Mass storage entertainment hard drive system Help needed

Samantha1968 · 9 Aug 2015 at 14:25

I have 2 PC's running of my home network system currently on sky. I have a Lot of Bluray and DVD's stored on my main i5-4690k Processor PC. It currently has 2 x Western Digital Blue Drives at 1TB each and a SSD samsung 850 Pro 256GB with operating system on it.

The first Western Digital Drive D: is where all my programs and Data is Stored and Main use Drive.

The second Western Digital was going to be used as a basic Backup of D: Program and Data files. But Currently Hold my Movies on it full copies on My Blurays and DVDs.

as i find playing from hard Drive much easier than looking for DVD or Bluray from shelves which is difficult when you are disabled and mainly wheelchair bound.

MY GOAL:-

I want to be able to store all my own owned original BLURAY and DVD's all on hard drives and play direct from there. Ihave all software necessary to do this purchased and registered legally.

What kind of storage system can i setup that will allow multiple drives to be connected to network and store all my movies on it and play direct from it from either machine as one in livingroom other in another room and both have main 3d screens and also can play direct to my 3d smart tv by HDMI. have not worked out how to do wireless playing as think i need a certain type of wireless adapter a intel adapter to do miracast as tv is miracast enabled.

What hardware to i need to be able to have several large 1TB or 2TB drives in a case/unit that connects to network by IEEE network cable direct to router or do i connect it direct to PC and use the sata ports that are spare ????.

PC's Motherboard is a Z97X-SLI Gigabyte Motherboard Rev 1.0 ???

Sata0 ,ssd
sata1 , western digital d: main programs and data
sata2 , western digital e: backup data and movies from dvd's and Blu-Ray's
sata3 , akasa card 6 in 1 card reader and usb 2.0
sata4 , LG BH16NS40 Blu-Ray Read/Writer

sata5 and Sata6 not used yet
M.2 connector.

but room for one more external drive possible hot swap hard drive system ???

room for internal drives as well space for 3 drives physically but not enough sata connectors.

only 2 sata connectors free in total.

Chipset:
1 x M.2 PCIe connector
(Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280 SATA & PCIe SSD support)
1 x SATA Express connector
6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
(M.2, SATA Express, and SATA3 4/5 connectors can only be used one at a time. The SATA3 4/5 connectors will become unavailable when an M.2 SSD is installed.)
Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10

So what are my options here to get a lot more storage for keeping my movies on and considering that some movies take the 45gb that a bluray actually hold. states 50gb dual layer but checked and only 45 available in reality. ??

So need a lot of storage and hot swap capability so when i get to point of running out of room on what ever setup is used i can always hotswap a hard drive. its easier to just hot swap one drive that could contain approximately only 20 movies of full blu-ray standard to one western digital blue 1TB.

Could contain app. 30 in theory per 1tb hard drive but that's not a lot considering amount of movies i have.

So Options here , what can i get hardware wise that will allow multiple hard drives to be obtained and all be accessible at a good speed as using it for watching movies. Also hardware that allows hot swapping of a drive or all drives.

How it connects up is a choice of direct to router hardwired or direct to main pc as can always access main pc from other pc as remote access internal to lan will work fine. Media streaming/sharing.

So Please Options of how i can obtain this requirements. Willing to have a hot swap hard drive system in main pc as a start as room for one more external. I do not know what kind of hardware would be reqired for this and what hard drives it would accept.

I know there is usb hard drives but not sure of there speed for movie watching.

Please i need a lot of help on this one as i am at a complete loss of how this works. how ou can add a mass storage system to home network that has fast access time.

How you can add a hot swap hard drive system direct to external spare slot on pc under bluray drive.

Please supply options of this and with each option its speed and expandability of storage , hot swap capabilities.

I hope there are some members out there that have done something like this before even if its for a office but i am looking at a home version.

