Network storage

lotusvball · #1 07-19-2005, 01:38 PM

Has anyone looked at Server Elements. They have a product that can turn any old system into a NAS. I just set mine up and it is awesome. I plan on adding another harddrive to give me a TB. http://www.serverelements.com/ I went with NASLite+ for 24.95. Since I already had the hardware is was much cheaper than going with an additional full system.

SHS · #2 07-19-2005, 04:17 PM

what cool idea

lotusvball · #3 07-19-2005, 09:03 PM

I just added another harddrive. It took about ten minutes to install and configure. This program is the bomb.

mdmint · #4 07-20-2005, 12:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lotusvball

Has anyone looked at Server Elements. They have a product that can turn any old system into a NAS. I just set mine up and it is awesome. I plan on adding another harddrive to give me a TB. http://www.serverelements.com/ I went with NASLite+ for 24.95. Since I already had the hardware is was much cheaper than going with an additional full system.

Not bad for a simple stand alone drives NAS. Be aware it has a 4GB single file size limit! Also too bad doesn't have RAID support or support other than IDE PATA drives (max 4 if you have other than IDE CD else only 3 HDs) so no SATA.

Grey_Goose · #5 07-21-2005, 06:13 PM

4gb file size limit is kind of a deal breaker for video storage, isn't it?

lotusvball · #6 07-21-2005, 07:38 PM

Not totally. most of my shows are only 3 to 3.5 gb an hour. They also said that the new version of smb supports file size of 4 gb. Hopefully they update soon.

nielm · #7 07-22-2005, 02:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grey_Goose

4gb file size limit is kind of a deal breaker for video storage, isn't it?

Sage should automatically cope with file size limits by segmenting files (at least it does with FAT32's 2Gb limit)

lotusvball · #8 07-22-2005, 07:33 AM

Finished the setup last night and had it up and running with no problem. Sage altimaticaly segmented the files for me even with a two hour progrm that was over 5 gb in size. No performance hit. I now have almost a TB NAS. I plan on updating the Hard drives to 500 gb drives and this would give me 2 TB of drive space available. Oh what to do with 2 TB.

stanger89 · #9 07-22-2005, 07:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lotusvball

Oh what to do with 2 TB.

It's not enough. I speak from experience.

lotusvball · #10 07-22-2005, 07:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stanger89

It's not enough. I speak from experience.

Well then I will just have to build a couple of these. I have a few old (233mhz) systems around so the only cost will be the cost for the hard drives.

lotusvball · #11 10-14-2005, 09:40 AM

They just updated their software and now support transfers over 4gb. It works great. Check out the site. I am currently using this as a TB server for my SageTV setup. I have not noticed any stuttering or video lag. Speed is great. Plus it allows me to use an old system that normally would have been put out in the pasture.

http://www.serverelements.com/phpBB2/

lotusvball · #12 12-22-2005, 10:13 PM

I have been up and running for 2 months now. No problems. Just got the MVP and everything is awesome. for $25 it but my old systems to great use.

My 100th post.

ben_95sl1 · #13 01-11-2006, 06:38 PM

Sounds like great little software

However, it seems to me that if I have to have pcs powered on all the time, it would be one single central server which has lots of drives and also includes sagetv server running and the capture card; with it buried somewhere so I don't have to hear all the noise from the cooling fans....but I guess the dedicated file server is great because it's ALWAYS running, even when you reboot your winxp system

Please educate me as to why I need this!!!

lotusvball · #14 01-11-2006, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ben_95sl1

Please educate me as to why I need this!!!

I use this for more than just my SageTV setup. I have all my computers backed up to on of them. The nice part about it is you can use an old system and all I need is a cheep old video card and a network card. Think if you put in 4 500GB drives, that would be 2tb per setup. With the software being only $25, the only real investment would be the harddrives. It also recognizes my GB network card that I have in it.

steingra · #15 02-08-2006, 09:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lotusvball

I use this for more than just my SageTV setup. I have all my computers backed up to on of them. The nice part about it is you can use an old system and all I need is a cheep old video card and a network card. Think if you put in 4 500GB drives, that would be 2tb per setup. With the software being only $25, the only real investment would be the harddrives. It also recognizes my GB network card that I have in it.

