Christopher (Drashna)

A fact which made me extremely wary of the newer Hitachi/HGST drives. WD was my least favorite until this run of luck on Seagate, but so far I haven't gotten burnt on the newer HGST/WD drives. As you say, all the manufacturers have had their share of issues. I just try to keep a mixture of drives and make sure to scatter my purchases across multiple manufacturing lots to hedge my bets. That and make liberal use of data duplication on my pool to save me when something goes sideways!

After watching a few things with Emby...transcoding and access via DLNA appears a  bit "wonky".  I had two large MKV's that would stop part way through in Emby but play fine in Plex. It appears there isn't a PS3 client, which is an issue now that I've been spoiled by the Plex client..but one of the neighbors using a 360 txt'd me asking me "What this Emby thing was" and to leave it on...so... still playing with it, trying the other clients, etc.  Most certainly a nice piece of software.
 
Hey, in 1996 I had a DOS 6.22 box running a HTTP server, POP3 server, SMTP server, IRC server, FTP server, NNTP server, SMTP server, NTP server, RADIUS server while running a multi-node BBS.. All on a Pentium 60 w/ 16 megs of ram -- and it did it without flinching. Now THAT was amazing.    
 
I had friends who ran Media Center boxes..2005 me thinks. It was an actual whole O/S, they had dedicated machines and cable cards. I'm guessing it was then baked into WHS. IIRC I avoided it because I had Direc-TV which meant no tuner card support. So for my use, with TVersity and the DLNA access via XBMC on original XBOX (still a damn useful machine) at the time I didn't see any reason to run it. 
 
Thanks for the GPU link. Very interesting to say the least.
 
This is obviously a stupid question and yes I could Google but doesn't there have to be logon for Task Scheduler to run something?  
 
Sonarr will take ya five minutes  Just do it.
 
Woot.. just popped the motherboard and PS in the 4224!  She'll be fired up tomorrow.  Things take me so long because I'm so damn indecisive... I'll sit and procrastinate on the configuration rather than just plowing forward and then think about.....I need to do more plowing and less thinking!

I was tempted by the intel one as it uses an LSI chip (and my card is LSi too)

160 megs in 82/83??  That is insane for an individual at that time.
 
I'm guessing it was the biggest Public Domain repository in the country.  
 
-T

+1 for the HBAs based on M1015...these are great.
And you can grow later by adding an expander, instead more HBAs.
 
But...what drive sizes do you employ at the moment?
With drive capacity rising fast the money per TB ratio is falling.
There is as well the solution to just replace drives with larger ones and even sell the used ones afterwards.
Saving on the controller and the energy, too.

He absolutely hit the nail on the end and my professional experience mirrors his, specifically with Seagate Cheetah 15k's being the drive majority in most all my large data center experience in the last 10 years.
 
For the C64, I had the first hard drive ever available.  A 20 MEG Xetec Lt. Kernal...which contained a 20MB Seagate SCSI drive. That was 1985.  Fun Times...I was 11 years old and man did I have to beg for that.  It was a Christmas/Birthday present.
 
Here's one I think about quite frequently: Drive Orientation for longevity - horizontal or vertical. 
 
Physics tells me horizontal.. Drive manufacturers say "no matter."
 
I'll mount mine flat, thank you... just because it makes me feel better I suppose....
 
~RF

That explains some of it -- I have avoided everything "Microsoft Media Center" since day one and I didn't think people actually used Windows Home Server was a real thing up until a couple of years ago. 
 
You just made me chuckle...
 
"Check out the Emby Service" -- The first day I installed Plex I was combing through the options and was perplexed that I couldn't find the "Start As Service" option on a "SERVER" piece of software. Back in the NT days I used SRVANY in situations like this and I planned to do the same for Plex but just haven't gotten around to it.  Amazes me it's still not an option. 
 
I recently switched from Sickbeard to Sonarr.  I don't think I'll be headed back.  I did however find the option in Emby to store all of the metadata in a specified directory so that problem is solved.
 