I look forward to reply's and accept any options available as i will be going ahead with plan as soon as i know what is required.

bledd · 9 Aug 2015 at 14:49

Synology Ds1815+

Then get multiple 6tb Western Digital Red drives.

Do it properly, once.

lude1962 · 10 Aug 2015 at 09:42

as bledd has said above, install plex on it, run plex client on pc tablet phone etc.
also forget usb and hot swapping
For best performance you may also need a gigabit hub/switch, depends upon your current router.

EDIT just noticed you've got a pioneer br, you may want to check in the optical section as that drive may be rip-locked (it will takes you ages to rip the blu-rays).

FrankJH · 10 Aug 2015 at 17:51

lude1962 said:
EDIT just noticed you've got a pioneer br, you may want to check in the optical section as that drive may be rip-locked (it will takes you ages to rip the blu-rays).

They arent that slow - about 30 minutes per average BR I have found (as the rip lock process only allows the drive to spin at 1-2 speed rather than the "data" speed which could be 8 times speed)

Otherwise I would follow the above advise, go away and beyond for your data storage needs and do it once. Not only in the capacity of each drive but also in how many actual drives your NAS can hold.

Im going through the painful (ie long winded as well as expensive) process of doing just that after building a basic Unraid server 5 years ago which is now at its disc capacity and trying to work out the best way to proceed between scrapping it completely and buiding a brand new server with much larger disks or getting very limited expansion from replacing a couple of drives.

Samantha1968 · 11 Aug 2015 at 19:53

looked at 6tb drives but pc has only got six times sata cables. 2 used on drives 1tb , 1 on ssd , 1 on card reader , 1 on lg bluray

so only got 1 sata cable left as thats all six used. so would only be adding 6tb to start with. as dont want to get rid of other drives as just purchased them.

so really looking at a external drive bay system that i can then buy 6tb disk to put in. but not sure what hardware to get. to connect to router just plain 100mb coonection not 1gb as its a sky router.

as for copy bluray its fast copy straight to disk its the slow 2 x sped that is the let down but as i can do that one at a time later. as long as i can store on hard disk its fine.

so what unit do i need to buy that will allow full acces speed to play movies. most disk access at once would be 2 movies playing at once. one on each pc.

i could add a 6tb to current pc as a extra but i am going to need much more than 6tb in total. so need a mass storage system with fast access from 2 pc's on network router.

so that is hardware i need. maybe later would update my pc but just done that and all brand new disks as is.

Penfold78 · 11 Aug 2015 at 22:52

I'm using a ASUSTOR AS-5002T for a similar kinda of thing.

Currently a 4TB WD Red in one of the Bays, Use the LAN to Transfer files from PC onto the NAS and then using the built in HDMI plugged direct into TV using the Kodi App as playback.

I believe Synology box's can work in a similar manor and probably the interface is a little more polished than the Asustor but I haven't had any issues playing back movies.

Peter

Samantha1968 · 14 Aug 2015 at 01:38

thank you i am not familiar with nas systems.

what would you suggests i use as a basic nas storage system that will allow fast access from both 2 pc's so that i can play my movies from pcs and not just through hdmi on nas box.

hot swap available seems like a cheaper method of adding storage to the nas system instead of buying a additional nas box each time i run out of storage. if my films/movies are arranged alphabetically on each hard drive i an then use additional drives and hot swap them each time i need to re-arrange hard drives in nas.

a good nas system with fast storage retrieval via network home system and with expandibility is what i would look for.

but as i dont understand nas systems that much i would like some suggestions on which models i should use. which provide hotswap cabability , which have fastes access that will allow smooth playback of blurays that have been kept on drives. as i mount the folders vitually normally from folder on hard drive. so would need to be able to do sane things from nas storage.

what nas storages allow best maximum storage per price and allow for external add-ons that still have enough speed to play moies from.

please advise. i will do my own research but advise and knowledge of prior use will help.

thanks in advance.

lude1962 · 14 Aug 2015 at 08:24

Synology Ds1815+ 8 bay = 8x6tb = 36 tb, expansion units can also be be plugged into it

a NAS is just like a pc but made for file storage accessible across the network, configured via web inteface, apps can be installed ie plex, which acts a media server for all of your devices, tv pc, tablet, smart phone etc.

lude1962 · 14 Aug 2015 at 08:25

...and forget hot swapping do it properly...

plex or kodi catalogs your movies, audio etc, if you start hot swapping it will get messy

bledd · 14 Aug 2015 at 14:02

With a decent NAS you could easily watch a film on 5 machines at once.

