I am sure that a lot of us are computer nerds, so I thought it would be fun to see what everyone is using for their media server. I am building a new case to house my RAID arrays, so the pictures and specs are related to my current build, but this will change soon.
What Brand are all those HDD’s ?
Mine is quite simple
Skull i7 (16gb Ram, 250gb Samsung SSD) as PMS connected to Synology 1815+ NAS (WD Red 2x6tb, 6x4tb)
@spikemixture said:
What Brand are all those HDD’s ?
The drives are all Seagate. I am currently running in RAID 1 pairs, but I am going to add a third drive to each RAID for additional redundancy. I have ripped a great majority of my video collection and I don’t want to have any possibility of having to do it again. I have about 1600 discs ripped to the server at this point, with probably another 1000 left to rip.
I used a Synology DS1513+ with a DX513 expansion before I built the media server. The 1815+ is a monster of a device!
My “micro server” is a Gigabyte Brix with Celeron N3150, 4GB of RAM, 1TB of HDD and 128 GB of microSD; OS is Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, I use it sometimes as a client too with OpenPHT or Kodi+PlexKodiConnect.
I love this,
My Plex set up i have used for the last 5 years is the following
Mac Mini 2009 (white one) 1TB SSD, 4GB Ram, external 2TB USB Drive.
Its rock solid, transcodes and streams perfectly, have watched local and remote from Europe and US as i travel for work, i have HdHomerun Tuners for the DVR and running Beta 3 i get perfect recordings everytime.
I have really enjoyed the evolution of Plex ever since i first started using it.
Release 0.7.12: Knight to Bishop 3
March 03rd, 2009
Seems so long ago, but over the years i have kept my venerable little Mac Mini its runs Yosemite and its super happy…
Its bonkers but my Mac just keeps on gong and still looks a nice bright White lol, Bless
A simple Mac Mini (late 2012) 2.3 GHz Core i7 with 16GB of RAM, a 1TB drive running El Capitan.
5 NAS drives @ 4TB each (Raid1) for 20TB of storage (about 27% filled and yes, I keep track of each drives usage).
Just hums along with very little maintenance, has provided me with my media in different parts of the world and throughout my home for a number of years now.
Not sure I will need to replace anytime in the next few years.
I ran Plex on my MacBook Pro for a while. I was using a Synology DS1513+ and a DX513 expansion for service. I then moved to a LINUX build on another computer I built. I then moved to build another computer, and now run it on Windows 10 Pro.
I am impressed with how well Plex runs on all platforms.
Running on Synology DS1515+ with 16GB of RAM. No need to transcode but If required it does 1 stream (1080p mkv less than 10Mbps).
My line is 100/20 and also remotely my clients are able to direct play (used rarely).
Dual xeon X5687
96gb DDR3 RAM
6x3TB WD Red for Array and 1TB WD Black for cache drive
Running Plex in a docker container on Unraid and virtualizing my gaming machine.
[HDD]
3x - 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM SATA III 6.0Gb/s
2x - 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM SATA III 6.0Gb/s
I am thinking of replacing the regular Barracuda’s with either Barracuda Pros or IronWolf Pros. The current drives have been in there for a couple years with no issues, however the newer Barracuda & IronWolf Pros are 6-8TB in size, they both have 256MB cache, and they both come with a 5 year warranty. So now I’m just trying to decide if I want a NAS drive or just standard consumer since it’s only a $100 price tag difference and I would be buying 2 the drives.
Any thoughts/suggestions?
I know some people shun Seagate due to their experiences and hey to each their own, but I have only ever had 1 Seagate drive fail on me and that’s because I dropped the thing by accident during a move.
I have had terrible luck with Seagate. I have 14 drives in my server (all platter drives are Seagate) and have had to have 5 of them replaced. They are Barracuda Pro drives, mixed with IronWolf. Bad blocks have been found on each of the drives that have been replaced. The problem with the drives causes the server to crash repeatedly upon access until the drive is removed. Luckily for me, all my drives are in a RAID configuration for mirroring, so I don’t lose data.
I am thinking about moving all new drives to Western Digital to see if I have better luck with them.
Mac Mini Mid 2007
1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB RAM
10.7.5 Lion
80 GB Hard Drive
2 TB External for Media
2 TB Time Machine
When the original 80 GB HD dies I’ll do an SSD. It’s a very modest system yet it serves my needs without any problems! I don’t use it for any photos…just Movies and TV recordings.
Where do you see the benefit of running SSD as cache drives?
I assume Faster loading, Faster scanning, Faster streaming etc.?
You maybe spoilt now and can’t remmber what it was like pre SSD cache.
How much faster ?
And if (when) you build again would you do it the same?
