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Post by Topend on Dec 18, 2012 12:53:25 GMT -5
cfelliot,
Your build has inspired me to do my own. I'm considering a SilverStone SST-LC16B-M-USB3.0 HTPC Case.
I'm undecided on which motherboard. I would like standard ATX, HDMI, Optical out, WiFi and possibly stereo RCA out. Why did you decide on the Gigabyte motherboard use are using? Is there something this motherboard does well?
I will choose the other components once I decide on a motherboard. Please feel free to comment on my choice of case.
Edit: Maybe this motherboard, Asus M4A785G HTPC
Cheers, Dave.
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Post by ansat on Dec 18, 2012 13:05:36 GMT -5
Might I suggest adding another 3tb drive and utilize the storage spaces in win8 (I use a win 8 pro to replace WHS 2011)
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Post by Chuck Elliot on Dec 18, 2012 13:46:46 GMT -5
cfelliot, Your build has inspired me to do my own. I'm considering a SilverStone SST-LC16B-M-USB3.0 HTPC Case. I'm undecided on which motherboard. I would like standard ATX, HDMI, Optical out, WiFi and possibly stereo RCA out. Why did you decide on the Gigabyte motherboard use are using? Is there something this motherboard does well? I will choose the other components once I decide on a motherboard. Please feel free to comment on my choice of case. Edit: Maybe this motherboard, Asus M4A785G HTPC Cheers, Dave. Dave, The only limitation of the ITX size motherboard is PCI slots. It only has one. The Gigabyte GA-Z77n Wifi has everything you are asking for. 2-HDMI + 1 DVI 2-USB 3.0 4-USB 2 Optical SPFIF Analog Audio out (never seen RCA jacks except for Coax SPDIF) Wireless + 2 wired RJ45s ( unit can act as access point for non-wireless devices) As far as the case, I'm sure that the SilverStone is a good case, but I've used Fractal cases for my last 3 builds and I like the quality and layout. Might I suggest adding another 3tb drive and utilize the storage spaces in win8 (I use a win 8 pro to replace WHS 2011) ansat, Currently I have just the single 3TB Seagate and a SS boot drive, but the plan is to add 2 more down the road (case will hold 4). This is what I am going to use the PCI slot for, a HighPoint RAID controller running RAID 5 with 3 - 3TB drives. Now this is way over the needs for music and videos, but I also want to store system backups for all the family computers here too.
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Post by ansat on Dec 18, 2012 14:42:31 GMT -5
With windows 8 using a raid in unnecessary. The storage spaces allows you to take drives of all different sizes and create a drive pool that will give you the option of creating drives that have no backup and drives that perform mirroring. With 2 drives it gives you the option of mirroring to 2 drives or creating drives with no mirroring. With a third drive you can have it mirror to 2 additional drives, mirroring to one additional drive or having no mirror. Its a really nice method. Currently I use 3 1tb drives. Of those I made 4 storage pools (they show up as hard drives) One for videos - (no mirroring) - 1 tb One for Documents ( mirrored to one additional drive) 50gig x2 One for pictures - (Mirrored to 2 additional drives) 1tb x3 One for Music - (no mirroring) 1 tb I have all the discs for both the videos and music But with the storage spaces you can create Drives that are greater then the total space that you have. Once you are in need of more space the software will notify you that you need to add more disc space to the storage pool. As you can see I only have 3tb of space but I have allocated over 5tb. Its a really slick system. Here is a link to some more info about it. www.pcworld.com/article/2012847/how-to-master-storage-spaces-in-windows-8.html
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Post by Chuck Elliot on Dec 18, 2012 15:08:12 GMT -5
Although this is a pretty cool feature and one that I was not aware of, I don't totally agree that this replaces the need for RAID.
One nice feature of an add-on RAID card is that it removes the processing requirement from the main CPU. The RAID card is responsible for presenting a single LDU (Logical Disk Unit) from whatever PDUs (Physical Disk Units) are used to form the RAID. This is the same concept as having a separate graphics card do rendering etc. for games.
