Dammit. Stop making me spend money.

I would want Sickbeard and Sabnzbd+ running on it, and I would have to choose the OS. linux, Windows server, WHS?

It'll need to have Raid 5 software support

It needs to be able to run my Drobo

and I would have to resetup my Boxee shares etc...

Do they offer WHS 2011 yet?

Wasn't sure if WHS had Raid 5 though, Windows 7 doesn't and I had heard rumours of WHS only doing Raid 1?

The Drobo does mount as a USB storage, but you need to be able to run the dashboard software if you want to do anything other than just use it as a hard drive. i.e. reboot it, update it, etc...

WHSv1 doesn't do RAID anything. It has proprietary drive-extender stuff in place. On a folder-by-folder basis, you mark if it should be duplicated or not; basically toggling it between RAID-0 and RAID-1 except split over all the drives in the server. New drives can be added at any time. It ends up being quite similar to the Drobo. One important weakness: the OS is always on a single drive. If this fails (and this happened to me), you have to do a reinstall, although it scans for and rebuilds data from the other partitions in the process.

Cool, ta.

Any recommendations? I'm not after anything fancy, but also want to avoid something completely shit.

Kov does good?

I have a gigabit router now, so I might upgrade my switch later.

But a jump from £14 to £50 is a bit

Windows Home Server - Do I need it?

Is it worth replacing a Win7 install?

Why do I mess with stuff that works fine?

I got a Windows Home Server, and it's a vital part of my home network. The first thing I did was remove all the Windows Home Server components from it, however.

I got a Windows Home Server, and it's a vital part of my home network. The first thing I did was remove all the Windows Home Server components from it, however.

The major advantages of my WHS over a NAS unit are;

1) drive expansion -- I have four bays, which are all consolidated to a single big volume in the software. I can add and remove drives at will.
2) per-volume redundancy -- some of my stuff is mirrored across drives, some isn't. Can toggle this on the fly.
3) flexible software -- mine runs Couch Potato, sabnzbd, Sick Beard, for example.
4) can shell onto box and move files locally -- handy for moving 10 gig+ files around on the box without having to pull them down to and back up from a client
5) can put disks in any other computer and read them, so I've a bit more confidence that I can recover if the hardware goes pop
6) much more CPU and RAM grunt -- makes some DLNA transcoding tasks feasible (can your NAS handle 1080p?) and makes big unRAR jobs much faster
7) probably more I've forgotten.

Aha -- as Cras says, be an offsite backup host.

I'm almost positive 4 isn't an issue with Win7 anyway

Is there an idiots guide to sickbeard, couch potatoe etc

How is it different from torrents?

It's not; I often open a folder on my desktop machine from my laptop and move stuff around directly on the desktop's drive without pulling the files over to the laptop then pushing them back again. Indeed I thought I remembered doing that with XP as well, but maybe I didn't.

The data is still flowing through your laptop when you do this. Unless SMB got a lot smarter in recent times, anyway.

I'm pretty sure I can move GBs of files from one folder to the next like this in seconds rather than the hours it would actually take (on my shite network) if it was moving through the laptop. I'll try it tonight though to confirm.

I'm pretty sure I can move GBs of files from one folder to the next like this in seconds rather than the hours it would actually take (on my shite network) if it was moving through the laptop. I'll try it tonight though to confirm.

I'm pretty certain I posted you a load of links last time

Sickbeard and the like are just admin and and automated searching tools, which can send torrent files to a torrent client to download whatever it finds, or nzb files to a usenet client.

You did and I can't find it.

Is usenet worth the investment?

That's because if you're mobmving files on the same volume, it doesn't actually need to move the data, just tell the filesystem that it's in a different logical location. Try it with copying data or moving it to a different drive and it'll take ages again.

Is usenet worth the investment?

You did and I can't find it.

Is usenet worth the investment?