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Ask Slashdot: Easiest Way To Consolidate Household Media?
First time accepted submitter Lordfly writes "The wife and I have started looking to buy a house. In the spirit of that, I've been giving away books, CDs, and DVDs to 'downsize' the pile of crap I'll have to lug around when we do find the right place. That got me thinking about digital files. I'm perfectly okay with giving up (most) books, CDs, and DVD cases. The only music I buy are MP3s anyway, and we stream most everything else if we wanted to watch a show or movie. That being said, I have a desktop, my wife has an old Macbook, we both have tablets, and I also have an Android smartphone. I'd like to set up something on an extra Windows box shoved in a closet that lets me dump every digital file we have (photos, music, ebooks, movies) and then doles it out as necessary to all of our devices. Unfortunately my best computer geek days are likely behind me (photography and cooking have consumed me since), so while I CAN schlep around a command line, I've lost most of my knowledge, so go easy on the 'just apt-get FubarPackageInstaller.gzip and rd -m Arglebargle' stuff. Something easy enough for my wife to use would be a major plus. So: What's the best way to make your own personal 'cloud'?"
...you just have a fileshare. Create two if you want to be fancy. One is read only and is a media horde and the other is a scratch and play area that everyone in the house can use.
Use any tech you want. Use any OS you want.
Just create two samba shares and have at it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
freenas, and a couple 2tb drives. done.
Just buy a NAS box and start copying files. It's easier, less time consuming and less likely to break. Toms hardware has reviews. Get a decent one and it'll stream media to your digital devices without configuration. Suggest a static IP on your router if you have the inclination, but I've not gotten around to it. Similarly, suggest registering it with merge so you get software updates, but probably unnecessary. Other slashdot terms will give a lot more specific advice, but the best buy level NASs already have the compatibility you think you want froma windows box.
Unraid can turn an old Pc into a network storage device. It can use plugins for pyTivo, as well as use plugins for tv, movie, and music management software like sickbeard. Plus if a HD dies it can rebuild the array.
Lots of routers are now coming with USB3 connections that let you mount an external hard disk. It's cheaper than a file server and faster than cloud storage. At a $200 price point for an external hard disk and router I think this is a solid bonus. In addition, most external hard disks will sleep after a few minutes when they aren't being used, which is a 'greener' option than a server. You can also have multiple computers adding media to the hard disk at the same time via network to aid in your archival efforts.
I have a small computer set up as a NAS (yes it is running ubuntu server, but any distro would probably work) I run egroupware server on it so I can get email, access files, and have a consolidated calendar (among other things) on all my devices. I tried owncloud, but it was a bit resource intensive.
works for me...
Store your digital media on a server in any way you wish. Set up Plex Media Server, associate it with a MyPlex account, and point it at your media. Share your server with your family member's own MyPlex account, and they'll be able to stream everything from wherever (including using a snazzy new Web Client.) Make sure you set up some offsite backup solution, like Carbonite.
http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp
Streams music, video, pictures, whatever. Easy to install, dead simple to use (through a web browser). Has plugins for XBMC and apps for your phone/tablet.
I'm a big fan of Synology NAS's. They come in a wide variety of form factors, simple to use, but they're very hackable if you're interested.
seems ready for what you ask ...
http://owncloud.org/
tom
Most simple - buy a NAS box
Or...
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-i-set-home-file-server-free-review-freenas.htm
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/replace-windows-home-server-great-free-tools/
Better yet set up your own 'home cloud'...
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101441-create-your-own-personal-media-cloud
Are you going to keep the receipts of purchase around? If not, how are you going to prove all your digital copies are legal? Particularly the ones from physical media that you no longer possess.
For something scalable try unraid: http://lime-technology.com/
There is a license cost, but I find that it's well worth it.
Plex is pretty nice for streaming the media from the file share. You'll need the server installed on a box somewhere. They have client apps for just about all major desktop and mobile OS's.
It sounds like Dropbox might be able to help you out (and is probably the easiest solution).
A lot of people I know do a similar thing through their service. If you gotta have it local, and have a good wireless connection, there are Remote Desktop clients for all of the devices you describe. That would at least prevent the data from being redundant on multiple devices. I think you can find good Android clients for ~15$.
Just some ideas, you'll have to Google around for setup instructions.
I am going through a similar exercise right now, all of my music CDs have been ripped to flac format and I'm 3/4 of the way through my DVD collection. In my case I have a server in the basement running Linux Mint fitted with two 3TB hard drives. Linux Mint is the secret as all of the audio and visual codecs are pre-loaded and so far I haven't found a single file that I can't play.
Ganty
Don't forget to take a look at all your consuming devices and take the greatest common denominator of what they accept.
Maybe you have a TV which accepts streaming from a specific library format like DNLA. Maybe you're a mac addict who needs itunes everywhere (although your contemplation of using Windows seems to end that train of thought).
There are plenty of NAS setups possible to stream data. But where will the player be? Will it be your TV, your laptop, do you want to go for wireless speakers?
I got another Synology DS212J this year. It has a lot of click-to-add packages like photo, audio, media shares. Works with Win/Mac/Lin/I/And (everything I have is Linux/Android).
Great browser based setup/admin, built in RAID, Network Attached Storage. Best home NAS I have used.
Here is their live demo page:
http://www.synology.com/products/dsm_livedemo.php?lang=us
You can part up a cheap JBOD and install some nas software (I like freenas) or just run some linux you like with samba.
http://pcpartpicker.com/
Built my last system for under 200 shipped. 8 gigs of ram, g540 celeron, 10 bay case. The mobo is no longer available, but they're under 40. Drives are where you rack up the $'s
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/p5md
just use dropbox, it works on linux win and mac, android and ios. If 2 gb free are not enough just buy more space.
