Buidling my first dedicated WMC machine

[clemon79]

Hi! I *was* going to repurpose a spare computer I have kicking around for WMC as soon as SiliconDust's new CableCard tumers come out, but in the last couple days I have seen some relatively inexpensive ways to build a nice little HTPC, so now I'm thinking about going that route. But I have a couple of questions.

1) The enclosure I want to use has space for a single 2.5" laptop drive in it. (It does also have USB 3.0 ports.) Am I asking for trouble using multiple network-based tuners with a laptop drive?

2) Is 5400rpm vs. 7200rpm an issue? (Basically I'm just thinking of going with a WD Red 750GB drive.)

3) If I got an SSD to use for Windows 7 (with WMC), would an external USB 3.0 drive work for the actual Recorded TV drive?

4) I'm thinking of using this kit as a jumping-off point. Thoughts?

Thanks much!

-- Chris

[machausta]

1) The enclosure I want to use has space for a single 2.5" laptop drive in it. (It does also have USB 3.0 ports.) Am I asking for trouble using multiple network-based tuners with a laptop drive?

2) Is 5400rpm vs. 7200rpm an issue? (Basically I'm just thinking of going with a WD Red 750GB drive.)

3) If I got an SSD to use for Windows 7 (with WMC), would an external USB 3.0 drive work for the actual Recorded TV drive?

4) I'm thinking of using this kit as a jumping-off point. Thoughts?
-- Chris

1. It should be fine.

2. Non-issue

3. No, nor would you want it to. Just get a big spinning disk.

4. Personally, I would want something a little bit beefier -- but it should work.

[clemon79]

3. No, nor would you want it to. Just get a big spinning disk.

Mmkay...and OS and Recorded TV on the same drive isn't an issue?

4. Personally, I would want something a little bit beefier -- but it should work.

Beefier how? The only real concern I have is that the drive interface is SATA 2 and not 3, but I'm told something with a Core i3 (and at least Intel 4000 integrated graphics) should be more than enough for WMC.

Should I be really concerned about the SATA issue? I can always look into a separate ITX case / MB solution if it's going to be a huge issue, and I think I can do it for the same amount of money.

[Shackleford]

I think he misinterpreted your number 3. A USB 3.0 drive would be sufficient, that whole setup should be fine.

[tletourneau]

To point 3, I use a 4TB USB 3 drive for recorded TV with no problems.

[clemon79]

Yeah, I'm smart enough to know not to try something like that with a USB 2.0 external drive.

That said, though, if I picked up a drive like this and just used it for everything (figuring that there's more than enough room there for 100 hours of HD programming, since the terabyte drive I dropped in my TiVo was good for 156, and the tuner I am gonna get is gonna transcode to h.264 on the fly), would I be set, or should I really be leaning towards something 7200rpm? The logic here is that the 5400 is going to run cooler and the HD Reds are designed for 24/7 work.

The more I think about it, as well, the more I think if I do that I'm gonna need SATA 3.0 if I'm going to do that, so I may have to read around here a little and see if I can find what cases people like. Still deciding how married I am to the notion of front-mounted USB 3.0 ports. if I do, or if I even care for an HTPC.

[Mike88]

FWIW, I'm using an Intel G620 dual core Pentium and a single 1.5TB Seagate Green drive which is a SATA 2, 5900 RPM drive. It can record 4 programs at the same time while playing back a different fifth recording.

[christoph86]

I also have an external 4 tb hardrive connected to USB 3.0 for my recorded tv atm and it does fine. It runs pretty much non stop though, so the extra fan noise on it can be a bit of a nuissance depending on your drive. I have to disable the power option for USB selective suspend, because if I don't the HTPC at times won't recognize it. You definetly want the OS on an SSD and record on a separate drive, whether internal or external. 5400/5900 rpm is probably the way to go if you go internal, not as much heat or wear and tear. You just have to setup in WMC where you want the recorded tv to save.

[clemon79]

Hmmm. Okay, lemme throw this out there.

The machine I WAS going to use for this is my old desktop machine, which has a Celeron E3400, Radeon HD 4850, 4 GB of RAM, and two roughly-500GB hard drives. If I build this machine that one will probably turn into a Windows Home Server or something.

