HP micoserver or NAS for video

Phill4321 · 12 Apr 2012 at 18:11

Currently I use an ati 6450 but I did have a 5450 and that was just as good. I can play back full bluray rips and some are 45gb in size. Also the fact that ati cards can pass through full hd sound is a big plus for me.

HEADRAT · 12 Apr 2012 at 18:30

Is the GUI any faster between the 5450 and 6450?

dillingerdan · 12 Apr 2012 at 19:33

I was looking at these for a similar reason, but an Amazon review scared me off as he mentioned the PSU is inefficient (some 50+ watts at idle with the 1 supplied 250GB HDD) and its loud to boot. TBF even with the cashback replacing bits becomes a bit of a hassle for just a NAS. are they that loud? Or if anyone can, are they power hungry from the wall?

Tackle_Berry · 12 Apr 2012 at 20:00

Phill4321 said:
Hi, my htpc is running windows 7 and I have it to start XBMC after 1 minute. XBMC allows me to organise my bluray rips (MKV's) and it will download all of the cover art and film info for me. I control it all with a Harmony One which keeps things simple for me and my girlfriend. If people are more interested I can knock up a video of it in action?

If you could please mate, would be interested to see. This is basically what I want it for but would also like to be able to access Docs, Photos, Music while away from home can you do this?. How do you back up your films? Is it in a RAID configuration? Also if your using this to play content straight to your TV what do you use for sound?

Ezah · 13 Apr 2012 at 04:38

If youre using an HTPC, the audio and Video will be sent to your AVR via HDMI. BUt If you were streaming direct to your TV (via DLNA etc) then you use an optical or HDMI to send that audio from the TVs audio out to the AVR.

Phill4321 · 13 Apr 2012 at 07:05

dillingerdan said:
I was looking at these for a similar reason, but an Amazon review scared me off as he mentioned the PSU is inefficient (some 50+ watts at idle with the 1 supplied 250GB HDD) and its loud to boot. TBF even with the cashback replacing bits becomes a bit of a hassle for just a NAS. are they that loud? Or if anyone can, are they power hungry from the wall?

Im not sure of the exact effiecency of the psu but I havent really read any complaints about the power draw so I assume its not so bad. I have found this thread and this massive thread should have the info. I have heard people estimate that this would cost about £35 a year to run 24/7 which to me seems very reasonable for something that is powered on all year round. Theres also this video of the power usage.

In regards to the noise, I havent seen many people complain much about it, and with my two in operation, all I get is a light hum but definitely nothing that bothers me much.

I have not really replaced any bits for the microserver, but I did add a hotswap drive at the top that allows for 5 hard drives. Its also posible to fit 6 hard drives with the right accessories. The cheapest 5 bay nas on this site is £400, but the microserver after cash back is around £150 and is also more powerful. So to me the microserver in comparison is better value for money.

Ezah · 13 Apr 2012 at 07:17

Mine is in the bedroom and generates virtually no heat or noise, if it wasnt for the blue light on the front you wouldnt really know it was there.

All I have done to mine is add a new RAM chip and slide in the HDDs and install WHS.. thats all you need to do.

Deep · 13 Apr 2012 at 09:01

Ezah said:
All I have done to mine is add a new RAM chip and slide in the HDDs and install WHS.. thats all you need to do.

I want to add another 2GB of RAM to mine, what stick did you buy?

Ezah · 13 Apr 2012 at 11:54

Mine is the N36L, it came with 1gb, which was not enough to install WHS, so I put a single 4gb stick in.. it seems more than enough for my needs.

Phill4321 · 13 Apr 2012 at 16:42

Deep said:
I want to add another 2GB of RAM to mine, what stick did you buy?

Hi, I upgraded my ram to this. But mine was 2x4gb. It seems to work fine.

Phill4321 · 13 Apr 2012 at 16:45

Ash2097 said:
If you could please mate, would be interested to see. This is basically what I want it for but would also like to be able to access Docs, Photos, Music while away from home can you do this?. How do you back up your films? Is it in a RAID configuration? Also if your using this to play content straight to your TV what do you use for sound?

You can access all of those items that you have stored locally. My films are backed up on the microservers which are running unraid. With regards to the sound, the htpc is connected via a hdmi cable, through a 6540 graphics card that can pass sound.

Phill4321 · 13 Apr 2012 at 16:47

HEADRAT said:
Is the GUI any faster between the 5450 and 6450?

I find the performance to be the same, both are good at handling the menus with speed, and both can play back full bluray rips with ease. I only went with a 6450 as I had it cheap from a friend.

Ezah · 14 Apr 2012 at 06:22

Phill4321 said:
You can access all of those items that you have stored locally. My films are backed up on the microservers which are running unraid. With regards to the sound, the htpc is connected via a hdmi cable, through a 6540 graphics card that can pass sound.

With WHS you can set up remote access for one or more users then view or download your content anywhere, over the internet or a mobile device.. the Microsoft wizard sets you up a domain name (yourname.microserver.com) and you access all your stuff from there.

Freakbro · 14 Apr 2012 at 08:32

I'm going to try and setup my HP microserver this w/e.

Bearing in mind I've never set up server software ( I have 3 pc's on win 7 networked with homegroup atm) I have the option to use WHS 2011 or just d/l Unraid as suggested in this thread...

