How to convert to NAS / WHS / etc

[Ken C]

Currently, all of Sage's videos are stored on a media server. Basically, the server is nothing more than a networked computer running XP with six drives, one for boot and os, five for storage. The five storage drives are of various types (PATA/SATA) and capacities (300gb, 300gb, 320gb, 400gb,750gb). They are 'free-space' managed by Sage and each has about 150 gb available.

So, the question ... Is there any way to convert this over to NAS or WHS, something with recoverability, without losing any data ?

Ken C

[stevech]

A PC with two 500GB ($100 now) SATA3 drives arranged as RAID1 provides a mirror backup that should be pretty reliable. Each drive itself is a windows NTFS partition that will work without any RAID software; not so RAID5. C: parition and V: partition w/64K blocks. You could have two pairs of 500GB drives, each a mirrored pair.

I have such a setup, with a motherboard that has RAID1 support built-in. ASUS M2N-MV; $70.

For simplicity, low cost, and ability to boot/use any drive taken out of RAID1 mode, I prefer RAID1 to RAID5 which cannot do so. But RAID5 is more storage cost efficient and is the best choice for really big stores.

[Ken C]

So, guess I will have to build a new server, with new hardware and drives, and move everything to the new box. Ouch !!! Lots of money and time. Wonder how long it will take to move over a tb of stuff to a new machine. This will be a good test of the just installed gb network.

Ken C

[Ken C]

Starting to think about NAS / WHS / Unraid / NASLite / Drobo.

Being able to use drives of different types and sizes is good. Start out with 300 gb and move up to 1tb over time as the prices drop. WHS / Unraid / Drobo can handle this, what about any of the NAS / NASLite implementations ?

Drobo is a USB device, I need a network device. Any idea if Drobo is coming out with a network version ?

Can any of these handle 64k sectors ?

Rumors abound regarding WHS. Will it be available as software only or bundled with hardware, (remember MCE ?).

Ken C

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by Ken C

Can any of these handle 64k sectors ?

Pooled drives managed by WHS cannot be formatted with 64k sectors. But you can choose not to add a drive to the pool, format it with 64k, and access it as a regular network share (but of course loose the option to let WHS duplicate the data). I have my SageTV recording directories placed on such a non-pooled drive in WHS, I don't need redundancy for my recordings.

Rumors abound regarding WHS. Will it be available as software only or bundled with hardware, (remember MCE ?).

Should be available as OEM Software from e.g. newegg.


Dirk