If u know someone who has it get an invite, it's 250mb extra free.
Well, not really, but... my wife and I recently purchased and moved into our first house. We downsized a lot of crap. While I couldn't find it in me to part with my CD collection (too much love and effort went into it), it IS sitting in basement storage.
I ended up buying a Synology NAS. My uses are more hardcore, but if one of my non-technical siblings came to me, this is what I would recommend. I can dump tons of data on it and make sure that it's redundant. It's crazy easy to set up as well - if you can still fart around a windowed environment, you'll get this set up easily. And it's one of the cheapest and well-supported consumer NAS solutions out there.
Yeah, I could have gone with a PC hanging out file shares, but I didn't want something that bulky and that noisy, and the Synology uses less electricity too.
Also, good luck with finding a place, closing on it, prepping it, and moving in. I'm glad we did it, but man - I never want to have to do that ever again.
Probably the very simplest is a network capable external drive like the Western Digital World Edition. Just plug it in and you have network storage. That just gives you a folder full of media files visible to the network, though. A much nicer, searchable interface with playlists etc. can be had with XMBC, a media center for Windows, Linux, Mac and others (including some Android support).
Check out the PogoPlug Solution which combines a hardware device for storage with cloud accessibility for all the devices you listed. It's extremely easy to use. You don't have to use their cloud solution if you purchase the cheap hardware device. You simply plug in an external hard drive/thumb drive and use their Internet interface on all your devices not just for file storage, but also for streaming.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm quite sure it's hard to pronounce."
I've been a big fan of FlexRAID (http://www.flexraid.com/). It is a parity based "smart storage" system that essentially lets you pool in N+1 hard drives while giving you access to storage space on N hard drives (enables recovery from a single HDD failing). Based on your desired redundancy, you can also set it up to be resilient for M simultaneous hard drive crashes...which allows you access to storage space on N+1-M hard drives. It is a paid solution but I've been using it since it was a free Beta. It has a very neat drive extender solution that pools in all the folders across all hard drives in the FlexRAID and makes all the storage accessible under a single drive. It makes accessing and storing data on your FlexRAID exceedingly simple as every software simply sees it as just another drive letter. Also provides you with very slick web based administrative controls (running on local host, not the cloud) that let you monitor your FlexRAID and schedule daily/hourly/weekly sync operations to keep the parity RAID system up to date. It does take a bit of effort to read up on it to understand how it works (if you care) but there is also a fool proof setup option that does all the configuring for you.
Of course, FlexRAID is only part of the solution. It lets you store your important data locally on a NAS or across several hard drives while giving you some redundancy and enabling simple access to the entire storage pool via a single drive letter. The other part of the solution for me is to use a very simple but awesome piece of software called SecondCopy (http://www.secondcopy.com/). It has a lot of options, but you can configure it on each of your computers to automatically watch certain folders and upload any changes, additions, etc to your NAS to keep it up to date with what is on your hard drive. You can also set it to only add or edit changed files but not delete files of the NAS when you delete something locally. That's just scratching the surface. You can even have it zip all the files being archived if they are purely for backup purposes and you care about the space savings.
I've found that the combination of FlexRAID and SecondCopy works really well for me. The only problem is that SecondCopy only runs on Windows, so you might have to look for something similar on the Mac.
Finally, since you are a photographer, you probably already know about services like SmugMug. I'd highly recommend paying the $60 a year for such a service. They have a plugin that integrates into Lightroom allowing you to publish photos on your SmugMug website as soon as you are done processing them. It serves as an off-site backup for all my photographs (which I care about a lot) and gives you unlimited uploads and lets you store images at their original resolution. Smugmug also lets you request a zip file containing all pictures of any given album that makes it easy to redownload any albums of images that you might have misplaced or lost. Not only does it serve as a backup, it also makes it very easy to share all your pictures with friends and families and also allows them to easily download any of the images they like (if you enable downloads) and/or order prints straight from the website.
For me, FlexRAID + Second Copy + Smugmug works well enough with zero hassles once I have everything set up.
I would strongly suggest either A) looking into ownCloud. The set up for a local in-house box is fairly inexpensive and I believe ownCloud will let you rent space on their server if you want file sync on the road. Alternatively I would suggest looking into FreeNAS. Basically you install it on a spare box and FreeNAS will manage pretty much everything for you. You can set up shares through an easy point-n-click web GUI.
The whole set up process for FreeNAS or for a local ownCloud install is probably less than an hour, even if you haven't used them before. Plus they are pretty much set up and forget solutions, which is ideal for most people.
A lot of people are talking about NAS devices and so on, but they all come back to "filesharing" as the software portion of their solution.
I use Plex to serve out media and love it. Transcodes a Blue-Ray rip to my iPad. I hit pause and bring the movie up on my television and start where I left off. You can run the server on a Windows machine, a Mac, or even some NAS devices.
I can be on the road and bring up any movie I have.
Client-wise they have iOS, OS X, Windows, and Android.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
You'll just be adding another system to maintain. Just buy a network attached drive, much simpler to maintain and smaller to book.
I know that Western Digital (my book) has software to share with iOS devices at least. Maybe Android, too.
but how much IO can they do??
And most external hard drives do not have backup / raid.
You can get a cheap pc with software raid 1 and 2 HDD's.
It sounds like you are trying to downsize, and have less stress/crap in your life. You are also buying a house, which for the next few years is going to increase the stress level by a bazillion.
I recommend just using the real cloud. I went to Apple icloud. So. Damn. Easy. If you despise Apple, Amazon also offers cloud services. To badly paraphrase Larry Ellison, circa 1995: "You don't keep all of your money at home, under your bed, you keep it in a bank; so why keep all of your data at home?"
