rgreenpc Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 Long time lurker to the Podcast and forums but its time for "me" to ask the question... I have a WMC box that is not being used. It is currently running 64bit windows 7 Pro Specs: i5-2500k 4GB ram (yes I know this will need to go to 8-16GB) Motherboard DH67BL I have turned off all the WMC services but am wondering if I should move to FREENAS or WHS? My use case is a PLEX server so going to a standalone NAS doesn't seem a good idea given transcoding has to occur on occasion. I would like some advice as to what you all would do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drashna Jaelre Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 Depends on what else you want. If you want backups, then WHS. Otherwise FreeNAS would work well for you. Though, do you have a copy of WHS already? If not, that maybe problematic, as it's hard to find anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ikon Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 WHS2011 is getting really hard to find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgreenpc Posted March 15, 2015 Author Share Posted March 15, 2015 I don't have a copy of WHS so that could be an issue. I have a time capsule for my mac backups. Is there any benefit to nuking this box and going with freenas or WHS over my win7 install? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ikon Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 Maybe run Plex Media Server on your Win7 box? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drashna Jaelre Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 I don't have a copy of WHS so that could be an issue. I have a time capsule for my mac backups. Is there any benefit to nuking this box and going with freenas or WHS over my win7 install? No, there shouldn't be any issue. Reinstalling should repartition and wipe everything. But Ikon has a point, if you have a Win7 box, why not use Plex on that? It should work well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgreenpc Posted March 15, 2015 Author Share Posted March 15, 2015 Thats a fair point... I guess I then get into "what is the best raid controller/server software" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ikon Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 If you run Plex on the Win7 box, why would you need a server? Win7 would be your Plex server. I also don't think you need a RAID card. Just get StableBit DrivePool and pool the drives. I would also get StableBit Scanner (to keep an eye on your data drive(s) ). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drashna Jaelre Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 I'm totally biased, but I'll second StableBit DriePool. It's kind of like a software JBOD. So you can use a bunch of mismatched disks to create a single pooled disk. And everything is stored on NTFS volumes, so you can recover data easily. There is a fully featured 30 day trial built into it (download, and install it, and it will prompt for a license, where you can then activate a license). if you do decide to buy, there is a link on the main page of the forum. Use this link, as it generates revenue for Home Server Show, as well! If you have any questions about the StableBit products, please ask away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgreenpc Posted March 15, 2015 Author Share Posted March 15, 2015 I'm totally biased, but I'll second StableBit DriePool. It's kind of like a software JBOD. So you can use a bunch of mismatched disks to create a single pooled disk. And everything is stored on NTFS volumes, so you can recover data easily. There is a fully featured 30 day trial built into it (download, and install it, and it will prompt for a license, where you can then activate a license). if you do decide to buy, there is a link on the main page of the forum. Use this link, as it generates revenue for Home Server Show, as well! If you have any questions about the StableBit products, please ask away. Thanks for the info... I will look up the info on the site regarding Stablebit. I guess my issue was redundancy. I hate the thought of ripping my discs again (if you've never done it imagine having arm hair removed a stand at a time). Stable bit is just JBOD if I understand correctly... just in a software form. Is there any significant CPU hit by going this route over hardware? I rip my movies from my discs then strip out the extra audio and languages (to make the tracks a bit smaller) I was thinking about running 4 - 4TB drives (or 6). I have been lucky and never had a HDD fail on me before I replaced it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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