This software looks great. I am ready to order the Plus pack. And get some of my older machines back in use. I may use the bootable USB option or just bootable CDROm is OK, then the 4 IDE drives can all be used for video storage. Can never have enough.

I was reading on their forums, and havent got real far yet. But some people were complaining about performance issues it seemed.

Are you still happy with this solution?

Thanks again for mentioning it here. I always like new toys to try out.

lotusvball · #16 02-09-2006, 06:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steingra

This software looks great. I am ready to order the Plus pack. And get some of my older machines back in use. I may use the bootable USB option or just bootable CDROm is OK, then the 4 IDE drives can all be used for video storage. Can never have enough.

I was reading on their forums, and havent got real far yet. But some people were complaining about performance issues it seemed.

Are you still happy with this solution?

Thanks again for mentioning it here. I always like new toys to try out.

I use it for imported DVD's, music, video, and pictures with a gb network, but I have had issues with putting it in use as a video library for sage to record to. I have not had the time to troubleshoot it so I am not sure what the issues are. I know that they are coming out with ver. 2 shortly and hopefully it will address my issues. But for everything else it works GREAT!

steingra · #17 02-09-2006, 08:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lotusvball

I use it for imported DVD's, music, video, and pictures with a gb network, but I have had issues with putting it in use as a video library for sage to record to. I have not had the time to troubleshoot it so I am not sure what the issues are. I know that they are coming out with ver. 2 shortly and hopefully it will address my issues. But for everything else it works GREAT!

What kind of issues are you having? I am wanting to use it for a backend for SageTV to save its video files to.

lotusvball · #18 02-09-2006, 12:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steingra

What kind of issues are you having? I am wanting to use it for a backend for SageTV to save its video files to.

When watching live tv I was getting alot of stuttering issues. It only started with v 4.1.6 beta so I am not sure If they are related. When I restarted everything things worked fine for about a day and then the stuttering would start again. I would also see stuttering in my recorded files. I tried playing them on another computer and would get the same stuttering. I have not had the time to troubleshoot so I am not sure why I was having the issues.

heffe2001 · #19 02-09-2006, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lotusvball

When watching live tv I was getting alot of stuttering issues. It only started with v 4.1.6 beta so I am not sure If they are related. When I restarted everything things worked fine for about a day and then the stuttering would start again. I would also see stuttering in my recorded files. I tried playing them on another computer and would get the same stuttering. I have not had the time to troubleshoot so I am not sure why I was having the issues.

Could very likely be your NAS PC isn't beefy enough to support the amount of data coming across the system (both in and out). Could also be the PCI implementation on the board (is it a Via chipset board). That's one of the problems of using a PC as a NAS box, it's not really designed for that job, whereas a real NAS box has caching, low system overhead, etc, to keep the data moving as quickly as possible. I used to use a Snap 1000 NAS box, which was linux-based, but it was way too slow to use as video storage/recording drive. You could actually write to it faster than you could read from it, performance was that poor. Now one of the newer-larger Snap or Iomega NAS boxes (running Windows on the Iomegas) have much better performance, but at a much higher price/gb of storage...

steingra · #20 02-09-2006, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lotusvball

When watching live tv I was getting alot of stuttering issues. It only started with v 4.1.6 beta so I am not sure If they are related. When I restarted everything things worked fine for about a day and then the stuttering would start again. I would also see stuttering in my recorded files. I tried playing them on another computer and would get the same stuttering. I have not had the time to troubleshoot so I am not sure why I was having the issues.

So you are saying that your NASLite was working just fine as a backend storage solution for your SageTV recordings...until you installed 4.1.6 beta?

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