The Home Media Data Center Project

[Zewetenwieikben]

Compaq Evo N1020z ??

[neosmith80]

So wheres the redundancy, if there's only 1 power cord what if it gets disconnected same with the ethernet no dual ethernet connections. Just fyi Hub's are the worse networking gear available. Nub job and fire hazard!!! ~_~

[DialedBMX]

this is so cool man, i like the way you put the hun in the case with the single up link wire coming out of it, great idea

[HalleLangley]

Halle Langley is on FaceBook.

[HalleLangley]

This is what has gone before. I am what came after. I will not be replaced.

[novachevyguy]

what a damned joke this is...

[wwallender]

Don't We Have Virtual PC For Somthing

[sacrenough]

@wwallender Dont Don't We Have Uploader's Comments For Something?

[doomtomb3]

This needs cable management... badly... it runs so much hotter because of that.

[jamesfreddieboy]

UPDATE TO POWER PACK 3

[dbnstrikeman]

Its sounds like you need to try LinuxMCE

[rimtech45]

so much stuff if you have not get a bigger pc case

and a wider case

[dragomitch]

Hats off to your ingenuity for fitting it all in one box; and then showing everyone up by also having a network hub in the spare room!

[klote2314]

how do u cool that dual mobo

arent the cooling blocks jamming each other??

[jamesf12345]

@klote2314

No, there's about a half-inch of clearance between them. They're dual core CPUs, not overclocked, so not super hot.

[andyisthebestest]

virtual machine

[jamesf12345]

@andyisthebestest

No good (at least when I built it). WHS needs access to physical hardware for drive extender. Media Center needs access to physical hardware for using multiple cores & tuner devices.

[jamesf12345]

@andyisthebestest

Can't do it- Windows Home Server needs direct access to the disk hardware.

[Ninesvnsicks]

I don't see why you need 2 computers here, just install windows media center and then setup your raid and share that from windows meda center.

[Ninesvnsicks]

Why don't you jsut get another case and separate them I mean one is a Nas and the other is your media center Idk why you would put them in the same case.

[PhilipHo92]

Is that a coolermaster 300 case series?

[jamesf12345]

@PhilipHo92

It's a Cooler Master Centurion 534

[jamesfreddieboy]

Just use windows home server. No need for vista. Now we are on PP3 on WHS.

[jamesf12345]

@jamesfreddieboy

WHS doesn't include Media Center.

[jamesfreddieboy]

Mental

[onionofdeath]

Dual Mobos=Badass! Have you had any heat issues with that cable (mis)management?

[dave5708]

Nice Project :) Well done fitting all that in there, and the net hub too. Cable management will kill you though. You need to get those cables tidy, and improve the ventilation, or you'll start losing parts to heat. Brilliant idea though, something I must try :)

[Ben333bacc]

If you got a 2nd case... it would be sweet.

[FunIsPhun]

thats not a mini tower. its a mid-tower

[TheBuffaloChicken]

Cracking!

[cotton509]

modular psu ssd drives smaller mother boards say pico itx ones?

[jamesf12345]

These are great suggestions. I was looking at SSD drives that plug directly into the IDE slot (would save a lot of room in the case), were a bit expensive though. Maybe cheaper now. Same goes for the mobos- Micro ATX was a good balance of features and cost.

[cotton509]

k but tr pico itx and amke it a tint server :) i would work on it with u but i cant :(

[cotton509]

make it a two tiny pico itx servers that plut intoeatchother :D and the network is externail

[nickdacomputerbof]

Brilliant idea really cool

[palauskas]

thats brilliant man

[ravenousjerboa]

a dual mobo, never heard of that

[k4ZE106]

LOL for good airflow you should have put some cables out of the way :D

[grimlord5654]

its a messy setup.

[Skilinium]

"We get an pretty good airflow inside the case.", I highly doubt that with all those nice wires.

[jamesf12345]

Still going strong ;)

[ZIPPOX64]

not to knock your creativity....but stacking boards is a horrible idea....as pinkfloydeffect perfectly stated, virtualize your machine and save a little cash in power and hardware...virtualization is great for network based projects such as your home media network. Right now i run vista on one box with many different virtual xp installs with USB audio adapters that pipe audio to amplifiers located in different zones in the house and property...(continued)

[jamesf12345]

Check the comments- tried that. When this was built virtualization didn't have the hardware support required, nor did the host platform have the horsepower needed to do it cost-effectively. May have caught up now.

[scotland2019]

nice setup. my htpc case is packed with hard drives. the fans were too noisy for me i hate noise. i just took the sides off the case perfect :)

[gotingohan]

where do you guys get the money to buy all of those??

[pinkfloydeffect]

nice project but why two motherboards in one case? go rackmount looks liek too much heat. you could run virtual machine in windows server and eliminate the entire second pc hardware in that case

[davidsons08]

haha. wow. lol

that things gonna burn up. Theres no way he gets enough airflow to cool all that.

[kinkaid25]

i've always wanted a glass tower case, something stylish

[macbookpro57]

did u actually build that or did u get it? cause i want to buy one, lol if i make it, i will probably mess it up

[jamesf12345]

It's 100% home-built. I definitely learned a few things during the process (like figuring out whether Pico boards and PSUs would work for me), but it sure was fun to build.

[macbookpro57]

oh so i have to build it, like i cant buy one from bestbuy or something? =)

[mdiamond2007]

WHS has media sharing built-in, and works brilliantly with the Xbox 360.  I have this running at home with 2 360's, and I only have to run 1 PC in the closet (with only 1 motherboard and 1 OS). I'm not clear why you need Media Center if all you want to do is share media.

