OK, as a fun little Summer project, Im considering ripping all my DVDs (currently at around 450 http://www.invelos.com/dvdcollection.aspx/goblin) to hard drive to access them anywhere on my Media Center PCs, probably using MyMovies. I reckon this is going to take a minimum of around 5 terabytes at the minute and wondered what people thought is the easiest way to get this much storage at a reasonable price. Ten 500gig HDDs would be easiest and most cost efficient at the minute, but cannot for the life of me work out how to run that many discs or even what to put them in.

Any ideas?

Coolermaster Stacker, GOOD psu (or two), cheap ATX mother with 4 usable SATA ports.  Add in some extra SATA cards and you are set.  Just use a *NIX of some kind to run it.

Ive been out of the hardware game for too long - I never even THOUGHT of add-in SATA cards

your other option is a cheap box and some USB Caddies.  At that number of drives though it might make more sense to just bolt them all into one case, and reserve the USB option for future mess.

any old pc will do... then stick naslite on it... i used it on mine and its rock solid stable

(better than installing windows on it etc...)

you should be able to get a decent 12 port sata card on ebay pretty cheap (ish) too

save the hassle
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SONY-400-CD-DVD-JUKEBOX-DVP-CX985V-GUARANTEED-JUTEBOX_W0QQitemZ280128999095QQihZ018QQcategoryZ61326QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

or this
http://www.freenas.org/

Quote from: Eggtasticosave the hassle
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SONY-400-CD-DVD-JUKEBOX-DVP-CX985V-GUARANTEED-JUTEBOX_W0QQitemZ280128999095QQihZ018QQcategoryZ61326QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

No use, needs to be able to pipe around the house to four different zones playing different stuff at the same time, plus Id need two of them

Quote from: Goblin

Quote from: Eggtasticosave the hassle
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SONY-400-CD-DVD-JUKEBOX-DVP-CX985V-GUARANTEED-JUTEBOX_W0QQitemZ280128999095QQihZ018QQcategoryZ61326QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

No use, needs to be able to pipe around the house to four different zones playing different stuff at the same time, plus Id need two of them

ahh, Im doing somthing simlair myself. Ive run a mile of cabling. 4 ethernet cables to every room & 2x Satellite/TV coaxil Cable as well. (4x bedrooms, 2x living rooms, dining room & Loft conversion)

Ive yet to decide if Im going to have 1 PC to do all the encoding/decoding or have seperate boxes in Each room.

Ideally Ill have LCD panels in each room. I already have matrox cards that can display an output to 4 seperate screens. - so I need another one of those if I go down that route.

before anyone asks.. Im lucky enough to be renovating an old house from scratch.

Why ive run so many cables, simply because its just as easy to run 4 as it to run 1 or 2... and CAT5 is quite cheap. All the cabling cost about £100 in all.
2x Purples  cable.. They are to carry HiDef Signals.
1x Orange cable.. Thats for VOIP through a Trixbox server
1x Grey cable.. Thats my Data/Internet run :-D

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/129306

pretty cheap imo

Though I could get 1.5 Tb in Samsung Spinpoint 500Gb for a tenner less, or a half Tb free... Of course it adds to the amount of SATA ports and cables and power needed.

how about mounting it in a server shell?

Personally I would think of what ten hard disks and a computer might do to my electric bill. How often do you watch the films at an average of eight hours watching a day it comes to 112.5 days worth of video. I bet there are some you will never watch again too. Better to transfer the ones you watch most onto a 1TB dual drive box and use the DVD drive to watch the rest when you can be bothered.

Another option is to buy a couple of external USB drives and move them around to the computer you want to watch on. As prices continue to drop you can buy bigger hard drives. 1TB drives should be at the price point next year.

Quote from: SeriousPersonally I would think of what ten hard disks and a computer might do to my electric bill. How often do you watch the films at an average of eight hours watching a day it comes to 112.5 days worth of video. I bet there are some you will never watch again too. Better to transfer the ones you watch most onto a 1TB dual drive box and use the DVD drive to watch the rest when you can be bothered.

Another option is to buy a couple of external USB drives and move them around to the computer you want to watch on. As prices continue to drop you can buy bigger hard drives. 1TB drives should be at the price point next year.

Computers have power management now ;-D

I was going to get 2 long strips of metal & drill holes to mount hdd on. I was then going to get a load of Sata-> usb adapters & daisy chain them up :-D

Now im undecided which is the best way... mainly because I cant decide on end clients for each zone.