I don't know much about DIY servers if you share Mac and Linux and PC devices, so I'm eager to read the user responses. However, If you do go DIY, I would recommend that you at least backup your pictures, vids, and important legal docs/financial docs up to Carbonite or some online backup service (iron mountain "Connected", etc.) THose services are worth their weight in gold, so to speak.
My $0.01 (I'm not savvy enough to offer $0.02)...
I use Plex. It is free and it runs on any platform as the server and any platform as a client. It is a painless and quick way to setup your own Amazon or Netflix type media server with very little work.
Sounds like a file share to me...
I run the vortexbox software on a HP microserver.
Vortexbox is a modified linux distribution based on Fedora, that has a straightforward web interface that minimizes any administration, and is designed for your use case.
It includes:
Automatic CD ripping (just insert the disk, and it will be ripped and tagged, with album art)
Automatic DVD ripping (as above)
Plex media server integration
Squeezebox server integration
All music is streamed via Squeezebox hardware and software. There are cheap/free ipod/android players for Squeezebox audio, and remote controls, so you don't need a Squeezebox device. It also supports spotify,
TV / movie / photo streaming is via Plex. There are clients for Android / iThings.
Just run a disk share for the remaining ebooks etc.
they have enough space so that they DON'T have to give away all of their stuff.
If you give away all of your physical media, why do you need a house?
Create a Samba share, then use the various flavours of XBMC to access movies, pictures, and music. If anything, I found since I started using XBMC that it has forced me to keep all my digital files better organized to ensure they show up correctly.
I bought a used Mac Cube for short money on craigslist and attached a Firewire drive to it. It runs silently, headless and keyboard less without configuration, consumes little electricity and it's beautiful to look at so no need to hide it. Just remember to check wake on LAN and you are good to go and install a VNC. I use it to feed everything from Apple TV to PS3.
If you plan on centralizing all your data, that will greatly simplify your media management and space. There are tons of perfectly good ways of doing it, from buying a NAS to setting up a dedicated computer using Windows/Linux/BeOS/C64 or whatever. If you don't want to take the time to set up a good linux based solution, then I would actually recommend buying a used mac mini and either replacing the HDD with a bigger one or getting a USB3 (if the mac is new enough to support it) or a firewire external enclosure. You said you have access to an old macbook. That would probably do you perfectly. Depending on which version of OSX is on it, you could even hook it up to your TV and use it as your main media centre because it will have Front Row. (I'm dissappointed Apple got rid of it in later releases... I guess not enough people used it to justify maintaining it?)
BUT.... Getting everything together is still a fair amount of work. Not just setting up the initial system but the time spent having to rip all your media. And if that machine dies, or get stolen in a burglary, your stuff will be gone and (unless you kept all the originals in a storage locker or something) unreplaceable.
It is imperative that you get a backup solution in place, even if it's just an external HD connected via USB to the main unit. Make sure it's a nice big drive. This goes nicely with the Mac solution because Macs come with Time Machine, which is the single best backup solution I've ever seen for a personal system. It will backup your entire system to your chosen external drive, and continue to perform hourly incrementals as long as the machine is turned on, without any effort at all on your part. Better yet, you could have your backup drive in a completely different and protected location of the house and have your data backed up to it over the network.
Best of all, you could then use this setup as the basis for setting up a central encrypted repository for other more critical data like copies of your household finances, photos of everything you own to show the insurance company in case there's a fire, etc etc.
There are several choices, but I'm new to them. So far Serviio seems decent enough.
I just went through a similar exercise with our 200 disk DVD collection - copied the DVD images to a RAID fileserver (I used ubuntu + ZFS, you could buy something like a Drobo or a ReadyNAS if you don't want to set up your own fileserver - don't skimp on the hardware, you want something solid and reliable). DIsk space is so cheap I didn't even bother compressing the DVD images on the initial copy.
3 or 4 of the DVD's had some copy protection that dvdcopy couldn't handle - I almost got some WIndows software that's supposed to be able to bypass the copy protection, but then I found bittorrent images of the missing movies. I wonder if my ISP is going to report me to the MPAA for pirating movies I already own?
I also keep another offsite backup on a pair of 3TB hard drives that I shuttle back and forth to the office, one is always at home, one is always at the office. I've debated sending a hard drive to Amazon to import into Glacier storage - after paying the transfer fee, for less than $20 month, Amazon will store the movies for me (and all of the rest of my data too - pictures, mp3's, etc).
I took all of the physical DVD's out of their cases as I copied them, and put the DVD's, slipcovers and booklets into some excellent DVD storage binders so I have proof of ownership.
We buy a lot of used DVD's (for what I used to pay for Netflix's DVD by mail subscription, we can buy 2 or 3 used DVD's/month at Amazon - most cost between $3 - $9), so I set up a simple script that my wife can use to copy new DVD's, she just puts in the DVD, and types in the name.
After copying everything I set up a script to use Handbrake to compress the DVD images into smaller files suitable for putting on a tablet, smartphone or laptop. It was nice to have 200 movies to choose from on the plane while traveling over the holidays.
I did the same with my CD's ages ago - back when it took longer to encode an MP3 on my computer than it does to play it back. I haven't bought a physical CD in a long time, so I don't know how long it takes to encode them these days.
Don't DSL/fiber boxes already do this?
I recently set up a media server and had a pleasant experience with Serviio (http://www.serviio.org/).
Although I believe it's intended for smart TVs the UPnP will allow you to browse and stream to other devices (I'm currently using VLC for computers, PS3 in living room and UPnPlay for my andoid phone).
I used an atom netbook with ubuntu but it appearst to support windows and osx.
Then a simply sharing the folders will allow you to add and maintain your media.
