Advice on how to use NAS server.

[jryan15]

I recently pulled the trigger on a NAS server (w/celeron 420) for no other reason that the price felt right... I'm now trying to decide how best to utilize it .

I currently run a single HTPC server with several hdd's full of movies. My media front end has been xLobby which I use to switch between SageTV and watching movies through zoomplayer. I run the old freeware version of xLobby and it has been eating up 50% cpu usage for a while now, and I'm thinking of dumping it and running SageTV exclusively.

That being said. Is it acceptable to use a NAS hdd for the primary recording drive (I have 2-HD and 2-SD PCIe recording devices)? If so, does comskip run ok?

The NAS server is upgradable and could do some processing, but I don't think that I want it to act as the primary HTPC since I also use multi-channel audio outputs for whole house audio using Girder for control.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[brainbone]

I originally started recording directly to my NAS (I use unRaid), but ran into issues with dropouts in recordings, especially if the NAS was under heavy use. I ended up recording to a local drive, then moving recordings to the NAS later.

[stevech]

I've tried several Linux/SMB based NASes and all have poor throughput/speed. Too slow for GB video files.
Perhaps there's a fast one, but not in my price range.
So I use NTFS and windows.

[jryan15]

Thanks for the info. So I guess I'm stuck with keep two hdd's in my server, one for os and one for sageTV. I guess I could host my video archive on the NAS.

[hedly]

Why did you buy a NAS when you had a HTPC server...a server is really just a server.

If you have a server running Sage as a server (i.e. you also have tuners installed in the server and it is where the recordings are saved) and then have Sage running as the front end on another box (i.e. the client then accesses the server to get the recorded shows), I would recommend that the following:

Merely move the stuff you are going to keep (music, movies, etc) to the NAS.
Continue to use the HTPC server to record shows
use the clients to access the HTPC and the server for the media.

Then you can use the power of the HTPC server to record (and remove commercials) while using the relatively low power of the NAS to just be a simple file server.

[jryan15]

Why did you buy a NAS when you had a HTPC server...a server is really just a server.

Beyond the price being right, I've been having a few issues/concerns with my HTPC.

1. My USB-UIRT keeps dropping out requiring me to unplug/plug-in the USB cable to restart it. Before this I had problems with USB buss not working even to the point that the server wouldn't survive BIOS post until I unplugged the USB cable. I wasn't sure if having so many hdd's (5 all together) could be tasking the power supply too much and possible adding to my USB issues.

2. I have 2-500Gb drives full of movies (both drives formatted for large clusters) and some of the movies stored on them play back very choppy and rough even though they are full DVD-rips (vob). I though that this may be due to the drives being accessed so rarely (1x a month or so). I though that the NAS may even out my hdd usage so that all drives are accessed more uniformly.

To top things off, I bought a horizontal HTPC as well. I the process of moving components, I found the that the chipset fan on my ASUS A8N had died and the chipset looks like it has seen better days. The system was running before so I'm sure the chip wasn't completely dead. I'm now debating buying a new fan or passive cooler for the chipset or start looking to upgrade my HTPC.

I don't know if the chipset could have been damaged from running hot for so long, so I'd hate to buy a cooling device only to find that the chipset has been damaged to the point of no return....

Thanks.

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by jryan15

Beyond the price being right, I've been having a few issues/concerns with my HTPC.

1. My USB-UIRT keeps dropping out requiring me to unplug/plug-in the USB cable to restart it. Before this I had problems with USB buss not working even to the point that the server wouldn't survive BIOS post until I unplugged the USB cable. I wasn't sure if having so many hdd's (5 all together) could be tasking the power supply too much and possible adding to my USB issues.

2. I have 2-500Gb drives full of movies (both drives formatted for large clusters) and some of the movies stored on them play back very choppy and rough even though they are full DVD-rips (vob). I though that this may be due to the drives being accessed so rarely (1x a month or so). I though that the NAS may even out my hdd usage so that all drives are accessed more uniformly.

To top things off, I bought a horizontal HTPC as well. I the process of moving components, I found the that the chipset fan on my ASUS A8N had died and the chipset looks like it has seen better days. The system was running before so I'm sure the chip wasn't completely dead. I'm now debating buying a new fan or passive cooler for the chipset or start looking to upgrade my HTPC.

I don't know if the chipset could have been damaged from running hot for so long, so I'd hate to buy a cooling device only to find that the chipset has been damaged to the point of no return....

Thanks.

Sounds like the USBUIRT dropouts could be caused by the chipset overheating and resetting/freezing. If it still works, especially before it heats up, like after a cold start, then it is probably fine, but definitely throw a fan and heatsink on it.

What NAS did you buy? When you say NAS Server, with a Celeron, I think computer, with a Celeron, which opens up the possiblities, vs a plain old NAS which is specialized hardware etc....

I currently run a PC as a NAS, running Ubuntu, with a 6x1.5TB Software RAID array formatted as XFS, and shared out as a Windows Share. I record 4x HDHR streams, and one HDPVR at the same time, while playing back to two HD200's with no problem.
Granted, my Ubuntu box is a dual core Athlon, it is not even breaking a sweat when all that is going on.
If you have a computer as your NAS, you might want to look into installing Linux on it to make it a NAS. Linux makes a much faster an efficient NAS than the actual Home User NAS level devices, in my experience.

[stevech]

my earlier comments re s-l-o-w NASes I've tried apply to embedded Linux in the NAS box, rather than a full computer running Linux/Ubuntu. The overhead of SMB combined with the cheap CPU in embedded NASes is the culprit, I think. Most of those CPUs are like 400MHz or so and have slow memory.

[mikejaner]

I'm confused what this means...

Originally Posted by stevech

my earlier comments re s-l-o-w NASes I've tried apply to embedded Linux in the NAS box, .......

I agree that embedded Linux NAS systems, at the consumer level are slower than a full blown computer sharing files etc... Even running specialized NAS OS'es like FreeNAS, on a full computer, in my experience, aren't as fast as a full Linux Distro for some reason.
Seeing as the chip he mentioned is a pretty decent performer based on Conroe..
http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82e16819116040
.. I was curious to see if this box he is talking about is actually a computer, or a specialized NAS device.

[stevech]

I've read that NASes using NFS instead of SMB are somewhat faster. Does Windows 7 (or XP) have means to mount/use NFS volumes?

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by stevech

I've read that NASes using NFS instead of SMB are somewhat faster. Does Windows 7 (or XP) have means to mount/use NFS volumes?

http://sagehacks.wordpress.com/2009/...der-windows-7/

[johns55]

I have a file server with 6TB of space that I just run XP on and share out the drives. I have another machine that runs XP with sage and connets to the file server through a Gig switch. Very simple and I even run showanalyzer on the file server. Been running that way for over a year with no performance issues.

Only problem that I have had is if I run Sage as a service, when booting the machine sage tries to start before the network connections are established. To work around it I just auto logon on the sage machine and start the sage service in a startup script.