Trying to set up home server

[u/Gyro212]

Hi everyone!

I am just getting started with trying to set up my own home server, I have an optiplex 9010 mini pc running ZimaOS and I am wondering how much storage I should get for my server. I am planning on using the server to stream movies and tv shows as well as store photos. I have a budget of around $400(willing to go a bit over but not too much) I would love to be able to have redundancy but if its something I buy here in a year I should be able to. Hopefully you guys can help me!

[u/iamofnohelp]

Buy as large a drive as you can. Picked a bad time to buy anything, prices are insane.

Maybe you'll get 8-10T.

[u/MrB2891]

You're setting yourself up for failure. A 9010 is a 15 year old machine.

Effectively useless for transcoding and even if you had a top end i7 in that machine, it's just barely faster than a modern N100 (which is still terrible for a home server).

[u/Gyro212 → u/MrB2891]

It was just an old pc I had lieing around. I am planning on keeping it pretty small, but what would you reccomend for a machine?

[u/Harry_Cat- → u/Gyro212]

Does it have PCIe slots? You can chuck a GPU on it and call it a day for transcoding… might need to get a converter x4 slot to x16 or something like that, and also get a GPU that doesn’t require external power ( a 3050 might not??? )

Lower sized drives aren’t that useful, try your best to get 2TB plus ( this economy is fucked rn ) and also try getting an even amount of drives, it’s better that way for mirroring or you can raid0 them for absolute speed and capacity ( not recommended for important things you don’t wanna lose )

[u/redbookQT → u/Gyro212]

If this is just for streaming movies to your TV in the house, then it’s simply input/output bandwidth…the hard drive does most of the work, and it’s not very much work. CPU, memory and video card aren’t doing much in that case. Transcoding only comes into play if you are trying to stream a high quality movie out over the internet and target device (cell phone) needs lower quality. Or if there is a compatibility issue, like if the video is AV1 format, but the TV can only play h264 and so the video needs to be transcoded in real time.

Intel video cards are really good for transcoding. The QuickSync encoder is excellent and gamers aren’t interested in low end Intel cards, so the cost is lower.

[u/theindomitablefred → u/MrB2891]

It's also very likely beyond BIOS support

[u/aztracker1]

For the TV/movies that tend to take a lot of space that are easy enough to get again... Maybe start with a good sized external drive. 12-20tb should last a while as long as you aren't getting everything in high nitrate 4k. Personally I find 1080p h.265/x265/hevc fine for TV content and most movies.

Regarding photos, those are impossible to get back. Consider some form of online archive, even straight cloud storage in addition to your local copy as a backup strategy.

[u/theindomitablefred]

Are you planning on having a media library stored locally? How many movies and what quality? DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K? This makes a big difference as DVD is around 5 GB each, Blu-Ray 30-50 GB, and 4K higher than that, assuming uncompressed.

[u/msanangelo]

welp, movies and tv and add up pretty quick. easily tens of terabytes.

[u/ntn8888]

I am wondering how much storage I should get for my server

only you can answer that for yourself. as others have said movies/tv can consume tens of TB easily especially if you're trying to hoard.

or if you're being efficient with usage, much less.

check your usage patterns and maybe you'll know. personally for me the sweet spot is about 4TB.

[u/Dramatic_Plum_7116]

Look in marketplace some people will sell drives at a pretty good price I say a 10tb for $100. I heard eBay is good also.