Need help in making my old pc useful to store music, photos, movies, games and also do streaming.

[pocholo01]

Hi everyone, i got this old pc which i would to make into a htpc /data storage. I need help on how to make this work. It's a Athlon x2 4600 with a ddr2 ram 4gb, hd5770 and a 160hd. It's a budget build please be kind.

 

 

To be able to:

 

store music, movies and games

share them thru wifi router

stream movies from it

can play movies on tv

[Amazingasian]

Add a 1tb hard drive and a pci-e wifi adapter

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey there pocholo01,

 

It really depends on how much storage you'd need and how demanding it will be. For simple streaming I would say a single drive or a couple for redundancy would be more than enough. You can get a small SSD for the OS so the whole system becomes more responsive and runs smoother. 

If you budget allows it I would recommend two WD Red drives for a RAID1 array for good and stable performance and redundancy for your data. Here's a link: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=KCrtPP

 

Captain_WD.

[pocholo01]

 

Hey there pocholo01,

 

It really depends on how much storage you'd need and how demanding it will be. For simple streaming I would say a single drive or a couple for redundancy would be more than enough. You can get a small SSD for the OS so the whole system becomes more responsive and runs smoother. 

If you budget allows it I would recommend two WD Red drives for a RAID1 array for good and stable performance and redundancy for your data. Here's a link: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=KCrtPP

 

Captain_WD.

 

 

 

Hey there pocholo01,

 

It really depends on how much storage you'd need and how demanding it will be. For simple streaming I would say a single drive or a couple for redundancy would be more than enough. You can get a small SSD for the OS so the whole system becomes more responsive and runs smoother. 

If you budget allows it I would recommend two WD Red drives for a RAID1 array for good and stable performance and redundancy for your data. Here's a link: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=KCrtPP

 

Captain_WD.

 

 

so if i get 2 3 tb drive do i get 6 tb total space at raid 1 or just 3 tb?

i dont know much about raid

[devildog031101]

You shoul look into FreeNas there are some really good tutorials on YouTube and they also explain how raid works really well. just some input Im also looking into storage ideas just thought I would share

[pocholo01]

You shoul look into FreeNas there are some really good tutorials on YouTube and they also explain how raid works really well. just some input Im also looking into storage ideas just thought I would share

Thanks, I will do that.

[Captain_WD]

 

RAID1 Mirroring uses one of the drives to "mirror" all the data bit by bit and thus provide redundancy if something happens with the other drive. It does provide, in some cases, a certain amount of speed boost in the random and sequential read speeds, but it is generally recommended for redundancy. In your case, two 3TB drives would give you 3TB of usable space and use the other 3TB for redundancy. 

Here's a quick video of what the different RAID types are:

 

Captain_WD.

[pocholo01]

 

RAID1 Mirroring uses one of the drives to "mirror" all the data bit by bit and thus provide redundancy if something happens with the other drive. It does provide, in some cases, a certain amount of speed boost in the random and sequential read speeds, but it is generally recommended for redundancy. In your case, two 3TB drives would give you 3TB of usable space and use the other 3TB for redundancy. 

Here's a quick video of what the different RAID types are:

 

Captain_WD.

 

 

I think i like raid 10, but can i make 2 sets of raid 1 in one pc? linus didn't cover that one in the video or do i need a raid card already?

[Captain_WD]

I think i like raid 10, but can i make 2 sets of raid 1 in one pc? linus didn't cover that one in the video or do i need a raid card already?

 

If you want to do hardware RAID, this heavily depends on your RAID controller so I would check with the manual and the manufacturer. 

For regular Software RAID you can have multiple arrays that are configured from the Disk Management and this depends on waht the motherboard supports.

 

Captain_WD.