Computer question..

[evilnewbie]

Is there a reason why we don't use our own personal computer as a NAS device as well? To me, I could share my hard drive over the network that anyone can access over the home network without needing a NAS. I guess the downside is the computer needs to be on but it seems the speed is pretty fast on Asus RT-N56U wired networks. Any thoughts?

 

[Jesse B]

This is an option, and is completely doable for sure.

As you mentioned, the issue with this is that you must leave your PC on. Also, other applications running on your PC may hinder your network performance, where as a dedicated NAS unit would have 100% of its resources dedicated to file serving.

 

[stevech]

I and many people do this - simply lots of disk space and windows or linux disk/folder shares.
Can also be a low cost mini-ITX computer - always on, low AC power consumption.

 

[evilnewbie]

I have just under 900 DVD movies... do you know how many GB it would take to fit all these DVDs? One last thing, can two separate computers access the same movie file on a third computer? Thanks...

 

[Jesse B]

Well it depends on the quality of the DVD rip. Generally (from my experience) DVD rips tend to be around 700MB. So 1TB would easily fit all of your DVDs if this were the case. There's no reason not to buy a 2TB drive for how little they cost though.

 

[stevech]

I thought a good quality DVD copy would be much larger than 700MB.
A feature length movie at good quality would be like 5GB or more.
My HD TV recorded shows in H.264 are about 5.5GB per hour (1080i).

Happy that 2TB disks are what, $80 now?

 

[Jesse B]

I thought a good quality DVD copy would be much larger than 700MB.
A feature length movie at good quality would be like 5GB or more.
My HD TV recorded shows in H.264 are about 5.5GB per hour (1080i).

Happy that 2TB disks are what, $80 now?

Again, no idea what quality they are. Just an estimate. If they're super high quality then yes they'll most likely be a few GB each.

 

[Phatty2x4]

I have just under 900 DVD movies... do you know how many GB it would take to fit all these DVDs? One last thing, can two separate computers access the same movie file on a third computer? Thanks...

Couple questions:
1) Do you plan to convert them to MKV or AVI or some other format?
2) Do you plan to rip them and keep them in their ripped state?


Depending on your hardware and network, 2 or more systems should be able to access the same files without any issues.

 

[evilnewbie]

Couple questions:
1) Do you plan to convert them to MKV or AVI or some other format?
2) Do you plan to rip them and keep them in their ripped state?


Depending on your hardware and network, 2 or more systems should be able to access the same files without any issues.

To be honest, I don't even know how to rip DVDs from my computer... I read something about DVD Decrypter or something like that and figure, I'd just do "that"... is there a better way? These are just regular DVD's, most of them are in widescreen format... does it matter what format since I'll be streaming them to other computers in the house and television sets? I am actually going to build a new computer to do all this and plan on getting about 3 Seagate 3TB hard drives (for the ripped movies), a 2 TB WD storage drive (for other storage files), and a SSD for boot/gaming....

 

[Phatty2x4]

First and foremost:

You need to read up on what you thing you want to do.

Go over to DOOM9 (http://forum.doom9.org/) and start reading there about what you want to do. It is an amazing resource for getting your media off you DVD/Blueray and getting stored in a format that meets your needs. You will learn the Pro's and Con's of decryptors as well as converting or keeping the current rip in it's raw state.

Be aware, keeping a DVD in its raw ripped form will take up quite a bit of space (figure 4 to 9 gigs) so if you intend to keep it as such, you will need a lot of storage (especially since you have almost 900 DVDs)