Secondly, this is brand new tech for Windows. I've suffered with enough half-baked MS ideas in the past!
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bootman
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Typing useless posts on internet forums....
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Post by bootman on Dec 18, 2012 15:12:21 GMT -5
Although this is a pretty cool feature and one that I was not aware of, I don't totally agree that this replaces the need for RAID. One nice feature of an add-on RAID card is that it removes the processing requirement from the main CPU. The RAID card is responsible for presenting a single LDU (Logical Disk Unit) from whatever PDUs (Physical Disk Units) are used to form the RAID. This is the same concept as having a separate graphics card do rendering etc. for games. Secondly, this is brand new tech for Windows. I've suffered with enough half-baked MS ideas in the past! Not quite new tech but the evolution of drive pool that was used in WHS. Also the data is still readable even if you pull them out of the array.
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Post by ansat on Dec 18, 2012 15:22:14 GMT -5
Although this is a pretty cool feature and one that I was not aware of, I don't totally agree that this replaces the need for RAID. One nice feature of an add-on RAID card is that it removes the processing requirement from the main CPU. The RAID card is responsible for presenting a single LDU (Logical Disk Unit) from whatever PDUs (Physical Disk Units) are used to form the RAID. This is the same concept as having a separate graphics card do rendering etc. for games. Secondly, this is brand new tech for Windows. I've suffered with enough half-baked MS ideas in the past! This is actually old tech for microsoft. This was a feature that was in windows home server 2003. Due to licensing or something like that, it was removed from WHS 2011 and was brought back into service in windows 8 with some needed refinements. (It was called Drive Extender in WHS) While I am a fan of creating a raid at the hardware level when necessary, for raid 1, I dont feel that this has any benifit to implementing at the hardware level. Storage spaces also allows a parity drive which will allow for your raid 5 setup. But I didnt mention that earlier as I would not want that being controlled by windows logic and agree that a good controller would be needed (not to be confused with the onboard raid controllers). The main reason I am a fan of this software method is that it is scaleable with time. I happened to have 3 1tb drives from a raid that I had set up previously in home server 2011. But currently, when I need more space I can just buy a 2tb or 3tb and add it to the storage pool. You could do the same with a 1 tb drive to yours and have 1tb of available space for mirroring. Tony
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2012 20:23:39 GMT -5
that will not take the place of true raid, software is software, if you want to trust it not to corrupt? be my guest, raid anything on a hardware level is always the way to go IMO. With RSTE you can just throw in a nothing drive if something goes wrong an rebuild the array without even having to do anything but plugging in a drive and clicking "yes".
Win 8 seem to work fine though, as far as an improvement goes, it's not one over win 7 yet.
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Post by Chuck Elliot on Dec 18, 2012 21:31:22 GMT -5
that will not take the place of true raid, software is software, if you want to trust it not to corrupt? be my guest, raid anything on a hardware level is always the way to go IMO. With RSTE you can just throw in a nothing drive if something goes wrong an rebuild the array without even having to do anything but plugging in a drive and clicking "yes". Win 8 seem to work fine though, as far as an improvement goes, it's not one over win 7 yet. I think you and I are in the same “camp”. I want a RAID to have all the additional features including the ability to hot swap a failed drive and e-mail notification on a drive failure. I just don’t trust Windows to do all this for me. As an example, I have tried to mount a disk partition to an empty folder in an existing partition instead of giving it its own drive letter. I have always had to remove it eventually as some software will just not work. This feature has been in Windows for a long time. It’s funny how some of this technology is thought of as new. In the late ‘70s I worked for Data General as a production technician. We manufactured all of DGs disk drives here in Maine. Our largest drive then was a 190MB monster the size of a washing machine. AOS the DG operating system was able to build up larger logical disk drives(LDU) from multiple physical drives(PDU) even then, as I think Unix could. Even the “new” concept of hybrid drives is somewhat “old” tech. We also made what was called a paging disk at DG. It was only 2 MB, but used 256 fixed heads with no seeking required. A LDU build from a paging disk and several regular disks would store its allocation tables and directory structure on the paging disk. This really made things much faster.
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