mediaservers

[sil3nt_dr3ams]

Just curious what other people are running, here is mine.

http://www.nissanpatrol.com.au/forums/images/imported/2014/01/4.jpg

http://www.nissanpatrol.com.au/forums/images/imported/2014/01/5.jpg

http://www.nissanpatrol.com.au/forums/images/imported/2014/01/6.jpg

http://www.nissanpatrol.com.au/forums/images/imported/2014/01/7.jpg

Intel Xeon X3220
Intel s3200sh board

10x 2tb in jbod everything on those drives is replaceable, so no point with raid.

[SonOf]

nice, whar was the damage to build if I may ask

[Hodge]

Nice set-up mate. Got more disks in there than a Google server room.
Mine is a pure silent simple water-cooled unit, with about 2TB of space. I run a game-capture card straight in it purely for recording foxtel stuff direct which takes up heck of a lot of room. That's mainly what mines there for. The rest of media I leech straight off my main rig.

[sil3nt_dr3ams]

nice, whar was the damage to build if I may ask

Most of the parts where sourced from America, probably 1600$ all up

[SonOf]

not bad, cheers

[mudski]

Nice mate. I just run two NAS drives, one with 4 x 2tb Drives (soon to be upgraded to 4tb drives) and another 2 bay jobbie for my torrent needs. :)
Who's up for some fault finding too? I know its network related but can't pin point it. On the odd occassion when watching movies from the NAS on one or both of my HTPC's the movie gets real choppy. If I change the jumbo frame setting on the network card it goes. But then comes back say the next time or after when you watch another movie (not consistent on when it will happen). Its all hard wired with CAT5E so its not wireless. I'm using an Asus 8 port router (GX-D1081)to connect it all too. Something is holding it up. But I don't know what.

Cheers.

[lhurley]

Nice mate. I just run two NAS drives, one with 4 x 2tb Drives (soon to be upgraded to 4tb drives) and another 2 bay jobbie for my torrent needs. :)
Who's up for some fault finding too? I know its network related but can't pin point it. On the odd occassion when watching movies from the NAS on one or both of my HTPC's the movie gets real choppy. If I change the jumbo frame setting on the network card it goes. But then comes back say the next time or after when you watch another movie (not consistent on when it will happen). Its all hard wired with CAT5E so its not wireless. I'm using an Asus 8 port router (GX-D1081)to connect it all too. Something is holding it up. But I don't know what.

Cheers.

Can you get it to do it?? ie using the network. I know on my network, if im streaming a movie at full hd and someone else starts using the network it will drop out. Remember you are moving huge amounts of data to watch quality tv/movies. What player are you using also? Probably not related, more curious.

[mudski]

Can you get it to do it?? ie using the network. I know on my network, if im streaming a movie at full hd and someone else starts using the network it will drop out. Remember you are moving huge amounts of data to watch quality tv/movies. What player are you using also? Probably not related, more curious.
Strange this is it hasn't always done it. I think its bottlenecking in the network somewhere. As when watching using VLC when it happens the progress bar on the bottom of the screen is usually blue when its fine, when it happens it turns to orange and move along the bar to the right( hard to explain) and then its fine, until a few seconds later it does it again.
I actually haven't tried on my gaming pc, to see if it does it...Both HTPCs are very capable of watching full HD rips too.

[lhurley]

Strange this is it hasn't always done it. I think its bottlenecking in the network somewhere. As when watching using VLC when it happens the progress bar on the bottom of the screen is usually blue when its fine, when it happens it turns to orange and move along the bar to the right( hard to explain) and then its fine, until a few seconds later it does it again.
I actually haven't tried on my gaming pc, to see if it does it...Both HTPCs are very capable of watching full HD rips too.

Im not doubting the capabilities, just sounds to me like the network is struggling. Could possibly try having a direct link to the server/s to remove and interference then go from there?

Annoying stuff like this is why i never pursued a career in IT :p

[sil3nt_dr3ams]

Sounds to me your problem is in your network hardware, Copy a large file from your nas box on both your htpc's at the same time what are the transfers speeds?

[sil3nt_dr3ams]

while doing that hit control alt delete go to task manager and click on the networking tab have a look whats going on there. we can rule out the harddrives for the moment the read/write speeds should be more than sufficient.