I'd like to set up something on an extra Windows box shoved in a closet that lets me dump every digital file we have (photos, music, ebooks, movies) and then doles it out as necessary to all of our devices.
It's folks like THIS guy. Their unpatched infected Windows machines sit forgotten in closets all over the world, spraying the malicious packets of Code Red, Nimda, Sober, Blaster, Sasser, etc. despite modern OSs being invulnerable. We call this Internet Background Radiation; This is the reason your modem's "activity" light blinks even if you've just turned it on -- We're being scanned! This is why an unpatched machine connected to the net becomes infected in mere minutes just sitting there... From a raw sampling of unsolicited data coming into an Internet connection I can determine the date at which the sample was taken by the Internet Background Radiation collected, I can "carbon date" the age of the network traffic. Now think: Your ISP bills you for traffic... Are they billing you for all those packets that are dropped at your firewall / router? In a way we are all funding the malicious behavior, we are at least feeding the machines electrons...
The Internet is much like a primordial soup, configurations of malware self assemble from the fertile components of energized silicon. Code Red is infected by Nimda, which alerts modern bot-nets of vulnerable systems ripe for the picking. The cascade of malware produces patterns in the network similar to a neural network, still untrained, not yet aware of itself, so you assume... Yet, as another fertile machine is attached to the net its connection is immediately flooded with enticing electrons, and soon a new infection has formed, as if a neural cell forming a fresh synapse compatible with the type of nodes at the end points.
The malware authors each supply a simple cascading self propagating pattern that grows in complexity over time, but it is YOU and your Windows Media Servers who provided the core components -- the amino acids, so to speak -- that enabled the Sentient Machine Intelligence to emerge! It's YOU I blame for the DEATH OF ALL MANKIND!
It's like Dropbox, but everything resides on the server of your choice. Ridiculously easy to set up, literally copy a directory into the web root, set permissions, and done.
Has MOST features Dropbox does, sharing files, access from anywhere...photo gallery, you can open files in the browser with native internal apps..
It gives you the drag-and-drop simplicity of Dropbox with its syncing with nearly the same simplicity to set up.
The box provided by French provider "Free" has a 250 GB HD that is CIFS exported:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebox#Quatri.C3.A8me_g.C3.A9n.C3.A9ration_:_version_6_.C2.AB_R.C3.A9volution_.C2.BB
What you NEED to be spending your time on is finding out exactly how much this will cost! How much in welcome tax, municipal tax, school tax, water tax, insurance, inspectors and whatever other creative ways we invent to suck money out of people's wallets.
If you are renting, what's wring with your place? Don't you realize that home "ownership" makes little sense these days? What if you lose your job? What if you want to move on a moment's notice? What if repairs need to be done?
You are on your own when you "own", and you probably have no real idea of the real costs of that.
Real estate hasn't made sense for the individual for a long time. The whole idea of "owning" was based on the idea of life-long commitment to one career at one employer in one place. That was true for my Dad's generation in the 1960s.
Are you buying a new house? You realize how utterly cheaply they are made these days? Particle board and glue instead of real wood, etc.
Some things are better these days, but structurally? No way.
So forget your "household media" and concentrate on the HOUSEHOLD itself.
Let me know after you buy if what I said makes sense or not.
Mostly random stuff.
Just look up the rating of windows home server on amazon and all your troubles are done for. It even will backup images of any windows machines on the network automatically. Best solution Microsoft ever made for home based backups.
Network Attached Storage appliances are cheap and quite reliable. Get one that can a couple 2tb drives and set them in a mirror mode. The NAS will have a simple web interface for management and expose your drive(s) as a Samba share on your network.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
You really just need a NAS box take whatever hardware you have install and be done with it.Few things need more than cifs or http access to work.
No sir I dont like it.
And more environmentally friendly as well. Any halfway decent home NAS will spin down the drives when not in use, and probably use only a few watts while in standby (which will be most of the time, assuming you sleep, go to work, etc.). A desktop may well consume a hundred watts or more in standby. That's a MWh a year, about ~$100 at $0.10/kWh. As such an entry-level home NAS could pay for itself in the first year, a higher-quality one would take a few more.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Plex server will do everything you want except books. Keep your books for when the power goes out. Google plex server and get plex!
If you want to watch/listen to all of that media from any device on your network, just use plex. It's really pretty great software and it's free!
Hello Lordfly!
I understand you're basically trying to digitalize your library and allow some streaming features to all your digital devices (mac, windows, tablet, phone, etc).
Now there are various options available to you, there are some factors to consider:
* How much data are you looking to store?
* How much time do you want to spend tinkering around with it (looking for a hobby or a solution)?
* Are you looking to stream this data outside of your home and if so, do you have the bandwidth to support the stream?
* How bad would it be to lose your data due to harddisk failure, or a fire?
With all points to consider, based on what you said my guess is that you would be okay to spend a little extra and have the "full solution" in place.
A "NAS" (network attached storage) device sounds like the thing you need here, you can build those yourself, but is rarely much cheaper then grabbing a NAS device from a manufacturer (we're talking maybe 10~50 dollars you'd save here, not counting the hours you'd have to invest to get the software running). A NAS generally is a suite of different solutions and connection methods allowing you to make your storage widely available throughout your home.
Most come prepacked with nice proprietary software packages that offer you all the features right out of the box!
My personal favorite brand on NAS devices is Synology, relatively new but make very nice devices which they frequently update, even on older models.
I have a DS212j at home, with 2 x Western Digital Red 2TB disks in it running in a redundant RAID-1 setting.
http://www.synology.com/products/product.php?product_name=DS212j&lang=enu
Offering a wide selection of connection methods I managed to hook this device up to my PC, media center running XBMC, TV, Home cinema system, laptops and tablet.
