Alx9r's Network Attached Storage Setup

Alx9r's Sample Setup

System Diagram

I now store my media on a 2-drive Network Attached Storage box. The 2 drives are entirely independent volumes (i.e. not a RAID configuration). Only the second drive is used by LinuxMCE. Every night, a script synchronizes the contents of the first drive with the second drive. See the rationale section below for why I set it up this way.

Originally I opted to use a built-in (sata connected) secondary media storage drive for my hybrid core. That configuration was simple and cheap to set up but suffered from a few shortcomings. You can read about that original setup in earlier versions of this page.

Rationale

Here are some reasons why I set up my media storage the way I did.

• Fresh installations of LinuxMCE can be put on the hybrid/core drive without losing media. If you have only a single drive, you need to use the custom partition installation which is somewhat less-supported.
• The NAS box can be located away from my hybrid/core which cuts down on noise in the living room and heat in the hybrid/core case.
• As compared to adding hard drives to a hybrid/core, NAS offers more flexibility for the same money since I am not limited by the amount of hard drive slots and available connections in my hybrid/core.
• With the DNS-323, syncronizing independent drives nightly is less buggy than RAID1.
• Unlike with RAID1, using one drive as a nightly backup only means that the two drives have a different usage pattern and are unlikely to fail simultaneously.
• Unlike with RAID5, if the NAS box fails I can just plug either of the drives into a PC and recover the contents.

Hardware

I opted to go with the D-Link DNS-323 ($180) which is a two-bay bring-your-own-drives network attached storage box. I put two Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB hard drives in the slots which were $225 each.

Setup

There are a number of wikis and forums dedicated to the DNS-323. I'll just provide the general steps that I took to prepare mine. Here is what I did:

1. With no hard drives in the slots, I upgraded the DNS-323 firmware to 1.05 using the DNS-323 admin web page.
2. Changed the name of the device to NAS-1 from the DNS-323 admin web page.
3. Added the drives and used the wizard on the DNS-323 admin web page to format them in "standard" mode. This mode results in two separate volumes called Volume_2 and Volume_1.
4. Copied all my media to the LinuxMCE folder structure on Volume_2.
5. Installed ffp (aka fun_plug) following these instructions.
6. Set up a nightly rsync to copy all of the data from Volume_2 to Volume_1 by following these instructions.
7. With the DNS-323 turned off, connected it to the INTERNAL network, then switched it on.
8. Once the DNS-323 completed booting, I performed a reload router. After a what seemed like a long time (probably a few minutes), LinuxMCE detected the DNS-323 and asked me if I wanted to use the drive. LinuxMCE prompted for each of three shares that the DNS-323 set up: Volume_1, Volume_2, and web_page. I told LinuxMCE to use only Volume_2 with the LinuxMCE folder structure.
9. After this, LinuxMCE displayed that it was "Installing Software" for a few minutes and eventually hung indefinitely doing some sort of "Configuration". I finally, forced reload router, and the DNS-323 was fully set up.

Folder Structure and Media (Pre-Installation)

Before connecting the DNS-323 to LinuxMCE, I created the standard LinuxMCE media drive folder structure on the Volume_2 drive. The structure looks like this:

Volume_2

|-public
   |-data
      |-videos
      |-music
      |-pictures

Also before connecting, I moved all of my media to the appropriate folder on the media drive.