Re: Hard drive film/music storage

[Phil Harris <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

noel_pilot wrote:

>Hey all,
>Next probably stupid newbie question!!
>
>Im looking into my plans for a media server and Im trying to estimate
>the kind of storage I'm going to need.  Planning on putting all dvds
>onto a hard drive together with many tv shows and all future movies
>and footage!
>
>So....what are my options?
>
>
Reckon on about 4.7Gb per movie if you keep it at full bitrate but strip
out all extras and foreign language audio tracks and subtitles. (That's
what mine averages out at over just under 400 movies.)

>In my head I have this idea of some kind of drive setup that appears
>as one drive but actually spans across multiple drives. i.e. a number
>of 200+Gb drives with dvds and tv shows on that all appear when I
>click on one drive symbol or navigate to one area.
>
>
Windows MCE with the MyMovies plugin works nicely enough for me...

...there's also a networked DVD player that I've been looking at with
one of the HA dealers on this list that is looking very good too and
will be *MUCH* cheaper and quieter than a typical PC for playback.

>Have heard a lot about RAID but my limited understanding is thats a
>more redundancy thing??!!
>
>
RAID is good but you sacrifice a certain amount of space for (supposed)
reliability and resilience - and if you are simply storing DVDs then you
can recreate data if a drive fails (assuming that you are at least
copying DVDs that you own of course).

>Advice on this be greatly appreciated, Am open to consideration of NAS
>ideas but like the idea of being able to add drives at will!
>
>
I've been using firewire attached drives ... more than quick enough and
easy to expand as and when required.

>As always cost is an issue, so cheaper the better!!!
>
>
As always... ;-)

Phil