Its icing on the cake is its webbased management interface which looks like a windows environment on it's own, very easy with all kinds of navigation windows, external software packages you can click&install and separate interface when using mobile devices or tablets. I can for example now stream my library using the integrated audio-player at work without even having to install any software there. there is also a download tool integrated, All in all it is a lot more then i'd get with a software package as FreeNas for example.
Some are suggesting a XBMC setup which is more of a media-center solution, not as much a storage solution.
I prefer to keep those separate as playing entertainment media and storing data are 2 different purposes each with their own requirements.
I hope this helped you with your choice!
PS. when getting disks, you'd want to go for the more durable series, desktop drives aren't really made for NAS devices and might give issues, my 2 cents, stick with western digital REDs, which are specially made for NAS devices, both cheap and pretty durable.
Plex - http://www.plexapp.com/ ($free$)
I reused an old Acer w/ an amd 4050E and 4GB ram. Installed a simple Newegg/Rosewill SATA card and added 2 WD green drives. I then stream all of my audio/video/photos to everything (android phone/tablets, tv via roku, itunes music, xbox, etc). I use standard windows file sharing along with FreeFileSync (http://alternativeto.net/software/freefilesync/) to use the server as a backup for everything else in the house.
The tl;dr version:
If you can't admin it, you shouldn't run it. There's a real risk your negligence will cause problems for others.
That said, my advice is: Go buy a NAS that isn't Windows based (most of them aren't). The risks are much lower, and it's easy enough to do basic admin on through a web interface.
They're made for people who aren't interested in all the important details of setting up and maintaining a secure internet-facing file share.
If your goal is to be able to access all this media from every device a Plex media server is your best option.
Server is free, iOS is ~ $5, allows you to stream any media to your iPad/iPhone and access it from mac and windows computers.
"go easy on the 'just apt-get FubarPackageInstaller.gzip and rd -m Arglebargle' stuff"...
So why is he asking Slashdot?
Seriously, git-annex assistant might be the solution for part of his problem. assistant is a pretty front end to git-annex which uses git to sync repositories of file metadata and several other means (rsync, etc) to schlep the files between repositories. It won't run on his Windows box but does run on OS X and might be easy enough for his wife to use.
Timothy? The editor is Timmah? From South Park?
What a fucking retarded question to ask slashdot. Seriously. This is a very low standard of question. Perhaps slashdot really has gone downhill after all these years.
For myself, I've got a computer running iTunes with a big external drive attached for all the media. A couple of Apple TV's scattered around the house make streaming movies shows music and audiobooks a synch. The "Automatically add to itunes" directory is shared, so any other computer can add media to the library for everyone to watch. On top of that, I'd recommend Handbrake for ripping your old DVD's to your library.
The reason i'm pointing out the apple solution is because of the Apple TV's. Admittedly, once I came upon this, I stopped looking for other solutions, so I don't know if there is anything else comparable for streaming media to multiple TV's from a single repository at home, with a simple remote (as opposed to a wireless keyboard or what not... been there, done that, not at all preferable).
If you use any idevices, you can stream from your phone or ipad back up to your TV as well, using the Apple TV. Or from your wifes macbook, supposing she updated to the latest OS.
Commence the Apple bashing now... No, I don't work for them. I'm just pleased with the experience.
Personally, given how cheap online storage is these days, I'd just outsource to dropbox or another vendor.
If you want to do IT as a hobby, then by all means buy a NAS, etc, But then you need to worry about hardware failure, offsite backups, updating NAS firmware, etc.
Unless you have an epic amount of data, I'd just pay dropbox the $10/mo necessary to get 100GB of storage. A decent NAS setup would end up costing around $200-$300.
One master computer.. running SuperSync, Plex Server, iTunes, FileZilla, with as much storage as you need (4T USB drive at Costco for $179). Use a remote backup service. Then have remote clients throughout the house, at the office, etc. that can log in and upload/download/add playlists, sync ratings, etc. http://supersync.com/
I'm using an old Acer Aspire T100 or something another along those lines I put Lubuntu onto. I have Twonky and Plex Media Server running on it (started with Twonky, but I love the Plex interface on devices and never bothered to remove the Twonky).
It streams to my Dish Hopper/Joey setup, as well as the Android and iOS devices and Rokus. The client application looks, works, and feels like the Netflix app. It's pretty damn sweet. (Granted I think it may cost a nominal amount for the mobile devices to purchase the app).
I know on the mobile devices and Roku it allows you to set a streaming bandwidth should you need to say cut down the speed for over wireless links etc. I've only had to do this for the one access point I have way down at our "camp ground" because that AP is in a client bridge to another wireless router, that then plugs into another wireless router that does a WDS link to the main wireless router that has the internet connection (don't ask, long story and involves two house holds lol).
As for the Dish Hopper/Joey, the setup there plays MKV's fine but for whatever reason doesn't play MP4's. I know older versions of Plex would transcode, and I think the newer version can be made to do so although I haven't got that figured out yet (nor bothered with it much as I just use handbrake to convert the videos).
Also, both Twonky and Plex will stream music, and if you use Plex on a Windows box you can add in other "plug-ins" to do such options as Netflix and what not (I believe it only plays the movies you add to your instant queue though). Again, since mine is on a Linux box and doesn't support SilverLight, I can't utilize this feature... and no MoonLight doesn't work as it doesn't support the special features Netflix uses. Pretty much if you can play it natively, then the Plex plugins will work as well.
All in all I have to give both a good thumbs up as free (or mostly free) options to do most of what you're looking to do.
Here is what works for me, as well as a few things to keep in mind.
If all your client devices support samba (i.e. they're all computers) then by all means just install Windows on an extra box and set up shared folders and dump your media in there.
