Need some help picking hardware please peeps!

[Stoner81]

Hey folks!

Recently I have had what I suspect to be HDD failures since I was getting a lot of BSOD's on my main rig and since removing all the mech drives they have all but vanished (except for 1 yesterday, still no idea what caused it). Anyway, I am in dire need of a proper storage solution for all the digital media that myself and the other half are collecting (close to 1.5TB at this point) and with a bit of luck (aka you lot ) a way to stream it all to the main TV downstairs without spending a small fortune.

My initial thoughts are a HP Gen8 Microserver with a RAM/CPU upgrade since I could put in a small SSD for the boot drive and then RAID 2x 3TB WD Red drives together in RAID 1 so they are mirrored for the backup solution. After that I was thinking of something like a USFF HP 8300 for connecting to the TV downstairs and streaming to it running Kodi or something similar. In an ideal world Blu-ray playback would be supported since our collection of those is slowly growing.

At this point these are just ideas and to be quite frank I feel rather out of my depth with this since there are so many different ways of doing what we want to do ... put simply I need help and lots of it!

The main things to keep in mind are:

• I don't want to spend a fortune.
• Must be able to stream to another device from the storage solution. The whole thing is just for storage and streaming movies/tv shows and that is it! No gaming or anything I have my main rig for that.
• Playback device should have BD support.

This will probably come together over the course of a few months so we don't have to pay for everything all at once or at the very least get some cash together. In the mean time I would just like to know some good viable and cheap options so have at it folks and thanks!

Stoner81.

 

[Kidge]

I have a N54l with WHS 2011 installed that I've ripped all my DVD's on to, store all my photos/videos/docs and run MySQL.

I then have a Raspberrypi connected to my TV running RaspXBMC which I stream my films to over the network and it works perfectly. The films are mostly 720p however I have a couple of downloaded 1080p films which also work great. Whether these films are full 1080p such as a BD rip I'm unsure however someone else may be able to advise?

If you went for the Gen8 you could just use it as a HTPC to save getting 2 devices.

 

[Stoner81]

If I went for the Gen8 it would be sat upstairs under my desk since the router is there so it would be easier to run a network cable to it. A RasberryPI might be worth a look I guess if they are cheap enough, having full BD playback would be nice but if push really came to shove we would just use a BD player.

Thanks for the advice!

Stoner81.

 

[implosiveturnip]

Just to point out, RAID isn't really a backup solution - it's more just to maintain uptime. If your data is really precious, I'd consider getting a usb3 external drive to back your data up and unplug from the machine when not in use. If your power supply goes pop and takes out all your drives, RAID doesn't count for squat then.

But for your needs the hp microserver sounds good. Alternatively you could knock up a freenas box. This could be the cheaper option if you happen to have any spare parts lying around. I'm in the process of doing the same, just waiting on a motherboard, as the one I just got from the bay came with bent pins ;_;

 

[Stoner81]

Hmm that's a very good point implosiv I hadn't thought of that... seems I have some more thinking to do.

Stoner81.