Did a quick check and it's about 8 times dearer if I use the set up I currently have
Either I am not grasping this sentence or you mistyped something.
I've started trying both, iso will probably be my weapon of choice as with what I'm using I'll strip down the extras, keeping the movie at full quality
I rip all my DVD's as ISO also because I wanted the ability (if need arose) to rip the entire DVD back to media. Note that each DVD will take anywhere from ~4GB to ~8GB and the space will add up quickly. I currently have about 230 DVD's ripped to ~1.65TB worth of space, and if you do the math that comes to just around 7GB per rip. So if your talking about storing all 600 DVD's in ISO format you are looking at probably around 4.5TB JUST for the movies in your collection. If you were to get a drobo (you would need the drobo NAS addon also) and put 4x2TB drives in it you are looking at about 5.5TB of usable space.
Not interested in that, I've got all my music at 192 mp3 and I have no intention of re-ripping them!
OK, it is good that it is already ripped! Do you plan to move the collection to the NAS? I store a "server" version om my library that I use when at home and I have a "mobile" version of my library when I am on the road. I use a program called Multitunes to switch back and forth easily and manage the separate playlists for each one.
I'm going to start with 2TB and expand, but I need to be able to expand without changing the unit
Well, the Drobo is fairly easy to do that with (and so in unRAID) though you are limited to the 4/5 bay version of there hardware. I currently have 10 drives in my NAS system and would need 2 (maybe 3) Drobos to do that; not to mention I would have had to buy the Drobo NAS addon.
Again the Drobo, and the unRAID system are great at this. Drobo and unRAID can both take drives of any size (the largest has to be the parity drive in the unRAID array though).
I'd rather it's a combined unit running a server at low power - the alternative I thought of was a NAS with a mac mini running boot camp home server...
then you have 2 "computers" running all the time, which to me defeats the purpose of the NAS. A NAS is supposed to be "self supporting" and not require another computer to "run" it. The Drobo is close to being a NAS but not quite.
absolutely, most of my previous systems have been obtained like that, costs a little more but the research and building is fun
If you are willing to do this then you may just be a candidate for unRAID. Any modern hardware, even an Atom processor should be up to the task of running unRAID. If you are willing to do some searching, digging and researching then you will be rewarded in the end.
This is a very promising looking board for use in unRAID as it has 6 SATA built in and allows for expansion via the PCI-E x4 slot. It is an Atom board and therefore the processor will use very little power, the drives will spin down when not in use by unRAID, and it is expandable past the initial 6 SATA drives.
Tough one, I'm hoping to have all of my videos mainly hosted on this thing, so I'd budget initially £1k for it.
Does that include the price of the SATA drive(s)? If so figure you want to start with 2TB of usable space and need to buy drives that means you are going to need 2x2TB drives in the case of unRAID or 2x2TB drives for a Drobo (used there capacity calculator to get an idea). if you search around you can usually find a 2TB drive for $150 or less, so for 2 drives figure $300 off of the orginal 1K for "parts."
If your willing to spend a little time unRAID is probably your best bet. It does not use a proprietary file system, it is easy to move drives from one system to another, it does not have the pitfall of RAID5 (lose 2 drives and be screwed), and it is considerable more expandable then something prebuilt like the Drobo