As for my thoughts?  Well, I can't be definitive until I run Emby for a bit longer but right off the bat they are so close it's ridiculous and it's nice having the choice --  but I will say this: 
 
Emby is free. (Doesn't really matter, I'd donate anyways)
Emby is more my speed. (Multiple meanings)
 
I'll probably switch permanently to whichever one gets the GPU acceleration implementation working correctly....my bet is on Emby.
 
~RF

ah thx!
Indeed, the drive removed correctly and I can now access the pool again.
I will do it the other way next time.

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.

NO, you use deduplication at the host level so it has nothing to do with the VMs themselves.
 
Carlo

psykix, you could just use a free product like SnapRaid to create a parity across your present DrivePool drives.
The volume you stripe to can be local, on another computer or NAS.  Doesn't really matter.
 
Something to think about for a bit more piece of mind.

I myself use a variety of different manufacture drives for my personal stuff.  I work in IT and work with large data (I mean LARGE data) spread out over numious SANs with more than 10K drives.
 
In my professional life I've seen a trend of higher failure rates among Seagate drives than any other manufacture (percentage wise), bot not in the last 2 years (about even).   These are mostly all Enterprise drives and not the common home user or NAS drives that most of us would use routinely.  So I'm not sure how much this matters.
 
I think a lot of failures over time by some companies/users is choosing the wrong drive for the application at hand.  Drives are built differently.  For example putting 40 drives in one case/cabinet will be different then running one or two drives in a normal case.  Lots more vibration and movement.  This can also be even more of a factor for people who try and stuff lots of "home" drives in large cases then use suspend/power down features.  When the drives spin down/spin up they cause extra vibration that other drives in the running in the case won't like, especially when you have 5 to 10 drives spinning up at one time, etc...  Modern drive are much better with this type of thing, but can take it's toll over time.
 
I'm not sure what value this post has except to say that if any one particular vendor had a much higher failure rate than other vendors they probably wouldn't still be in business. The HDD market place is extremly competitive and any manufacture putting out "junk" would surely be noticed in this day and age.
 
Just pick the right disk for the job at hand based on the features it has you need and don't worry to much about who made it. Of course follow common sense rules such as use the same drives if building a traditional RAID type thing, etc

Yeah, fingers crossed!
 
thanks for your help tho

Thanks Christopher, tell Alex thanks for making such quality products, and to you for your helpful answers. It's hard to find businesses these days with such transparency. 

No, I never have.
 
Sounds like you need to poke around over at http://c64.org  -- You will certainly find the answer to your question. 
 
I never actually play too many video games.. heck, even when I was importing them into the US when I was a kid I didn't play many of them.
 
I was more into the demo scene, importing and collecting.
 
One of these days I need to hook all of my Commodore stuff back up.  It's been sitting in a storage closet at my parents house since the FBI gave it back. (15 years after they took it!)
 
~RF

It's a well discussed (as in, I've mentioned it repeatedly to Alex, the developer) feature, that we do plan on adding in the future. 
 
The best option I can offer for now is to enable QoS on your router, to help curb the usage. 

Lol, my 30TB seems oddly insufficient now.
 
Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk

I somehow missed this response earlier.  I didn't realize Emby was that nice. (as in an actual Plex competitor) 
 
It really is hard to believe the UI is so that much better, Plex is beautiful.
 
Argh. Now I feel the need to install it just to compare.
 
........more hours in the day!
 
~RF

Somehow Emby has slipped under my radar over the last few years. I might have to take a look at it for the heck of it.
 
I've tried most every DLNA server that I've run across and my experience goes like this.....
 
The first DLNA media server I ever used was TVersity, for a few reasons. #1) It was the first and only (at the time) DLNA server that would transcode AND only when needed on a per device basis. #2) It was 100% free. #3) I simply couldn't find anything better. Free or Paid. 
 
I needed to feed original X-Boxes running XBMC, X-Box 360's and several WDTV Live boxes but the majority of clients were/are Playstation 3's. After A LOT of tweaking I got TVersity where I wanted it and had no complaints for several years. It just worked.
 
