Thanks for the replies -
BaddaBing - (impressive looking setup by BTW) Could you explain what Parity is? I've read this term numerous times, but don't fully understand the principle - especially as I've never had any expereince with any type of RAID setup. Also, why does it take so long to set a RAID up or replace a drive? How often would a drive fail and what is the likelihood of two drives failing at the same time? As you may have guessed, I'm no computer geek - maybe a wannabe one
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I have considered DVD changers but have dismissed them for several reasons. First, they may only cost $300 in the US, but here in NZ they are considerably more expensive. There is also the issue of region coding (I have about half and half R4 and R1) When I looked into A DVD changer last time, the best option would be to run one on R4 and the other on R1. Still an option I guess, but less so when my collection surrpasses 400 titles in one region. The other reason, apart from the reality of lag times in loading and the way certain DVD's are formatted, I'm getting increasingly annoyed at the way studios are presently their discs - especially with advertsing at the front of them which one can't ff through or jump straight to the menu, etc, etc, etc. To me, a HD based system seems more user-centiric and I can set it up in a way that appeals to me.
One major concern for me lately is the unexplained failure of DVD's without excessive use - as I've said, I've had 6 die - many of them have only been played once or twice. The retailers can't offer any explanations and I've heard conflicting stories from the local studio branches or distributors. With a growing collection that has cost $16000NZ it makes me a little nerous when I pull a title out as to whether it's going to fail or not. This DVD rot scenario is something that is NOT being addressed by the studios. Do I have to replace a title every third use? I worry about future DVD designs that utilise multiple layers, as the failure in mine has always been after the layer switch. This failure rate has made me want backup potential on whatever type of media server I decide to go with - but then it seems to reach a moot point when backup costs more than just replacing the discs that die - and backing up on to a blank DVD is seriously expensive here as well - may as well just buy another studio released one.
I did plan to setup the system in the basement/another room. Better for many reasons.
AirPost - I'm currently leaning in your direction - using external firewire drives. Seems easier to implement from my perspective and a lot easier to maintain from a non-geek POV. I was considering Hitachi's 400 Gb drive, but it costs a fortune here. The most cost effective unit I've found locally is LaCie's 1TB unit for $1800NZ. I figure 4 or 5 of those should set me up with enough space to grow and contain movies, music and TV. Is USB 2.0 any better/worse than firewire 800? Why would I need to hot swap drives and can't this be done already with a firewire drive? What is the story with drefrag on such systems?
I've have also been considering re-formatting all my DVD's to MPEG4 to save on space, but am uncertain if one can get as good a video as MPEG2. Do either of you have any expereine with this? How much of a saving would one achieve on say a 6Gb movie?
One more question before I fang - does backup software (like the one that comes with XP) compress the VOB files significantly to save heaps of space (are there any backup software suggestions), or are VOB's already heavily compressed?
Thanks again - Groover
by Groover on Sat Nov 27, 2004 1:37 am 
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) with 8 Maxtor 300 gb 7200 16mb cache drives. This array initlalized in 6 hours and I copied 500gb to it in about 4 hours so it obviously performs much much better (unnecessary for pure file storage).
to pay for it all.