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RobbieH

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Everything posted by RobbieH

  1. I use CouchPotato and MCEBuddy. For now, Emby still is the winner when it comes to programs with no data though.
  2. There are some shows that simply do not have any metadata available to them on the internet. Some, I have gone out to TMDb or thetvdb and set up my own entries, but it's a pain. Without the metadata, they don't show up in Plex.
  3. Same here, if the server is down I hear it from my daughter and wife! My equipment isn't in my office. I have it all in a closet set up with a dedicated wiring/server area. All the equipment is in there - switches, server, HDHR tuners, garage door interface, UPS's, etc. It is a little noisy in there since I built the new server, but it is mainly because I haven't gotten around to changing the server's chassis fans.
  4. That stuff was a lot of money for me back then. I had a couple of grand in my Atari ST, then there was the cost of the hard drives and Adaptec 4000 (close to a grand total), my first USR modem set me back $699 because I didn't order it on the sysop deal, and so on... and back then our household income was just over $18,000 per year. And that was for the system that ran the BBS, never mind the other equipment in the room. But like I said, look where it got me. I'm paid well, I work for a large, stable company, and I walk from my bedroom to my office to go to work - no commute, no dressing up, nada.
  5. Another thing you need to know about missing films - if you don't name the files EXACTLY the way Plex wants them, they don't show up. It is one of the things that bugs me about Plex. Emby will show it, but it won't have any program details if it doesn't know what it is for sure, but Plex just ignores the file altogether.
  6. My wife didn't like me buying all that gear either. But the experience I gained in all my tinkering is what led to the IT job I have now.
  7. I'm using the Plex client, the one that requires Plex Pass, downloaded from Playstation Store. I tried it again last night, and yep, it is slow to move around in the menus compared to Roku 3 and AFTV. Of course once it is playing, it is just fine. I know it's a minor quibble, I am really glad they released the PS3 client, I just wish it took advantage of the PS3's hardware to speed up the navigation. Oh, I did note while testing that it takes a long time to load, too. Eh, like I said, minor quibbles, I hardly ever use the PS3 for Plex since I have other options. I am glad my copy speed is back up where it belongs, too! I don't know how MCEBuddy was staying hidden away from me, because right now Im' looking at the server and I see HandbrakeCLI.exe sitting at 80%. Why the system showed System Idle Process at 90% but the processor pegged yesterday is a complete mystery to me.
  8. I have a question. In my experience, Windows operating systems, even Windows Server OS installs, don't like very large numbers of files within a folder. All sorts of bad performance issues crop up, mainly huge performance issues when trying to do any sort of mass file stuff - example would be backing up the folder. Christopher, does this issue affect the performance of DrivePool?
  9. At first I only used an AMD 610e in my server (45w TDP quad core, it was a good choice at the time). I was running Windows Home Server v1 (and later upgraded to 2011) to perform some server tasks, back up workstations, etc. Then, I discovered BlueIris surveillance software. OK, the 610e is still keeping up at this point... Then I added Subsonic, Sickbeard, etc. Still keeping up, but really starting to max out the system Then, I discovered I could do things with my TV recordings such as pre-transcode and commercial removal using MCE Buddy. And then I found Plex (I was still on Media Browser 2 at this time). Cool, I can watch my shows on the road! And lately I upgraded to Emby, and I have started playing with Rokus and Amazon Fire TVs, and doing more tablet based stuff. As you can guess, my little 610e is now completely pegged and I'm nowhere near the necessary horsepower required to do all this. So, I bought a server grade motherboard, ECC RAM, Xeon 1246v3 processor, new case, and I repurposed my Green drives and switched out to WD Red drives (longer warranty, no load cycle issues). Point is, Christopher's recommendation of a board you can upgrade is valid. Those of us that have been down this road can attest to many dollars spent retiring substandard hardware, and many hours spent reinstalling or recovering from failures. Start with a low power CPU if you don't plan on doing a bunch of processor intensive stuff. BUT, get a board you can upgrade to a Xeon later so that you don't have to reinvest time or money on the system. At first you'll kind of tinker around and use it as a server, but a lot of people start realizing what they can do with a system that is on 24/7 and doesn't affect performance at the workstation level, and start adding on, just as I did.
  10. Both ends are Windows 7 in this case. I'll start the copy here in a bit. EDIT: Well, I figured out what it was without having to collect any logs. I am currently copying at 52 MB/second. The problem had nothing to do with Drivepool. Turns out MCEBuddy was kicking in and processing files as they were being copied. When I checked the other day, I didn't see anything in the MCEBuddy conversion list, but when I looked today they did start showing up after about 5 minutes. BUT, the files WERE being processed, they just weren't showing up immediately. And, I'm really surprised that the processes that MCEBuddy uses (ffmpeg, Handbrake) didn't show up in the Processes tab. (and yes, I have Show processes from all users checked!) Normally, those processes do show up. So, I'm going to consider this solved, hide my face, and crawl into the corner of shame.