Samantha1968 · 14 Aug 2015 at 21:43

thank you for your answers. now i looked at the synology modela and see there are other models available. but with lower read write mb/sec.

for home entertainment with a mximum of 2 pc's playing , never more than 2 mainly 1 at a time.

what woul be the minimum specification required in cpu , ram and read write capabilities.

as i may not require a high end synology model but may be able to go for one of the lower end models and still use western digital red 6tb's.

as i suspect the synology may be more powerfull than my needs.

to play my movies i actually mount the folders to a virtual drive on my pc then play via powerdvd 15 ultra as i use dvdfab to clone copy to hard disk and they require you to mount the miniiso file first and then similate a virtual bluray drive.

so will this still work with nas systems.

i would prefer starting of with a lower end than the synology as long as it is fast enough to play the virtual mounted movies with zero stutter and there would only be 2 playing movies at one time ever.

most of the time it would be single movie playing.

so a synology may be overkill.

so please what about other models of nas. what is recommended cpu , ram and read/write.

i can then start of with one of these other models and use add on drives until later on when i feel i need to move up to a high pec model such as synology.

as at moment its really just myself going to play movies with possibility of guest using other pc to play movies.

lude1962 · 16 Aug 2015 at 11:30

'to play my movies i actually mount the folders to a virtual drive on my pc then play via powerdvd 15 ultra as i use dvdfab to clone copy to hard disk and they require you to mount the miniiso file first and then similate a virtual bluray drive.'
how to make a simple job hard, look up what plex and kodi/xbmc actually does
install xbmc on your pc

FrankJH · 16 Aug 2015 at 14:41

Samantha1968 said:
to play my movies i actually mount the folders to a virtual drive on my pc then play via powerdvd 15 ultra as i use dvdfab to clone copy to hard disk and they require you to mount the miniiso file first and then similate a virtual bluray drive..

No reason at all to do this anymore - and there are a number of reasons not to , even if it takes you a little time to get used to a new method;

1) Rip Bluray with MakeMKV (or another app of your choice) - instead of full "image" of disk, you can literally just rip the movie + soundtrack with no extras / trailers etc or variety of language soundtracks - which will reduce size of each film on the NAS, allowing more films to be stored on the same hdd

2) No harm in doing a standard drive map through Windows explorer - simpler for ripping and play back

3) Use plex/ xmbc or even just VLC media player on the pc to play back - absolutely no reason to mount virtual drives any more. You can change quality of rips if you want, but not strictly necessary (personally I always rip at full quality, and then use plex on a tablet to reduce quality when needed -but have full quality from same rip on server for large screen /full audio fun on main av system)

queamin · 16 Aug 2015 at 14:42

I would get the best 4 bay nas you can afford and stick 1 6GB drive in it and stick one in your pc as well, what about back ups if the nas fails or will you just copy from the disks again a lot of effort really?.

Samantha1968 · 16 Aug 2015 at 23:23

lude1962 said:
'to play my movies i actually mount the folders to a virtual drive on my pc then play via powerdvd 15 ultra as i use dvdfab to clone copy to hard disk and they require you to mount the miniiso file first and then similate a virtual bluray drive.'
how to make a simple job hard, look up what plex and kodi/xbmc actually does
install xbmc on your pc

this is what i currently do just that i now need extra room. more than my pc can currently supply. hence a nas system but one that is just good enough to do the sam mount to virtual and not overkill as synology are expensive compared to others. so not sure if i require oen that is very fast as i mount into virtual memory with dvdfab virtual anyway.

so looking at other nas options apart from synology.

also i will be able to pickup a second nas as a backup incase of drive failures.

synology prices would not allow for a second backuop but a 4 bay version of a cheaper nas systom would
a 4 bay that allowed extra bay connects similar to synology system thou.