[jamesf12345]

Couple of reasons- mainly the Media Center interface is a bit more intuitive and user-friendly for non-gamers, and secondarily because of Media Center's TV support. Check my second home media blog- it's really important that we're able to have New York 1 News available to us (though I do wish that Microsoft would make on-demand Netflix and Xbox Live videos available through Media Center). Even better would be if it supported iTunes content, but I won't hold my breath :)

[elninzo]

very very nice project, like it a lot. good job

[halogenetor]

Love your modding and innovative solutions! But I have to say that its ridiculously tight in there. You should at least get cable ties in there, those wires are going to really damage airflow. I suggest and so has a lot of others that you get a proper server case, they ain't too expensive and they hold a lot more hard drives. Keep up the good work though, I like that switch on the inside of the case ;)

[cotton509]

omg use a bigger casee but that is so nuts

[jamesf12345]

Nah, too easy :)

[cotton509]

why??? atleast hack the case with a ion fan or better cooling before you kill it =(

[GarrettBMXes]

nice cable management. Just Kidding

i like the overall setup, very nice.

But I would seriously reccomend buying a server case. They are more compact and a lot easier to use. And you can make thos ver "plug and play" as well.

Nice.

Enjoyed watching

[gameplayer44444]

worst setup ever, makes me sad

[chrono162]

There are so many issues with this/ It defies everything. your LAN speed is reduced by 50% by going from 2x100 to 1x100.

You cooling is a joke. you need to fix that.

Sorry, but you should just stop. As far as PC's go you make those of us in the business sad.

[jamesf12345]

Not to feed the trolls, but just to correct the one fact you stated (and got wrong): look up ethernet packet switching: you'll find that doesn't mean that with two attached devices each device is allocated 50 megabits. If it was a 100 port switch, do you think each device would be allocated a maximum of 1 megabit? That would be one funky switch ;)

And thanks for the 'defies everything' comment: I'd love to take credit but I haven't defied gravity. When the box floats I'll post another video!

[dawthness]

Actually... Each switchport is going to get 100Mbps,.. when you connect a hub to that switchport,the devices connected to that hub are going to share the bandwidth (and collision domain).

Hubs are bad. using a hub is as bad as using dial up. Switches aren't that expensive anymore :D All a hub does is forward all frames (well technically, it just repeats the electrical signal.) out of all interfaces.

I apologize if you just got terminology messed up there - is it actually a hub, or a switch?

[jamesf12345]

Thank you for clarifying dawthness. It is a switch. Cost less than $50, iirc. I'm not sure you can even buy 100 megabit hubs these days :)

[musclesdude]

Why not just two cases with one machine in each one? I dont see the point in this! Theres no power savings because you have two power supplies in one box, the only thing you have done is save a little space? Do you live in a matchbox or something? hahahha!

[EmoLovez]

its for space saving and not everyone likes there place to look like yours from what your saying... not to mention you can have power saving if you hook up the PSU's corectly...

[jamesf12345]

Thanks EmoLovez. A big part of the goal was also to make this appliance-like/plug-and-play, with just two connections in: ping and power.

[koz303303]

i think i would run at least 4 big fans on both side of the case to move the heat. All that in that case has to produce some major heat. Nice job on the motherboards in the case

[jamesf12345]

Thanks koz303303- good suggestion. The heat load's manageable right now but most of it is coming from the HDDs. SSDs should help solve that problem when they get a bit cheaper!

[shagadelicman1]

dood, too many wires! even raid array wont help heat load!

[MetallicaHHH]

Awesome man!

[lister0fsmeg]

Wicked Rig!

[wankchufboxer]

get a job and leave designing servers to pros and use virtulisation!

[Cortezino]

Dude, I still think why you make it so complicated?

Beter to start a one OS with implemented all this things.

Much easier and manageable is just to use Virtial machines!

One system with Quad Core CPU and 8GB will be much more reliable and thin.

[jamesf12345]

Tried it. No dice- Windows Home Server needs direct access to the hardware to do its storage pooling, and Vista Media Center under Virtual PC only allows you to allocate one CPU to the virtual machine. It might work better under VMWare GSX if you can allocate 2 or 3 CPUs to Vista, but that's out of my price range.

[armexico2003]

hey man i love your project, i myself have a 6 computer home network, i was looking for a way to have multiple users in multiple computers, so i think i need a server, i pick my computers from a second hand store, windows home server its right for me, but i wonder if it can be run on a celleron computer, since its all i can pay for jeje, by the way where did you learn this? i want to study the same thing :P

[jamesf12345]

WHS should work fine on a celeron (or an Atom). Just learned by tinkering. Good luck!

[ThisShouldBeCensored]

vista from a ssd? you've got some balls dude!

I've heard very bad things about booting an OS from a ssd.

[conlol]

Dude tidy up those wires!

[KingPain14]

i just thought, you'd save alot of room and have less heat if you use laptop harddrives. Theyre wayy smaller and cooler. also, going to newegg you can pick up a few ITX or mini itx motherboards. They have some for intel that can work with core 2 duo that are really small and power efficiant.

[jamesf12345]

Good plan, for sure. Putting together the ideas for version. Maybe solid state drives?

[jamesf12345]

Had to remove the fan duct from the side fan already so I could fit the fourth HD in :)

[KingPain14]

btw, MORE FANS! i see an empty fan spot on that side panel, fill it!

[KingPain14]

cool rig man, I'd advise you do some serious cable management though lol

[jamesf12345]

Thanks! It was definitely fun. 2.5" drives is an interesting idea- trying to keep the cost down though. Was thinking of experimenting with a pico-ITX board for the Home Server with a USB hub... I'll post a folloup with version 2.0 if and when it happens.