[mudski]

O.k definitely something going on.
Gaming Pc, in the same room as the NAS gets 25mb/s transfer speed, network usage at 25%
Front HTPC via a Belkin N1 (don't laugh) gets average 13.5mb/s network usage at 11%
Front HTPC NOT with Belkin N1 get 7.2mb/s (go figure) network usage at 7%

Back HTPC gets a whopping 1.15mb/s!!!!


Back HTPC direct to NAS, NO router inbetween : get 12mb/s network usage at 99% (assuming its 99% because of the direct connection to the NAS).
So the router is stopping it, but why. Flooding?

[sil3nt_dr3ams]

O.k definitely something going on.
Gaming Pc, in the same room as the NAS gets 25mb/s transfer speed, network usage at 25%
Front HTPC via a Belkin N1 (don't laugh) gets average 13.5mb/s network usage at 11%
Front HTPC NOT with Belkin N1 get 7.2mb/s (go figure) network usage at 7%

Back HTPC gets a whopping 1.15mb/s!!!!


Back HTPC direct to NAS, NO router inbetween : get 12mb/s network usage at 99% (assuming its 99% because of the direct connection to the NAS).
So the router is stopping it, but why. Flooding?

Hey mate can we try something a little unconventional ? do you have those plastic freezer blocks in the freezer at all or maybe two bags of frozen vegies? put one under the router one on top wrap a towel around it. chill the router then re the test. Just bare with me .

I have a list of things we can go thru,

[sil3nt_dr3ams]

It's ethier your router getting hot or its your cabling, I run all cat6e and all gigabit gear but my network is alittle different.

modem--->hardware firewall ---> wifi router ----> gigabit switch---> gigabit switch

http://www.nissanpatrol.com.au/forums/images/imported/2014/01/19.jpg

http://www.nissanpatrol.com.au/forums/images/imported/2014/01/20.jpg

[mudski]

Yeah I think its the router. As I switched ports on it and the transfer speeds jumped back up. CAT5E is more than enough for a home server unless the cables will be over 100 metres or so. The longest on mine is around 30...I think i need to look into a better router.

[Fry]

Yeah I think its the router. As I switched ports on it and the transfer speeds jumped back up. CAT5E is more than enough for a home server unless the cables will be over 100 metres or so. The longest on mine is around 30...I think i need to look into a better router.

I use to have issue with transfer speeds and general network crapness. It was my all in one not being up to the job.
I ened up getting a ASUS RT-N66U
http://www.asus.com/au/Networking/RTN66U/

No more networking issues.

[sil3nt_dr3ams]

Upgrading your network to gigabit wont be expensive mate and you'll enjoy the rewards. Basically your speed of transfers is the speed that your hard drives can read and write at each end. I average 90MB/sec transferring over the network so moving large files is not a problem. Everytime I plug a pc/laptop into the network that has 10/100 network controllers its painful to work on over the network. If your going to spend the money on a new router atleast go a gigabit so you have the option to change your cables later.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Netgear-DGND3700-N600-Wireless-Dual-Band-ADSL2-Modem-Router-Gigabit-LAN-ADSL-/281030528746?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item416eb98eea

looks like a good choice.

When you going buying a router make sure it has a modem in it as well as alot of routers dont it is an easy mistake to make.

[mudski]

Thanks guys. I have too much cat5e in the house to even think about changing it. Besides I can't even get close to topping the cat5e limitations anyhow so thats a no brainer.
Router is my issue.
I have a BOB lite modem for NBN so I don't need a router with modem in it. But am thinking of getting a better NBN modem. There was one that had good reports of faster connection etc etc but do you think I can remember what it was? But I do need 8 ports on a router....

[FNQGU]

Holy Shi.t!! What forum did I accidentally click into…. Abort, Abort, Abort!!!

[sil3nt_dr3ams]

You could probally just get away with simple switch,

[mudski]

Yeah well thats what I have now, a simple Asus 8 port Giga switch. I don't want to get the same but different. If you know what I mean.
I need to research a bit more...

[Sretch]

Nice setup. What case and HDD controller card are you running?

[sil3nt_dr3ams]

Yeah well thats what I have now, a simple Asus 8 port Giga switch. I don't want to get the same but different. If you know what I mean.
I need to research a bit more...

Cant go wrong with dlink gear,


Nice setup. What case and HDD controller card are you running?

http://www.nissanpatrol.com.au/forums/images/imported/2014/01/1.png

Case is a Define XL PC Case by Fractal Design, I have 11 hdd's in it without having to mod anything. I probably get another 4 in 5.25 bays.