Bluecube · 16 Aug 2015 at 23:50

I think you're making a very simple job overly complex. Why do you need to rip your blurays as ISOs? As has been mentioned previously, rip your films as mkv files which will vastly reduce the file size. Buy a Synology NAS, install Plex and take things from there.

Samantha1968 · 17 Aug 2015 at 09:02

Bluecube said:
I think you're making a very simple job overly complex. Why do you need to rip your blurays as ISOs? As has been mentioned previously, rip your films as mkv files which will vastly reduce the file size. Buy a Synology NAS, install Plex and take things from there.

i rip with full disk feature as i want 2d and 3d formats available and all in live box special features avialble. whick mkv does not do. must be a full copy clone of original bluray 3d 2d.

hence need for so much extra storage.
#
now synology are expensive. i looked at qnaps i think and others.

all i need to know is what would be min requirement and recommend nas requirement.

i dont know when using dvdfab to clone if dvdfav virtual actually loads sectiosn i assume so many gb at a time.

i just needs a nas faast enough to allow that transfer to my virtual drive on my pc so that dvdpower 15 ultra can play it.

its a simple expanded mass storage system but fast enough to transfer speeds for wathcing movies on one pc.

a system that will allow expansion of 4 vays with 6tb in each TO START with. one that will allow add on bays like synology does.

but a cheaper version.

no need for super high speed and fast cpu and excess memory like a synology.

just a enough cpu and ram and hard drive space and transfer read rate to allow play smooth movied of sizes of 50gb in total but as long as it can transefr to my virtual drive and be read by my ppc from nas at a speed quick eough to play a movie its fine.

so what recommended transfer speed and cpu is required.

what kind of nas could do this apart from synology as too expensive.

a nas that allows add on bays similar to synology thou.

i can buy a second nas then pure backup only. for first nas.

as qnap and other nas units half price of synology.

so anyone using a nas that is not synology and using it to play movies copies clones from 3d blurays.

bledd · 17 Aug 2015 at 13:30

If you want full ISOs that's why you need a HUGE multi bay NAS.

sastusbulbas · 22 Aug 2015 at 19:33

I used to do something similar using MyMovies with VOB files of the movies I was ripping, I used 1TB F3's and 1.5TB greens, later migating to a single 4tb drive on my main PC, streaming within a W7 network.

I had planned on a 4 bay Synology with 4x4tb, then I planned on a 2 bay with 2x4tb. But with so many movie channels and streaming services at home, the kids never used it, neither did the wife. So it got shelved. I have a lot of DVD and Bluray, but my BR player was only hooked up again recently after sitting in a cupboard for a few years.

I am thinking of returning to it, would like a USB DAC direct connection with a Synology at some point for music. Maybe archive my movies too, but I was never happy with the "MyMovies" VOB rips that I am sure I used Slysoft and DVDfab software for.

I would prefer the best quality with full function menu's too considering the amount of storage you can get these days.

Samantha1968 · 23 Aug 2015 at 03:23

could someone please recommend a non synology nas system that would be good enough for movie streaming from a single pc' nothing fancy or expencive. a simple nas storage and i know there are other models non synology out there at half the price. just as long as its spes are fast enough for my mount miniso and play that is all that matters to me at this time.

so any nas apart from synology what about qpas and others. what is recommend in those.

nas is the way i am going just want to keep cost low at this time and qpas seems half cost of synology like for like storage capacity.

just need to know if qpas or other non synology have the recommened cpu speeds needed. thats all please.