  11. I should have mentioned, my apologies, I've already made these changes, but I did not do the auto tuning. I made the NIC changes a couple of days ago when I saw the issue. I'm going to go disable the Network I/O boost now and do another test. During the copy, the host box is not maxed out, or at least I don't remember it being maxed out. I can look at that again during the next copy. These are copying files that are NOT duplicated. I'm copying TV shows, and I never duplicate TV shows. I can run the logs and copy some more, I have more I need to copy off the HTPC. Should I run the logs with Network IO Boost on or off? As far as Plex goes, yes the PS3 client, and both my PS3's are wired gigabit. It is horribly slow compared to, say, my Roku 3 or Amazon Fire TV Stick (and the AFTV box is faster than the stick). Server side specs: Intel server board DBS1200V3RPL E3-1246v3 Xeon processor 16GB ECC RAM C: drive - 7200 WD black 500 GB (SSD failed) E and F are 5TB WD reds G is the drive pool NIC is the integrated NIC on the motherboard. Another Intel 4 port is in the machine, but it's used for management, the two pfSense ports, and one of the NICs for WSE2012. The VM is configured to give this machine 6 cores and 12 GB, dedicated. There is a WSE2012 using 4GB and 2 cores, sharing with my pfSense box, although the pfSense box is 1 core and 1 GB. The VM does not share boot drive with the WSE or pfSense VMs.
  12. Quite honestly, all of it was a way to learn more about my love for computers, and to tinker. I went to college to major in chemistry, and ended up with an IT job. I'm still in IT to this day.
  13. Speaking of Sonarr, I recently made the switch because Sickrage died on me (and several other people). It doesn't need the auto processing scripts, because it's all built-in. You'll have to try it to see what I mean. PS3 Plex client - Oh man it is terrible. It is so slow that I about go out of my mind trying to use it. I have an ancient Roku XD box I would rather use with Plex, not only is the speed better, but there is no fan and no 90w box running for me to watch my shows. Yes, I have a Roku 3 too, but I stumbled on this XD box for $5 at a garage sale and had to have it. I use it in a guest room or out on the patio. I was playing with Plex on PS3 a couple of nights ago for the heck of it, so it isn't that I'm running an old version. Mind if I go back to network speed? My copies from my HTPC (W7) to my server (W7 in VMWare) are terrible. The HTPC side is fine, processor at the bottom of the graph, all is well. The server side pegs to 100%, and looking at the running processes, nothing shows to be running very high so it has to be the copies. Copy speed is 5 MB/second. I doubt it's my VMWare box, it's by far the fastest machine I own (Xeon 1276v3). VM has 12MB RAM assigned. Network I/O in DP is on, maybe that's it?
  14. Yeah, I would kind of like to start all over, but all the hours I have put into this... It wouldn't be too hard really, I boot ESXi off a USB thumb drive, then I just have to add the inventory to the new host...
  15. I ran a C=64 BBS too, but just on 3 1541 drives. I don't remember what BBS software I was running, but on my 300 baud modem using Punter download protocol, you could bump it up to about 450 baud. After that, I moved to the Atari ST world. I don't recall what the first BBS software I ran was, but after not too long I switched over to Ratsoft BBS. I was also a Fido BBS, connected to Foundation BBS in Azle, TX, and I was an Atari ST only Fido-like BBS hub. I ran the BBS on three Seagate ST-225 MFM drives connected to an Adaptec 4000 SCSI-MFM adapter, all jammed into a used PC case. I considered moving to the ST-231 RLL drives, but in my PC I had some issues with them, even on the good Western Digital 1:1 interleave controllers. Those three drives sounded like a jet plane sitting on the tarmac in my computer room. The 225s also had terrible stiction problems, if I had to shut them down it wasn't uncommon for me to have to drop the drives on the desk a few times to get them to spin up. I tried all sorts of different "non-compatible" modems back in those days, Compucom, Zoom, etc., but finally went the USR route on the Sysop deal. Started with a 9600 baud HST only, then progressively upgraded to the dual standard, and increased speeds through firmware updates up to as fast as they would ever go. Yes, they were amazing times.