Am I facing problems there, or will that work if I decide I want to shelve this whole idea and just use that for the HTPC?

[machausta]

I think he misinterpreted your number 3. A USB 3.0 drive would be sufficient, that whole setup should be fine.

I totally read that wrong, yes a usb 3.0 drive would be fine.

FWIW, I'm using an Intel G620 dual core Pentium and a single 1.5TB Seagate Green drive which is a SATA 2, 5900 RPM drive. It can record 4 programs at the same time while playing back a different fifth recording.

Older systems work well -- just check out my HTPC via the little icon under my username.

I also have an external 4 tb hardrive connected to USB 3.0 for my recorded tv atm and it does fine. It runs pretty much non stop though, so the extra fan noise on it can be a bit of a nuissance depending on your drive. I have to disable the power option for USB selective suspend, because if I don't the HTPC at times won't recognize it. You definetly want the OS on an SSD and record on a separate drive, whether internal or external. 5400/5900 rpm is probably the way to go if you go internal, not as much heat or wear and tear. You just have to setup in WMC where you want the recorded tv to save.

You don't have to have a SSD, but a different drive (preferably faster) for your OS vs your recordings is a must.

Hmmm. Okay, lemme throw this out there.

The machine I WAS going to use for this is my old desktop machine, which has a Celeron E3400, Radeon HD 4850, 4 GB of RAM, and two roughly-500GB hard drives. If I build this machine that one will probably turn into a Windows Home Server or something.

Am I facing problems there, or will that work if I decide I want to shelve this whole idea and just use that for the HTPC?

This should be sufficient -- and you can replace that celeron with a core 2 duo / core 2 quad easy enough, provided your board supports it.

The only reason I had mentioned something 'beefier' is so that you might be able to run background apps like MCEBuddy, which I use to covert my .wtv files over to mp4 (much smaller).

[clemon79]

Actually the proc in the Celeron machine was originally a Core 2 Duo, but it was one of the early ones. The Celeron was actually a slight speed boost.

Well, again, the tuner I'm gonna get for this is gonna do the h.264 conversion in hardware on the fly, and if I want to do anything weirder I can do it on my desktop machine easily enough. So I don't know how worried I am about this running tons of stuff in the background.

Has anyone in the thread actually done this off of a single drive? The you-need-separate-drives thing might complicate the process somewhat, but if it's a must, it's a must...

[Mike88]

Actually the proc in the Celeron machine was originally a Core 2 Duo, but it was one of the early ones. The Celeron was actually a slight speed boost.

Well, again, the tuner I'm gonna get for this is gonna do the h.264 conversion in hardware on the fly, and if I want to do anything weirder I can do it on my desktop machine easily enough. So I don't know how worried I am about this running tons of stuff in the background.

Has anyone in the thread actually done this off of a single drive? The you-need-separate-drives thing might complicate the process somewhat, but if it's a must, it's a must...

As mentioned I use a single drive. Some people like to use an SSD for the OS because it's faster & I'm sure it is. But I don't have a problem with a slow HDD because the HTPC is in sleep mode when not recording or playing. IOW I don't have to wait for the PC to boot up. It wakes up, records, then back to sleep. It does take a few seconds to wake up when I want to playback, but it is only a few seconds.

It's probably easier to create an image of the OS if it's on a separate drive. But since there are not a lot of apps on my hdd it's almost as easy for me to just re-install Windows7 if I needed to.

If you plan on archiving a lot of recordings then you probably should have another drive for that. But I record, watch, delete. My HTPC is used mainly as a DVR & a little bit of Hulu streaming, etc., so it's basically an appliance with a dedicated purpose. Other people install all sorts of software so in their case a separate drive for software & for recordings may be best for them.

But a separate drive is not a must.

[clemon79]

Dredging this back up...

I've discovered that a much more HTPC-friendly version of the DS61 kit exists:

http://www.shuttle.eu/fileadmin/resourc ... H61V_e.pdf

But here's the part that is bugging me: the spec sheet says it's got two 2.5" drive bays *and* the slim optical drive bay (not or, and), but looking at this (exceptionally dry) video, I'm only seeing the one. Is there a way to get a second drive onto that bracket that I'm not seeing?