Hardware Problem/Question Hard Drive Recommendation and other Questions

[Hawkgirl70]

Soon, I'm planning to purchase a Media Server. I have some questions.
I'm going to start off buying a 4 TB Drive.

What brand Internal Hard Drive has everyone been using?
Seagate or Western Digital?
Does it need to be 7200 RPM? Is 5400 RPH too slow?

What is the final charge to purchase this for U.S. customers?

I have a very huge library of TV Seasons/Shows of ISO Files as well as DVD and Blu-Ray Movies converted into ISO's.
They are currently saved on multiple external Western Digital hard drives.
By buying an internal drive to go into the media player, this will give me 2 backup copies which I've wanted.

So another question. When I get the media player and the HD, I let the Media Player format it to use, correct?

How do I get all my ISO files to it? Do I connect one of my external drives to my Laptop USB and then hook the Media Server up to another USB and transfer them that way?

Thanks for any answers you can share and I'd love if anyone has any other advice regarding this purchase that you think I need to know.

Hawkgirl
Shayera Hol :>)

[october262]

see here - https://www.dvdfab.cn/movie-server.htm?trackID=navmenu2

[Hawkgirl70]

Thank you for replying but I've read that already.

I'm looking for more detail and opinions from here from those who own one relating to my questions.

[90312]

5400 RPM is plenty fast. If you let the DMS format the drive your PC will not recognize it, so if you intend to take it out and shuttle to the PC use NTFS. I let the DMS format mine and mapped it as a network drive so I move movies to it from my PC.

[jimczyz]

I use a Seagate Iron Wolf 8tb in mine and I formatted it with my pc as ntfs or you won't be able to see it from your pc.

[Hawkgirl70]

I use a Seagate Iron Wolf 8tb in mine and I formatted it with my pc as ntfs or you won't be able to see it from your pc.

Wait, I thought 4 TB was the max size accepted?

Another Q? So a Main Movie BR ISO has no problem playing that huge file? Like 23GB, for example.

[90312]

FAT 32 has the 4GB file size limit, NTFS has no such limit.

[signals]

Mine plays 60GB blurays with no issues from folders or ISOs, mostly folders. I use (currently) a Seagate 4TB drive with a GPT partition and NTFS file system, the DMS and PC see it fine. My first DMS drive was a 2TB WD Caviar black, but it filled up. Between Seagate and WD, I buy what is on sale.

[Hawkgirl70]

Another question my husband thought of so this is from him.
Could he buy one of these for himself , with a hard drive, have me load some ISO files of say 30 movies, and he take it to his office to watch them?
He currently has a Samsung Smart LED TV.
Could he just connect via hdmi to his tv and play them?
He doesn’t need movie posters, nothing fancy, he just wants to see the list of movies on there to watch.
So could this work with just his tv and this MS?

[jimczyz]

I haven't seen a tv that played iso images. You could turn them into mp4's though. All the smart tvs play those.

[Hunter1955]

Another question my husband thought of so this is from him.
Could he buy one of these for himself , with a hard drive, have me load some ISO files of say 30 movies, and he take it to his office to watch them?
He currently has a Samsung Smart LED TV.
Could he just connect via hdmi to his tv and play them?
He doesn’t need movie posters, nothing fancy, he just wants to see the list of movies on there to watch.
So could this work with just his tv and this MS?

I don't see why not. You should be able to hook the MS up to any tv via HDMI and it should play ISO files from the MS
I don't think it has to be hooked to the internet to work.

[Hawkgirl70]

I don't see why not. You should be able to hook the MS up to any tv via HDMI and it should play ISO files from the MS
I don't think it has to be hooked to the internet to work.

Maybe the mods here would know for sure.
He has no Internet access at his shop / office.
And I already have all these videos in this format, if I could just load some for him to watch, that would be awesome.

[Down2Earth]

Maybe the mods here would know for sure.
He has no Internet access at his shop / office.
And I already have all these videos in this format, if I could just load some for him to watch, that would be awesome.

I have a combo service with my internet provider in my area that I use is jointed with my land line telephone, internet and cable TV access. Last year after a major storm one of their lines went down and I lost access to all three services. I couldn't watch TV or use the internet for 3 days but I was able to use my DMS to entertain myself and my family. I was able to see all my wall posters and select them to watch what ever I wanted too. None of the wall posters were grey out and the DMS performed quite well without no internet access. Believe there is a cache inside the movie server that stores hard drive information that is sent to it. So under those terms, I would say if your husband does not have internet services at work he would be able to watch want ever movies you put on the hard drive, you just need to make sure that everything is updated under an internet connection before you unplug it and take it where there is no internet service. When power came back on after those three days the movie server went into and automatic re-scanning of the hard drive/library once it was reattached to the internet.