  16. Here's what worked for me, but it requires your motherboard to allow you to set some SATA ports to UEFI and some to legacy. I installed a second drive on a SATA port that was configured for UEFI. Boot up and the UEFI drivers are installed to the existing boot drive. Then reboot and set the boot drive to UEFI. It should boot this time. I've done this on two separate systems and it worked both times. Surprisingly it even worked on my old server, which was running WHS2011.
  17. The user interface is much improved in R2. That said, how honestly do you touch your server, and how much does the interface really matter? That's part of why I'm not on R2, other than I don't have a key for R2.
  18. Yeah, even that didn't work. I can't figure out why RDM creation is grayed out. About to manually create new VMDK files so that I can add an existing VMDK. EDIT: Recreating the VMDKs manually fixed the issue.
  19. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to use GPU acceleration on anything due to the fact I'm using VMWare, using the 1246v3. It appears I can do it if I add a discrete card to the server, but as yet I haven't needed to boost ffmpeg performance. And even then, it seems the ffmpeg stuff I've looked at, such as Handbrake and MCEBuddy, want the Intel integrated GPU to use for acceleration, so even with a discrete card I'm SOL. RIght now I can't change my password for my online account for Emby, I get an error. And, I can't change my Emby forum password, any time I go to the page it just says "Your password will be unlocked in 14 minutes". These little problems drive me crazy. But yes, when it comes to PQ on my HTPC, Emby wins.
  20. You nailed that one, Storage Spaces is awful. I have ignored some alerts from Scanner in the past, since I know I'm all duplicated. What happened? I lost the drives not much later. It does its job for sure.
  21. To follow up on what DaveyBoy said, that's the beauty of Drivepool. If you don't want to back up everything, as Christopher said you can just duplicate the folders you want. This is ultimately what brought me to Drivepool over other solutions.
  22. For a while Emby was less a resource hog than Plex, because Plex would try to transcode the entire stream right up front. A while back Plex changed this, which has helped a ton. On my system, I really don't see much difference between Plex and Emby with several streams going at the same time. I'm trying really hard to switch to Plex for good (even though I'm a paid Emby supporter), but every once in a while Plex will let me down and I'll have to go back to Emby. Plex Theater still has issues playing back media sometimes - the picture will go all kaleidoscope on me for a few seconds, yet every other player will play the video fine. The Plex app for Windows 8.1 is terrible, and my daughter is good at telling me how bad it is on a regular basis. Take my comments with this grain of salt - I'm not bashing either, and/or I'm bashing them both. I haven't found a clear winner yet, but my bet is on Plex. They are so close to getting it right, it seems they just don't have the resources to get there. If they could just get that little bit better, I'd switch my pass from annual to lifetime.
  23. They are physical disks. But when you create a RDM, it creates a VMDK file on a storage resource as a pointer. Step 3 Now we are going to use the vmkfstools utility to create our RDM’s. Remember that a RDM is just another VMDK, but instead of the VMDK pointing to a xxx-flat.vmdk file (which is the actual virtual hard disk), the VMDK points to our physical device. Being as we still need to create this VMDK file we need to save it somewhere. Since we just have the one local datastore, we are going to create the RDM VMDK files in it’s root. Also, I can't copy out these VMDK files, I'm getting errors. And I can't remove the SSD because I get an error that it is in use. The main issue is that I can't create the RDM because it is grayed out though. I feel I need to get the SSD out of the system and/or get those VMDK files for the RDMs gone before I can do anything.
  24. I am missing something here. I had to set up a new machine and trying to map the drives using the easy method, but the steps seem incomplete. In the ESXi Console window, highlight your server Go to the Configuration tab Under Software, click Advanced Settings Click RdmFilter Uncheck the box for RdmFilter.HbaIsShared Click OK Yes, but now that I have this set, how do I add the drives to the VM? I look in the settings of the new VM, but there are no drives to add. I think I see the problem... the VMDK files for these drives are still on the SSD I am pulling out, even though I removed them from the VM and deleted the VM from disk. Do I have to delete them from disk (somehow) before I can add the RDMs? These RDMs are on an SSD that is dying on me, which also contaned the VMDK for the VM. I moved the VM to another drive, which seems to be working. I was able to add the existing RDMs, but since they are on the SSD, I'm afraid I am still at risk.
  25. I installed WSE, then installed Standard over the top of it, because I don't have a license for WSE. This method is approved by Microsoft, but unfortunately this disables DLNA on the machine. Enabling media server fixed the Windows 7 streaming issue, but the recorded shows are still blocked with the sharing issue. These were fine before joining the domain. I should be clear, the recorded TV files are recorded and stored on a Windows 7 machine, not WSE/Standard. I was confusing myself through frustration in the first post.
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