ensamgud
Cadet
- Joined
- May 6, 2012
- Messages
- 3
Hi, I'm currently looking into centralizing all my spread out USB and internal drive storage and am putting together a new box. Planned to use a NetGear NAS Ultra first but I changed my mind and will go with custom box + FreeNAS. (mainly to even out the costs over a couple of months, but it also seems more future proof, plus I want something to build)
At first I planned to have it as a strict NAS, handling only storage, but as I frequently stream and transcode video to my entertainment room from my desktop PC (currently), I am now thinking if I could put some more (or at least better) hardware into the NAS box and perhaps give it the role of my video transcoder as well? Currently I am using PS3 Media Server for this and it works very well for my purposes.
What kind of hardware would be required to have FreeNAS running smoothly (quite large torrent throughput, running basically 24/7) and have it transcode full HD videos (using for example PS3 Media Server) a couple of nights each week? I know transcoding is pretty heavy stuff, especially 1080p, and my desktop PC currently doing it has good hardware and lots of RAM so I'm not really sure abot the lower limit.
Is it unwise to combine FreeNAS with transcoding?
The box needs high wife approval factor, so I'm going for a fanless power supply and a micro ATX card and a decent looking, probably "box-like", silent case. For storage I'm thinking up to four 2-3TB drives in RAID5.
I really want to avoid a GPU because of the noise/heat, will a decent CPU be enough to run the FreeNAS and do transcoding of 1080p?
The alternative is to build my new box for storage only, (a bit cheaper/less hardware) and keep using my desktop PC to transcode the movies - eventually get a Boxee or something that can replace the PS3 Media Server desktop.
Also, will I lose the stored data if I start with a single drive (say a 3TB disk), fill it up and then buy another one and decide to create a RAID configuration?
Thanks
At first I planned to have it as a strict NAS, handling only storage, but as I frequently stream and transcode video to my entertainment room from my desktop PC (currently), I am now thinking if I could put some more (or at least better) hardware into the NAS box and perhaps give it the role of my video transcoder as well? Currently I am using PS3 Media Server for this and it works very well for my purposes.
What kind of hardware would be required to have FreeNAS running smoothly (quite large torrent throughput, running basically 24/7) and have it transcode full HD videos (using for example PS3 Media Server) a couple of nights each week? I know transcoding is pretty heavy stuff, especially 1080p, and my desktop PC currently doing it has good hardware and lots of RAM so I'm not really sure abot the lower limit.
Is it unwise to combine FreeNAS with transcoding?
The box needs high wife approval factor, so I'm going for a fanless power supply and a micro ATX card and a decent looking, probably "box-like", silent case. For storage I'm thinking up to four 2-3TB drives in RAID5.
I really want to avoid a GPU because of the noise/heat, will a decent CPU be enough to run the FreeNAS and do transcoding of 1080p?
The alternative is to build my new box for storage only, (a bit cheaper/less hardware) and keep using my desktop PC to transcode the movies - eventually get a Boxee or something that can replace the PS3 Media Server desktop.
Also, will I lose the stored data if I start with a single drive (say a 3TB disk), fill it up and then buy another one and decide to create a RAID configuration?
Thanks