Steve
Senior Member
So, my main desktop pc decided to have a heart attack and stroke at the same time. Not sure which way it happened but a drive failed and power supply (psu) died a horrible death. My working theory is the drive died/shorted and took the psu with it. In any case I sort of got REALLY lucky because it was the O/S drive that failed and not my data drive. The sad fact is that I really do know better and tell people all the time about backups but I don't take my own advice. I have a new psu in there and I'm going to try to save the drive with a new controller board. So, I am taking this as a warning sign and I want to setup a robust new system like I should have had all along.
So, here are my current components:
Main desktop workhorse pc: Asus mobo with C2D and 4 (well 3 usable) GB RAM
Kids/wife's pc: Old 1Ghz Compaq pc
HA Server: Dell P4 3.2Ghz with 2GB RAM, this is my SageTV server and CQC server
This is my opportunity to redo thing the right way. My priorities are:
1. Robust / reliable - I don't want to lose data!!!
2. Fairly power efficient - gotta get electric bill under control
3. Easy to setup and maintain. While I do have the skills to do low level stuff, I'm old and grumpy and want it pretty simple
4. Affordable - I'd sure like to keep it reasonable but I realized you can't put a price on your data. My life is on that 1 drive.
So I've been doing alot of reading and researching and as is typical, reviews are all over the place. I have been looking seriously at Drobo, ReadyNAS, WHS (either build my own or prebuilt like HP MediaSmart server). I've been looking at options like keeping pc's as is and using Drobo or WHS simply as a backup, pc's with just O/S and Drobo or ReadyNAS as primary storage, WHS with Drobo as either backup or primary storage, etc, etc. and I've got a headache! I've thought about taking my current desktop and making it a WHS SageTV server to run Sage plus do duty a a WHS server for backups (for Sage I have all extenders, but I do run Comskip). If I do that I would probably either keep CQC on there or more likely put it on a dedicated fit2pc or similar low power device using the Quatech thingies I got. And then I would build a new main desktop pc.
So I'm not sure which components to go with or what configuration would be best and most efficient. WHS has some great and some bad reviews, same with Drobo, especially Droboshare. The better ReadyNAS is alot more $. Do I try to do it all really really simple like WHS or should I do slightly lower level and use stuff like Genie for backups and Delta file sync stuff, etc?
I do know I don't want to go Linux or totally do a bunch of low level setup and maintenance.
So, what do y'all do? If you could build your 'dream' system, how would you do it, keeping in mind the 4 priorities above. While price is last, its still somewhat important, but reliability is most important.
So, here are my current components:
Main desktop workhorse pc: Asus mobo with C2D and 4 (well 3 usable) GB RAM
Kids/wife's pc: Old 1Ghz Compaq pc
HA Server: Dell P4 3.2Ghz with 2GB RAM, this is my SageTV server and CQC server
This is my opportunity to redo thing the right way. My priorities are:
1. Robust / reliable - I don't want to lose data!!!
2. Fairly power efficient - gotta get electric bill under control
3. Easy to setup and maintain. While I do have the skills to do low level stuff, I'm old and grumpy and want it pretty simple
4. Affordable - I'd sure like to keep it reasonable but I realized you can't put a price on your data. My life is on that 1 drive.
So I've been doing alot of reading and researching and as is typical, reviews are all over the place. I have been looking seriously at Drobo, ReadyNAS, WHS (either build my own or prebuilt like HP MediaSmart server). I've been looking at options like keeping pc's as is and using Drobo or WHS simply as a backup, pc's with just O/S and Drobo or ReadyNAS as primary storage, WHS with Drobo as either backup or primary storage, etc, etc. and I've got a headache! I've thought about taking my current desktop and making it a WHS SageTV server to run Sage plus do duty a a WHS server for backups (for Sage I have all extenders, but I do run Comskip). If I do that I would probably either keep CQC on there or more likely put it on a dedicated fit2pc or similar low power device using the Quatech thingies I got. And then I would build a new main desktop pc.
So I'm not sure which components to go with or what configuration would be best and most efficient. WHS has some great and some bad reviews, same with Drobo, especially Droboshare. The better ReadyNAS is alot more $. Do I try to do it all really really simple like WHS or should I do slightly lower level and use stuff like Genie for backups and Delta file sync stuff, etc?
I do know I don't want to go Linux or totally do a bunch of low level setup and maintenance.
So, what do y'all do? If you could build your 'dream' system, how would you do it, keeping in mind the 4 priorities above. While price is last, its still somewhat important, but reliability is most important.