germany, btw. Shop around, now you got those quotations.

Try a WD Red instead of the Green. Marginally more expensive, 24/7 certified, was custom engineered for home-user NAS, i.e. very energy conserving and silent (the green is good, too, in that respect). On my favourite German shopping site the Red got some 90% user recommendations of 5 stars.

You can more or less forget the 64 MB cache or what it is, unless you really get into comparing drive stats on some test sites, like Tom' Hardware. Also, any non ssd will be hard pressed to even make good use of 600 MB/s SATA II, that's where that cache might kick in.

That WD My Cloud Mirror from a post above was a really good tip btw. Thinking of buying an 8 TB one myself to leave in Germany.