Re: Newbie needs Network / media centre solution!

[Jim Noble <yahoo-groups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stefan Gavin wrote:
> However to play my HD rips or MKV files smoothly I figure I need a
constant data transfer speed of 20 MB/s which would also make the network
more usable for transferring files. This would enable me to store
everything on a large NAS with RAID or mirroring technology for back up ?
this would then be accessible by any machine meaning I could play HD
content on any TV in house, but most importantly on my Viera through my
media centre.
>

RAID is not a substitute for backups. It doesn't guard against things
like accidental deletion, file system corruption, theft, lightning
strikes etc, and in consumer/appliance grade kit can potentially make it
significantly more difficult to recover from a drive failure. (Quite a
few reports of arrays being rendered unrecoverable in a failure
condition in the archives.)

RAID 0 should give you a performance increase though, but I think
rsych-ing nightly or weekly to a [slower] drive/server elsewhere would
be a better option for backups.

I know a couple of people who've had more success with the IcyBox NAS
using RAID 1 where they've been able to put the non-failed drive in a
linux box and recover the data directly, as it just uses standard ext3
format. You've got to be comfortable using a linux/unix CLI for that to
work though, really :-)

Jim


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