Bro win 10 computers are essentially free thanks to microsoft’s windows 11 requirements and any of them can keep up with transcoding. Add onto that any second hand sata drives and a sata controller than handles multiple parity drives for raid 5 and you’ve got a solution that is under the yearly subscription fee of ad-free netflix and a fun weekend project.
Hence my solution. You can get 2-4 TB drives for around $30 on ebay. Get a flexible RAID controller that can handle multi-parity Raid 50, ideally a second hand raid card. We’re at a total of $230 in at this point, assuming you have a windows 10 desktop lying around.
This is not a high data speed situation. If you have 6 or more drives you can dedicate two to parity and now you will never have data loss despite buying second hand drives. Effective storage capacity will be 16TB, which is more than enough to store 100 full series and a few thousand movies at 1080p or lower, and raid 50 gives a speed boost above what your controller will likely be able to handle, and way above what is needed for even a quite large multi-user media server.
Data storage is still incredibly cheap. You’re just confusing your needs and your wants.
So long as you don’t need to stockpile old shows you never watch, you can get by on an old laptop and possibly an external drive.
My homelab started out on a Raspberry Pi 2b. Most of the hardware Ive brought online were dumpster specials someone else didn’t want. It can be done on the cheap. Won’t necessarily be reliable, but it can be done cheap.
I’m in no position to toss to much shade at the data hoarder community. I’m personally sitting on close to 64TB of media I’ve collected over the years. In my case, most of it legitimately acquired, either by myself or by family, but still. It adds up and most of it hasn’t been accessed more than once or twice.
This can work fine if you’re just a single user/household since you can ensure that you’re only acquiring audio/video codecs that will play without transcoding but gets more challenging if you’re also sharing remotely with others since you don’t necessarily know what devices they’re using to watch which may require transcoding.
Yeah but good luck building out homelab these days. Too expensive
Bro win 10 computers are essentially free thanks to microsoft’s windows 11 requirements and any of them can keep up with transcoding. Add onto that any second hand sata drives and a sata controller than handles multiple parity drives for raid 5 and you’ve got a solution that is under the yearly subscription fee of ad-free netflix and a fun weekend project.
Can you guide my grandma to help her set it up? I’ll give you her number.
Edit: Just want to say I appreciate the info still
not the issue, storage price is
Hence my solution. You can get 2-4 TB drives for around $30 on ebay. Get a flexible RAID controller that can handle multi-parity Raid 50, ideally a second hand raid card. We’re at a total of $230 in at this point, assuming you have a windows 10 desktop lying around.
This is not a high data speed situation. If you have 6 or more drives you can dedicate two to parity and now you will never have data loss despite buying second hand drives. Effective storage capacity will be 16TB, which is more than enough to store 100 full series and a few thousand movies at 1080p or lower, and raid 50 gives a speed boost above what your controller will likely be able to handle, and way above what is needed for even a quite large multi-user media server.
Data storage is still incredibly cheap. You’re just confusing your needs and your wants.
stremio/nuvio + torbox since yall keep mentioning not storing anything longterm and deleting as you go
Cheaper than a netflix subscription. Especially if you repurpose the last PC you upgraded as a server. Jellyfin will run fine on 15 year old hardware.
If you’re happy with FHD (1080p) res, the requirements for both server and client are very low.
So long as you don’t need to stockpile old shows you never watch, you can get by on an old laptop and possibly an external drive.
My homelab started out on a Raspberry Pi 2b. Most of the hardware Ive brought online were dumpster specials someone else didn’t want. It can be done on the cheap. Won’t necessarily be reliable, but it can be done cheap.
c/datahoarders feeling personally attacked
:-D
I’m in no position to toss to much shade at the data hoarder community. I’m personally sitting on close to 64TB of media I’ve collected over the years. In my case, most of it legitimately acquired, either by myself or by family, but still. It adds up and most of it hasn’t been accessed more than once or twice.
Jellyfin isn’t too demanding. I’m still running my whole media stack on a Raspberry Pi 4.
This can work fine if you’re just a single user/household since you can ensure that you’re only acquiring audio/video codecs that will play without transcoding but gets more challenging if you’re also sharing remotely with others since you don’t necessarily know what devices they’re using to watch which may require transcoding.