You mentioned tablets and smartphones. Those likely do not support samba, so I'd suggest a DLNA server such as Tversity. It works pretty well, but there are some rough edges. What about accessing data to present on TVs, etc?
Another concern is the ongoing cost of powering a system sitting in the closet serving only as a file server. Assuming your old computer will suck 100W 24x7x365, do you really want to pay $100 a year to your electric utility to run it?
If I were you, I would look at some of the appliance solutions such as a USB NAS device that lets you plug Cat5 into one end and multiple USB devices (such as USB HDDs) in the other end to create networked storage. Such devices only use a fraction of the power, plus they're silent and generate no heat. A device like that will pay for itself in power savings in under a year.
Another option would be something like a Boxee Box. That will also let you share two USB hard drives to the network, plus it lets you play just about any file format and stream Netflix, etc to a connected TV. The Boxee Box was recently discontinued in favor of the Boxee TV, so you ought to be able to find one on clearance somewhere for $140-150. Just get a couple 2TB USB drives and connect them. If you need more than 4TB of storage, you're probably better off looking at one of the network hard drive appliances that let you put 4 or 8 drives in anyway.
As far as backup, I wouldn't bother messing with RAID, just buy double the storage you need and make a nightly or weekly differential backup between the two storage sets.
But the REAL question is...with Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Pandora, SoundCloud, Spotify, etc, do you really need to keep all that media anymore? Why not just pick one or two services to pay a small subscription fee to and let it all live in the cloud? That'll save you from spending money on a computer, storage, software and electricity, and will probably give you a wider variety of media.
"Cloud" is a marketing buzzword, nothing more. People are using the term to describe all kinds of fileservers and appservers now. "Cloud" started out describing the sort of apps that already existed: fileservers like dropbox and what is now iCloud, VPSes with secured CIFS/SMB shares, and appservers like Google Apps and SugarCRM subscriptions . It has since been expanded to include local fileservers, proving how the term really means nothing.
What you want ideally is a fileserver, possibly one running Plex or XBMC to serve up media streams and catalog your media, preferably one built on RAID5 or RAID6 on a hardware-based controller, with a separate array to serve as a backup.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Download your favorite media to computer folder or encode with handbrake in H.264 format to a media folder. Buy a cheap Roku for each TV then download free Plex PC/Mac/Linux media server easy and done. Next question.
Both get a free 2TB dropbox account.
'Share' with either.
Move or copy files into the Dropbox directory (folder)
Viola! they are in Dropbox and on your wife's computer.
Plex media server on your storage server
Plex client for windows and a new one for metro
Plex client for OS X
Plex client for iOS, android and windows mobile
For everything else, use a browser to get to plex web service on the media server.
Plex will index and fetch metadata for the files, play anything anywhere.
Hi,
I believe the right answer is the combination of various cloud and streaming services + NAS box(es) for local content. I love NASes. You can buy a two-bay DNS-323 for about a hundred bucks. With the current price of the hard drives you can get a 3TB drive for about $150. Thus, for about $250 you can get 3TB of network storage accessible via SMB/AFP/NFS/UPnP/whatever. And then later you can add the second drive. Or get two drives and have a RAID if you are concerned about the data safety.
Get a Synology box like the DS-113 or DS-213 or some similar home NAS. It will do automated backups (to web storage or other NAS or external USB drives), and supports RAID if you get a multi-disk version. They also will provide your own "private cloud" services as well as web server, media server, and various other features which you may or may not find useful.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Windows Home Server is a viable option. You can choose the power of the server... from a Dell PE 1900 class to a Atom processor.... or more or less. In addition to homing all of your media (MP3, Vid etc) it can allow remote access to your system(s), perform nightly backups of (windows) based systems. It is expandable (add another multi-TB drive whenever you want to). It can be headless (depending on the home layout, find a nice 'cool' place in the basement). There are also many 3rd party add-on's to enhance your network.
I realize Slashdot is a big time open source community, and I'm risking the internet equivalent of a wedgie by suggesting this, but I accomplish this task using windows home server 2011. All my shares are accessible to everyone on my network and all media is displayable on anything with a screen. I could do the same thing with linux (and I have used Linux based servers in the past), but I find those implementations to be difficult to manage, challenging to upgrade and almost impossible to recover. My home server hosts an Infinitv card and provedes live TV to my two other media center PC's. It automatically archives all my TV recordings, and it hosts all my music, movies and family pictures & videos. I also store all our important documents, run weekly backups of my PC's and media centers, host a network printer and run nightly backups onto an external drive. I've gone through two motherboards on my server. Both times, I swapped out the board, powered back up and resumed all operations with no loss of data.
A license for windows home server 2011 ran me ~ $50.00. Not bad for everything does for me. Highly recommended.
Checkout dd-wrt and buy a good supported router with an USB 3.0 port and replacel
Cthe stock firmware with dd-wrt.
Connect multiple large USB drives to it using a USB port multiplier.
This setup seems messy, and it is, but it is cost effective because:
1) it is cheap when it comes to power because most of the newer routers although being fast and having fast processors are still energy effective
2) as dd-wrt is Linux based you get support for multiple file systems and can set up the several independent file systems in the several independent external USB drives in an hierarchical way as if they were just one
3) several independent USB hard drives means that you can disperse the information in such a way that you can physically turn off most of them and leave on only those who make a difference.
4) you can actually use a lot of open source applications on those routers including set up VPN access, etc
5) you can still set up raid 1 or whatever level you like between some of those disks.
Take it from someone that set up a cool gig using esxi4, running a Solaris Vm (nexenta) and having the Solaris vm serve 4 1gb drives as SMBs shares and iscsi targets and then keeps it off most of the time because of cost: electrical consumption must be your primary concern, especially if power is very expensive, like in my country.
