Best way to add more storage

[Mutiny]

I currently have a dedicated 500GB hard drive, but I want to add more storage. Is it easier to add a new hard drive and path Beyond TV and Beyond Media to it? Or is it easier to create a RAID array or a NAS?

Are there pro's and con's?

thanks!

[Greg Caulder]

It depends on your situation.

If you have an Intel motherboard with an IRC8H RAID controller you can create an Array and down the road add more storage without losing your data in the array.

This is what i currentley have.

I would make a RAID 5 and then later on you can upgrade the size of a drive to say a 750GB and rebuild the array. then keep doing that. Then you can just simply extend the partition of the drive.


G

[TomSwift]

Easiest and least expensive way is to add a Firewire or USB 2.0 drive.

[Jakesty]

The problem with adding an independent drive is that the available space isn't reported back to the interface telling you how much is left.
With a Raid 5 or Raid 0 Array you'll lose your data and will have to restore or reinstall to get the system back up.
A simpler way if you are running with XP, is to use JBOD, or Just a bunch of Disks. Go into disk management, and make your drive(s) Dynamic. A reboot will be required if it's the System drive. Go back to Disk management and SPAN the drives.
My OS is running on Partition 1 with 16gb of available space and the remainder is dedicated to recordings. By spanning the drives you get one big D: drive like in my situation. The big downfall as with any drives is that now a HD failure on either partition and you will lose the data on both. Or atleast it's not easy to recover the data.
HTH, Jake

[deejaydaze]

What about network storage and recording to a network drive?

the NAS question wasn't answered yet was it?

Anyone actually place their video folder on a network? Is that possible? Will it work?

Can you have more than one location to store all videos?

Sorry I'm a NEWB!!

[pwlong]

Originally Posted by deejaydaze

What about network storage and recording to a network drive?

Sorry -- you can't record directly to a network drive.

Originally Posted by deejaydaze

Can you have more than one location to store all videos?

Yes, you can have multiple video folders, but BTV only records to a single video folder, whichever one you flag as the "default" folder -- read this post for a bit more info. Folks with multiple drives in their BTV servers manually manage switching between recording folders as the drives fill with recordings, and we're hoping SnapStream adds a feature to automate this process intelligently in a future release of BTV.

Originally Posted by deejaydaze

Sorry I'm a NEWB!!

As we all were, at one time. Best advice I can offer is, search and read these forums thoroughly, as their are quite a few very knowledgeable folks who have posted lots of useful info about SnapStream's products.

[Mr.X]

Originally Posted by pwlong

Sorry -- you can't record directly to a network drive.

But you can showsqueeze/copy to it. What I do is have a default recording folder on my local HD, and then I use the copy function of showsqueeze to move the file to my larger storage drive. There's no reason that the storage drive couldn't be NAS.

Yes, you can have multiple video folders, but BTV only records to a single video folder, whichever one you flag as the "default" folder -- read this post for a bit more info.

Not entirely true. You can set up individual recordings to record to different folders, so BTV can record to more than 1 folder. This is also an excellent way to organize your recordings and use more than 1 drive for your recordings.

[pwlong]

Originally Posted by Mr.X

Not entirely true. You can set up individual recordings to record to different folders, so BTV can record to more than 1 folder. This is also an excellent way to organize your recordings and use more than 1 drive for your recordings.

Good point -- I'd forgotten about this, since I haven't bothered to set things up this way, and always use the "By Show" view and not the "By Folder" view in the Viewscape. Good catch Mr. X.

[papatech]

greetings.
my preference is to simply have a bunch of hard drives. (can't a mapped network drive letter work?? - i can't believe i haven't tried that..)

when I browse "recored shows" and see that my available disk space or hours available for recording drop to under 10%, I switch the default recording destination to another drive that has more free space.. Then by the time I watch my shows on the full drive, delete them, that drive becomes available..

I record in the second to last dvd quality.. (i think there are 4; 4 being the best, I record on 2)... I have over 600 hours of available disk recording space. I have 4 tuners (2-basic, 1-premium cable, 1-satellite) and no problems.

works just fine. it's not really a hassle to switch the default location every once in a while (3 weeks or so) through the web interface. it's a lot easier to add a hot swappable 500gig SATA drive than to deal with building or deleting raid setup or spanning and all that.

[vogelap]

I love my NAS. It takes the hard drives out of the living room (reducing both heat and noise) and they're accessible to the rest of the computers. While you can't RECORD to them, moving shows to the NAS is every bit as good in my opinion.

[Mr.X]

Recording to a local drive and then using showsqueeze to move them to their final home (beit NAS or other large drive) is the proper way to do things, IMHO.
The speed of the local drive allows for better performance, less skips more simultaneous recordings. There's also less chance of losing a recording as a NAS or other external drive could go off-line during a recording or the network could get congested or whatever.

Record to your local drive and showsqueeze/copy to your final storage.

[pwlong]

The question "which is the easiest, best way" will get you lots of subjective responses, since most folks have setups that are well-suited to their needs, and therefore "easy" for them. As others have pointed out, it's pretty situation-dependent: for folks with the luxury of wired networks and server closets, NAS boxes tucked away from the viewing area work best. For folks with a one-drive, one-box BTV setup and no network, contemplating their first storage upgrade and hoping it can be kept simple, adding a second drive or swapping in a bigger single drive are the easiest ways to go. Not the most future-proof, or quietest, or cheapest (altho it probably is) or coolest -- just easiest in that specific case. Don't get me wrong, I love how you guys are using NAS boxes, I just don't think that's the next logical step from "single recording drive" for the majority of users.

For the sake of tossing out "Yet Another Way To Do It", I use two SATA drives in my three-tuner server, mounted in front-loading hot-swap trays. The trays offer nothing more than a handy way to get at the disks without cracking open the case -- my version of "easier", see? (This is actually one of the most desirable features of a well-designed NAS box, IMHO, so I'm using it in my server.) When I decide to upgrade my server, I might just get a case with more external drive bays; or I might opt for a NASlite or FreeNAS back-end; or I might try out a port-multiplied eSATA setup with an external enclosure. It all kinda depends on how much time and money I want to sink into making the next BTV server easier to manage.

This discussion also highlights one of the best aspects of a home-built PVR: you actually have a choice in how things are designed/built, how quickly to grow the infrastructure, and where to spend your money to make it "better" and "easier". You're certainly not faced with this many choices when buying your cable or satellite company's DVR solution...

[myktek]

something i've been thinking about doing is getting the Linksys wrt350n router
http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satel...=4351239789B01

the cool thing about it is, it has a USB port on it to connect an external storage device, so I could go get an external hard drive and just plug it directly to the router and it's setup like a NAS, it's called Storage Link, I haven't done more research, but I was wondering if I can plug a hub to it and then have multiple devices plugged to it.... btw, i'm upgrading to gigabit so thats why I would get this.... just another option for some ppl

[ThickHead]

Hi,
I got one of these OKGear external HD enclosures and put a 500G SATA drive in it...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817348024
http://www.okgear.com/gears/enclosures/landisk.htm
It can attach directly to your PC via USB 2.0 or put it on your 10/100 wired ethernet It uses Ximeta's NDAS technology:
http://www.ximeta.com/web/technology...ologie1_en.php
It appears as a local hard drive on your network attached PCs, and BTV will record/play directly to/from it. I have used it for about 2 months now, and BTV recorded MPEGs and DivX/WMV all work well, but OTA HD .ts files seem to overwhelm my wired ethernet's bandwidth and not record/play very well.