If you have a bunch of movies on ISO format then you should be able to pop those hard drives in the server and hit the ground running watching them. Hot swapping hard drives out the movie server is a different animal, not a fan how it works. I started out with a 2TB drive, that loaded up super quick, got to 279 movies on it before I started running out of room. The Movie Server can go up to 8TB max, would recommend going hard and get a 8TB HDD and and call it the day. Using two Segate 8TB drives in my unit now, Barracuda Pro and Segate Exos 7E8, the Exos my be overkill as it's used in NAS set ups to run 24/7, I just use it in the DMS and it seems to run hotter (like most I rarely turn my server off). Have two identical drives with movies on it as a back up as you noted since I do not have a NAS setup. I have 996 movies on both 8TB HDD with 4TB of space left on both, that's a lot a room to go considering.

One of your questions you asked was 'how do I get my ISO movies copied to another hard drive'.......tried a couple of things that I wanted a 1:1 copy of the HDD. Shared Networking and setting up a NAS system seemed to laborious with limited time available to give up for me. Here are some other options I have tried for making 1:1 copies of my hard drives.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KT3BEAS...ustomerReviews

https://www.amazon.com/SATA-Hard-Dri...YS7SR8FNZHDFM7

The latter two you will have to use windows drive management tool to extend the partition, it does a 1:1 copy but will partition your drive. All the ones with this set up puts a empty partition on your drive. It's the least expensive route. This one does a full blown 1:1 copy, no partition is much faster in copying, does so much more but at a premium cost.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

A last note, if you manged using your ISO file under your PC, think you would be more comfortable keeping that set up then formatting under the movie server, there's nothing wrong with letting the movie server format your hard drive but if you don't like the limited leverage of not being able to pop the HDD out and see the context on your PC, formatting on your PC to start off is the way to go.

[90312]

The short answer is yes it will work without Internet after initial set up, at least mine will after a couple attempts to establish a network.

[Basementjack]

Soon, I'm planning to purchase a Media Server. I have some questions.
I'm going to start off buying a 4 TB Drive.

What brand Internal Hard Drive has everyone been using?
Seagate or Western Digital?
I've used WD for years without issues.

Does it need to be 7200 RPM? Is 5400 RPH too slow? 5400 is fine, what is important is transfer rate, not seek time.

What is the final charge to purchase this for U.S. customers? The cost with shipping is on the website, sometimes the amount will be slightly different due to exchange rates.

I have a very huge library of TV Seasons/Shows of ISO Files as well as DVD and Blu-Ray Movies converted into ISO's. These work great with DMS, it is one of it's strong points.
They are currently saved on multiple external Western Digital hard drives.
By buying an internal drive to go into the media player, this will give me 2 backup copies which I've wanted.

So another question. When I get the media player and the HD, I let the Media Player format it to use, correct? This is one way, and the easiest

How do I get all my ISO files to it? Do I connect one of my external drives to my Laptop USB and then hook the Media Server up to another USB and transfer them that way? This will appear on your home network as if it was a NAS server, and you can copy files to it that way. If you use a NAS device, then you don't need to copy anything, just config DMS to point to your NAS.

Thanks for any answers you can share and I'd love if anyone has any other advice regarding this purchase that you think I need to know.
Best advice I can give is that I don't think the internal drive is needed. I have a 1TB drive in mine that's empty, a friend of mine doesn't have any drive at all, however both of us started with a drive, and I can't remember if you must have one to get through initial setup.

Most people in this hobby find a single drive isn't enough, so a small NAS device like a synology, or QNAP end up being nice additions.

If you are in the US, the best value on hard drives in the past 6 months has come from Best Buy - they put the 8 and 10 TB USB drives on sale, and people have had great luck pulling the 3.5" drive from the plastic housing. The Best Buy sale prices end up being far cheaper than the price of a bare drive.

Another question my husband thought of so this is from him.
Could he buy one of these for himself , with a hard drive, have me load some ISO files of say 30 movies, and he take it to his office to watch them? Yes
He currently has a Samsung Smart LED TV.
Could he just connect via hdmi to his tv and play them? Yes
He doesn’t need movie posters, nothing fancy, he just wants to see the list of movies on there to watch.
So could this work with just his tv and this MS? Correct, it will work fine, don't forget to bring the included remote control with to operate the unit.