If you were worried about "lugging stuff around" you should have done it when you were moving from apartment to apartment.
This is a bunch of pointless effort for moving into a more permanent location.
If you don't want to buy a prebuilt NAS like the QNAP or Synology boxes, I hear good things about HP's microserver w/ Windows home server.
a 2tbytes attached to router costs about $200. I then mount desktop and my documents on pc we have to it.
the Mac can also mount drive but sadly not as fluidly as above.
for pads and phones use ' es file explorer' folk can decide which video ,music files they want offline.
I have separate 2tbyte attached to nas via usb so backup using rsync every month ( then pop into loft ).
in home use cabling around house so heavy duty editing of video and raw photos don' t suffer lag.
key principal is everything on nas is ' safe' ( but see loft thing) everything local is copy.
figured out how to share music playlists between devices with a partial view of all content available. cannot recommend vlc for desktop and poweramp for android enough.
C'mon! Anyone who's promoting some shitty Linux-based tech with no ZFS is actually NOT HELPING the OP!
This is Linux-based old tech because there's no support for ZFS (Zettabyte File System), which is today's standard for this type of thing. How lame. the OP doesn't know it, but he wants a ZFS filesystem because, in the long haul, it can counterweight - amongst other things - silent data corruption (it's going on, but your hardware diagnostics says everything's OK).
Besides, the OP said he and his wife had Macs, and since Snow Leopard (10.6), Macs support ZFS. The old Mac just needs a memory upgrade to support Snow Leopard, probably.
Get a NAS box with FreeBSD inside (check out: www.freenas.org)
Since the OP is not one of the typical /. nerds, here's a nice You Tube video, by the nice msknight5, that explains why you need ZFS: ZFS - Home server - Why? (NB: she goes on a little rant about DVD, DRM, etc., but just bear with it).
Don't settle for less. Too bad for users of the lame Linux that their beloved GPL does not allow it on their kernel.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Also, a NAS that isn't Linux-based, because that sucks too, since it doesn't have support for ZFS. Which is crazy and lame, just lame.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
100 Watts in standby?!
What the heck do you use for desktops? Hairdryers?
Virtually *any* computer, regardless of age, shouldn't be using mpre than 10 Watts in standby. If it's using more than that, either its standby mode is broken by design, or it's just a broken computer.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
"Cloud" is a marketing term that means: "We'll keep all your data, and we'll tax you too. We'll make you depend on us, just like you depend on your healthcare provider. This is because you've chosen to remain computer-illiterate, and now you must pay us."
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
... the RIAA are coming for you ...
There's a big difference between "shouldn't" and "doesn't". I'll admit it's been many years since I actually put a power meter on one though, the situation may have finally improved, especially on a system with no external peripherals.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I have an FS, which I think is similar to the 5N.
http://www.drobo.com/products/professionals/drobo-5n/index.php
That initial cost is quite the leap of faith, but dually redundant mismatched drives that I can upgrade seamlessly at my leisure (and if drives ever get cheap again)? Done.
And yes, you could build your own network of rsync shares more cheaply, and performance is frankly unspectacular (may be my crusty 100M network.) But it's a ten minute setup for a virtually inexhaustible file share that you don't ever have to worry about. Sounds about right for our tech-wary OP.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
That's the same price as the Synology 2-disk NAS. Well, the Buffalo is about $190 and Synology $200. I'm not sure that $10 is enough of a difference to be out of reach for some but not others.
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
I've tried many different schemes in the past, but this is by far the best and easiest that I've come up with: Roku + Plex + Plex media server. Then Samba shares for everything else.
Find an old used computer for a couple of bucks. Attach a brand new USB 3.0 hard disk through the USB port. Install Samba, and bingo, you have a ready made file server.
my solution: for my parents:simple media player +2TB USB drives
:>)
Warning: do NOT buy the Roku. You can't even start it up without an internet connection and giving out a credit card number, even if all you want to do is look at your own media files over the usb connection.
.
Okay. So my parents are not as techy as me. (anyone/everyone on here can probably say that). So I'm the one who ends up converting media formats for backup and later viewing and they have a tough time with playing things back...
:>(
I had been burning things on DVD for them transcoded down to lower yet acceptable resolutions, but they were having trouble with the dvd libraries. So this year, I got them a philips media viewer thingy with usb input and hdmi output and a simple (meaning few options and buttons) remote control.
:>)
I then created two large USB drives for them, each of them is 2 TB in size. One is the "personal family drive" upon which I've been backing up the video-camera files and the camera files (both video and pictures) appropriately sorted into foldersm along with one copy of the music collections transcoded into mp3.
The second drive is the one upon which I put the CD music and the DVD files as our own personal backup of our media, after which the original disks are safely put away (i.e. hidden from the parent-volken, so that they don't decide to discard/give away/sell/throw/gift the original disks, just in case the magnetic media backups don't work or last long enough).
Now, they can plug/unplug the drives into the HDMI/USB box which they can handle doing and use the remote with the large screen TV, instead of crowding people around the 21" imac to watch videos and photos.
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The phillips thing cost $45 at Target, and I got two more to gift to my brother and to my sister (also not as tech-y as moi). It can also do netflix and vudu, but does NOT require an internet connection if you don't want to do netflix and vudu. The only files it has burped on are some AVIs that appear to hold quicktime (wtf? from some obscure 5 yr old canon or olympus 5 megapixel camera). I can always use the USB drive that's not plugged into the device to back up and save media files. And in quick circumstances, I can also burn files onto USB sticks that can be played from directly and then save those USB backups onto the 2TB magnetic media for permanent backup.
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The parents really like the unit. It's easier to navigate than the linux box. I have to admit that I have not yet tried a knoppmyth or mythTV setup yet. But I find this to be a good to go solution.