Pros/cons? Which would you use and why?

edit : It will just be used as a media server and I use a wdtv live to stream to the tv

Ezah · 14 Apr 2012 at 08:40

My position was similar, 2 vista PCs and 2 W7 PCs, I went for WHS2011 as I wanted something familiar and easy to work with, plus its a cheap bit of software.
Everything is linked now and I have the ability to access and manage any device from any other device via the WHS dashboard, plus they all have regular backups configured and working and I have remote access. No regrets.

I can also run utorrent and Mezzmo on WHS, not sure if I could on unraid.

Freakbro · 14 Apr 2012 at 08:53

Ezah said:
My position was similar, 2 vista PCs and 2 W7 PCs, I went for WHS2011 as I wanted something familiar and easy to work with, plus its a cheap bit of software.
Everything is linked now and I have the ability to access and manage any device from any other device via the WHS dashboard, plus they all have regular backups configured and working and I have remote access. No regrets.

I can also run utorrent and Mezzmo on WHS, not sure if I could on unraid.

The setting up of WHS is easy enough for a novice? Do you have to set up all the domain logins etc..

And is the RAID function in WHS good compared to Unraid? (aiming for a RAID 5 setup) I quite like the ease that you can add extra capacity into Unraid (from what I read on here)

Ezah · 14 Apr 2012 at 09:04

It was as easy as any Windows OS, and once its up and running the dashboard makes it very user friendly to manage. Once you try to connect to the server from any other PC on the network it will install the Dashboard on that PC for you. Via the Dashboard you can create user accounts with various permission levels on the content, configure backups, setup remote access, browse internet etc

There are loads of helpful videos on Youtube which will show you how to do pretty much anything, from installing additional HDD to how to use the Dashboard. (user : usingwhs)

e.g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=299bR4TQVbI

I dont know anything about RAID, I use RAID0 (I think) and then back up any critical data to an external . Most of what I store is replaceable anyway as I have the original content on disc, but Photos, PC backups etc I back up.

Phill4321 · 14 Apr 2012 at 09:49

Freakbro said:
The setting up of WHS is easy enough for a novice? Do you have to set up all the domain logins etc..

And is the RAID function in WHS good compared to Unraid? (aiming for a RAID 5 setup) I quite like the ease that you can add extra capacity into Unraid (from what I read on here)

Theres no easy answer as to whats best for your needs. Theres pro's and con's to each os. The reason I chose unraid is because it allows you to use hard drives of different sizes, you can remove an old drive and replace it with a bigger drive any time you wish and not have to worry about losing data.

Theres also redundancy in the sense that you can set one drive as what is called a 'parity drive'. This is one drive that is set aside for redundancy, if you lose one drive your data is intact, just insert a new one and the array is restored. If you lose two or more drives at the same time, then you only lose the data on those drives and the other drives will still have their data intact. In a normal raid array if you lost two drives then the whole array would be inaccessible and all data would be lost. I would hate to lose all of my rips like that and my data is very valuable to me, hence why I went with unraid. Its taken me a long time to rip all of my 200 blurays and I would hate the thought of having to rip them all over again. that would probably take me near a week solid which is time I cant spare.

Unraid will also spin up individual drives when accessing your data with no need to spin up the whole array of drives, obviously this saves on energy and wear and tear on the drives themselves. Unraid is also placed on a usb stick which again means no need for a harddrive to spin up for access to the os.

Here is a summary of unraid from their wiki:-

No striping, so safer for multiple drive failures; parity protection, so resistant to single drive failure; flexible, can mix and match drive brands, sizes, and types, easily add additional drives, etc...
Each drive is an independent file system. An unRAID array can be thought of as a parity protected JBOD. If the array fails, the individual drives are still accessible, unlike traditional RAID arrays. Spin down can be controlled per drive, so a drive with rarely accessed files may stay off (spun down) for months, saving power costs, and possibly increasing its life. With standard striped RAID arrays, the entire array must be spun up or down, so generally stays spun up.

Freakbro · 15 Apr 2012 at 11:34

I'm thinking I may go with UnRaid..

Here's another noob question, so I can put all my digital media on the Microserver running UnRaid, and the WDTV live will read straight from that.

or

Could I run XBMC on the current W7 pc and have it read the data from the HP server, and then to the WDTV Live. I'm just thinking I do like the look of the front end of XBMC compared to the clunky default WDTV live.

commited · 17 Apr 2012 at 01:55

I'm currently looking to go down the microserver route as I'm fed up of all of the places that we have data currently and I want our TV/movie viewing to be more user friendly. I'm trying to do it on the cheap initially, using existing hard drives that I have now. It comes with a 250gb, but I also have the following to put in it:
500gb SATA
400gb IDE
250gb IDE

Will I have the space to run the IDE drives with a converter or will I have to leave them housed as external hard drives? Is it vital to upgrade from the 2GB ram? My plan is to boot off an 80gb usb drive that I have, will that work?

What I want to achieve is to have one central location to play music, movies and tv shows in HD and run utorrent. I won't need it to do anything more complex than this and it will be beside my router, PS3 and TV. Would Windows 7 with XBMC be my best option or would it be better to experiment with Windows 8 beta? I plan to use the PS3 remote to control it.