Like you said Plex wanted to transcode everything which made it basically unusable for more than one or two streams so I stuck with TVersity.  It just worked.
 
Then I ran across Serviio and have been using it for about a year or so. A few short months ago I decided to check Plex out once again and wow,  I haven't looked back. Plex has its (minor) quirks but they are working their butts off over there and I have zero complaints. The community support is superb and they will get around to fixing what little annoyances I have. I notice the Plex server is updated about once every two weeks or so.
 
I didn't even know they had a Windows 8 app. If it's that bad just open up a browser (suggest Chrome in desktop mode) and skip using the app entirely. I have been extremely impressed with all of the Plex clients that I have tried (they sure support a lot!) but I must say the Samsung Smart-TV app is stunning. The PS3 & Android app are great also. I've read that the Roku 3 and Vizio clients are also wonderful. 
 
Personally I think the best experience is had in Chrome.
 
I know we're not exactly apples-2-apples with our configurations (DLNA, etc.) but I just wanted to share my experiences.
 
I still run Serviio in tandem with Plex though as a backup. I did pay for it and it works great in case I ever have an issue with Plex I can just stream from Serviio, it's on a different machine and pointed at the same media (drive)pool as my Plex server.. although I haven't had to use it yet.
 
PLex has come a long way in the past several months. I 'spect they got some funding.
 
Now go upgrade your Plex pass and show them some more love. They aren't slouching over there and I'm sure any issues you have will be resolved.
 
WIth all that said I wish you the best viewing experience and thanks for sharing your thoughts.    
 
Now to decide on the 10GB hardware I need.... Argh.. need more hours in the day to research!!!! 
 
~RF
 
 
 
 

The Gen8 Microserver needs a P222 so that it's reported to the iLO properly.
 
I wouldn't really want to fudge it :-)
 
These 4 drives were originally in a 4 bay QNAP using RAID 5 but the QNAP is ARM based and very slow, so I migrated to the Gen8.
 
If I duplicate everything, then I need 4 more drives - which means I also need a controller card and an external bay. Too much expense when what I have now will last me for several years since I have 6Tb free. It's just not worth all that expense to cover the loss of one drive. To be honest, if I was looking at parity then I'd have gone the hardware raid 5 route, so that I only had 25% overhead. I know that brings its own problems, and I've had RAID 5 arrays in my datacentre which lost 2 drives and required restores from backups.
 
Sooo... you're not gonna convince me to spend out all that money on duplication! hehehe!

Thank you Christopher for your in depth answer. I'll be looking at getting a second SSD I suppose.

Well since everything on my 4x4Tb drives is media and is ultimately replaceable (albeit with some time and effort!) then I came to the conclusion that having an extra 3.6Tb of available space at the expense of a drive failure is acceptable.
 
I'm impressed with the scanner. When I copied the data off the Storage Spaces array so that I could set up DrivePool instead, I had to use a multitude of small 1Tb and 500Gb drives that I had laying around.
 
I knew at least one of the 1Tb drives was acting strangely (it worked but seemd a bit "odd" at times) and as soon as I plugged it in, I got an email from the Scanner reporting S.M.A.R.T. issues. Therefore it seems to be doing its job.
 
Given the above, hopefully anything other than an instant complete drive failure should give me time to get the data off any drive which begins to show problems.
 
Also, as you mention if I do have data I want backing up then I can just dupe those folders.
 
All good for me, because Storage Spaces is awful - I deleted a load of stuff, and it doesn't rebalance, so you end up with uneven drives. They are not readable individually either. My other option was to add a P222 controller card to my Gen8, but that's a pretty expensive option and would cost at least twice what I paid for the Gen8 itself!
 
I can highly recommend Drivepool and Scanner from what I've seen so far :-)

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.

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.

OK, Gotcha. Time to start trolling E-Bay.
 
As I said before, I'm not much of a hardware guy so .... ummmm...
 
Two 10GB NIC's, one for each Norco box...
 
Two Mini GBIC's for the Cisco SG200?
 
Am I missing anything Drashna?   
 
WWDD???  
 
haha
 
~RF