Also, if anyone knows about reflashing the software on the philips thing to black out the netflix/vudu option and make it easier for my parents, please let me know!!!!! Thanks!!!!
2TB holds a lot of ripped DVDs and CDs, and it just works.
I use a 4-drive QNAP NAS at home. I have 2.68TB of RAID-5 storage (3x1.5TB drives), with a hot spare in case a drive fails. The NAS shares out NFS and Samba, which are accessed by all computers/devices in my home over a wired gigabit and N-wireless network, so speed is not an issue.
I backup my main workstation to the NAS, so I have a full backup of my most important files. Although I am now considering cloud storage as an offsite copy for extra redundancy.
After years of using home-built NAS boxes running NASlite or freeNAS, I decided to go for a commercial box. It was not the cheapest option, but I sleep a lot better knowing that my data is relatively safe from hardware failure. I currently have ~1.5TB data on the NAS. QNAP supports a lot of different services like web, ftp and SQL servers, as well as media servers. There is also a package system that lets you download and install specific services, but I am not using this. There are dual gigabit interfaces so you can even have redundant links to the device or team them up for more bandwidth, although even a single gigabit interface is not a bottleneck... it's hard drive transfer rates.
QNAP has also been really good at releasing new firmwares on a regular basis, with each one typically adding new features. Although, I have not had a single issue over the past ~2 years. It's been one of the best hardware purchases I ever made.
easy to setup for the average /. reader, extendable, active peer community, easy to upgrade or recover.. free (as in beer) for testing or small implementations (up to three hdd), not terribly expensive to buy for larger ones.
I use a HP Microserver N40L as a NAS. It's way cheaper to purchase than decent 4 drive dedicated NAS appliance. It's more powerfull and does not use much energy. I bought mine for about €200,- without disks . It uses about 14 Watt without disks booting from USB. With the high electricity prices here (€0.23 per kWh) I expect to spend in 4 years 4x365x24x0.014x0.23= €112,- on energy on the system. So in total that is €312,-. That total is still less than the purchase price alone of a decent 4 bay NAS which will still not give me the same performance. Installing OpenMediaVault or FreeNAS is about as much work as configuring a dedicated NAS (Next, next, finnish).
I installed 4 WD20EARX disks for €84,- per piece. This increases the power usage to about 40 Watts active. So the disks are the biggest component in price and energy usage and that will be the same with a NAS. Performance is great I can saturate a 1Gbps ethernet link nicely if the device requesting the data is fast enough.
How often do you access the data?
I wonder what cheap client solutions there are today based on Amazon's S3 service - for the storage it'd be pennies a month and you would have real cloud based storage where the maintenance hardware issues are taken care of? It'd take you many years to spend the cost of your own hardware with an Amazon hosted solution.
Horrible idea, exactly what corporate America wants you to do.
Take a look at PLEX -- http://www.plexapp.com/
I ran the PMS on a NAS box, but it was a bit choppy. Installed onto a windows 7 quad with 8 gig ram and it runs perfect. I access video, pictures, and a number of free stations such as CBS, HGTV, etc...There are a large number of clients available as well. Looks like it has good support and releases.
I had this same dilemma five years ago. I've done the linux and windows server route, and the best I have found in terms of making it wife-friendly is to stick with windows. This holds true for a couple other things as well. If you're familiar with linux and know the software you need to rip DVD's, Music, etc then you'd be find going that route. But if you want to get this up and running with minimal effort you're going to find a lot more help on Google for windows software when it comes to ripping your media. As for what interface to use, this is up to you. I have done everything from having the PC hooked straight to the TV, to then using my XBOX to access it, to now using a Smart TV (one with PLEX, one with the built in DLNA app) to view my media. Hard drives are cheap, go buy a 1, or 2, or whatever TB hard drive fits your needs and stick it in an old computer and start throwing your media on it. If you want to hook the computer straight to the TV, XBMC is a great interface (the Android beta is now out but I haven't tried it yet). If you have an XBOX or PS3 or DLNA capable TV, just put the files into appropriate folders and share them and you'll be able to browse them from the device.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
Check out http://www.linuxmce.com/, no command line needed (AFAIK)
I just recently set up an openfiler NAS for this exact reason, and I love it granted my collection is larger than most and I did the typical nerd thing and did extreame over kill and just put all my pc's in a rack and went for an "old" rack NAS I found on Craig's list. But I would recommend using Open Filer. the write speeds are about 2 or 3 times better than Free NAS.
My NAS is currently Supporting 14 Tb. Just give it a few weeks to sync all the drives if going that big.
The real question is Nas vs Computer. The one thing that always leans me towards a computer is you need to back it up to the cloud which means you need to find a nas capable of running crashplan or build your own system. The drop dead easiest setup is a drobo and a mac mini. Its a thousand bucks but will serve all your needs with very little setup.
In regards to a file server, it never goes into full standby mode entirely. The grandparent is only refering to the drives themselves going into standby mode.
Unless you're running specialised hardware (Intel Atom or ARM with a low power graphics card) a basic white box build can easily use 100W of power when idle. It just depends on what you're running.
With MP3's, you only got a sad , pathetic ghost of the music you wanted. Unless, of course, you're happy with an old 45rpm single record player with a 3 inch speaker and a stack of cheap, shitty vinyl. To those of us who are actual musicians, and/or truly appreciate the good sound of 'real' music, MP3 is simply shit. Stick with FLAC, or just buy discs. "MP3" and "music" should never appear in the same sentence, it's just plain wrong.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3348385&cid=42428889
LMAO!
APK
P.S.=> Is "that the BEST you got", boy? Apparently so... lol, thanks for making ME, look good!
... apk