Not much progress

Still waiting on my new ZOTAC to arrive.  It has been in the RMA process for 2 weeks now!  It is supposed to be here this week…we will see.

I have ripped as many DVD’s as I can onto my WHS also.  I am at 98% full on my data drives so I have to add another driver before I can continue.  I have a 1TB drive to add that was on my old WHS, but I don’t have anymore SATA ports.  The motherboard that I bought only has 4 ports and they are all used.

I ordered a SYBA 4 port SATA controller last week so I have to wait for it to come in before I can add the drive.  Once that comes in a will be good to go.  That should do me for SATA ports.  I believe that I have 5 drive bays open, so if I need to add that 5th drive (which would be 8 total), then I will need another controller.  Hopefully I won’t need it though.

The last I looked I am up to about 230 DVD’s ripped.  I am really not sure how many I have but I am only on the L’s I think.  Although at first I went out of order (for example all of the Star Wars and Star Trek movies are already ripped).  I have been ripping every disk of every movie, special features and all.  I hope that wasn’t a mistake and too big of a waste of space.  I am sure that I am well over 300 DVD’s total ripped now.

 

Universal Remote is here!

I received my Harmony 700 in the mail today.  Actually it was delivered on Saturday and has been sitting on my porch for 2 days since I didn’t know it was there!

I got to play around with it a little and it seems pretty cool.  I think that it will do the job.  I went through the setup and created some “activities” of the most common things that we do on the TV. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t find the IR codes for my DirecTV HR20 remote control for some reason.  I had the DVR listed, but not the remote codes?   I apparently will have to go through the learning process for that remote.  Doesn’t make much sense…it is a fairly common device??

I tested it briefly and it turned on the TV and selected the inputs correctly based on the activity that I choose, but since it couldn’t control the DVR there wasn’t much else to test.   Oh and since my HTPC is dead now, I couldn’t test it either…

ZOTAC Support

I sent ZOTAC support and email on Saturday about my dead PC and never heard from them.  I sent another email Monday morning and then called them once I found a number.  They said I needed to wait until support emailed me back about it but they would probably just issue an RMA for me to get new one.

Sure enough, not long after my call I got an email back from support just directing me to the page to request the RMA.  I did that and within a couple of hours I got the RMA authorization and the instructions on how to send it back…

My HTPC is dead!!

I was going to finally show the kids the HTPC on Saturday since they wanted to watch a movie.  I got them all ready and turned the TV on and noticed that there were no lights on the HTPC on.

I hit the power button and nothing.  I messed with it for a few minutes and finally had to put a DVD in the for the kids to watch.

Later, I looked at it further and noticed that the light on the power supply was not one.  I unplugged it and took it to a different outlet and it lit up!  I took it back over to where the HTPC was and it lit up again, but as soon as I plugged it into the PC, it went out.  Something was definitely wrong…

Not good since the HTPC is only just over a month old!  I put a support ticket in to the manufacturer, ZOTAC, so we will see what happens.

Universal Remote

I ordered a Harmony 700 remote control to consolidate my pile of remotes on my end table in the family room.  Got a good price on Amazon, but the deliver is slow.  I should have ordered from Newegg.com for another $10, but I would have got it in a few days..

Weekend Update

Over the weekend, I finally hooked up my Zotac HTPC to my TV in the family room…worked beautifully!!   I am very happy with it.  I went through the My Movies and the Online content and it looked and worked great.

In addition to being able to put all of my movies on my server, one of the biggest reason for the HTPC is to view home movies.  I have hours and hours of mini-DV tapes full of videos that we have never watched because there wasn’t a good way to view them as a family.  Other than hooking my mini-DV camcorder up to the TV, I have never had a good way to view the videos.  I tried and tried to get them to play through my DirecTV DVR, but I just never had much luck.  I could see all of the videos, but I could very rarely get them to play.  The big problem is that the video had to be transcoded for the DVR to be able to play them and I just always seemed to have problems with that.  Plus on the DTV box,  everything was text based, no pretty graphics like in WMC.

Anyways, HTPC hooked up to TV and working fine.  I ran an optical cable to my receiver for sound and it worked without any problems.  My wife and I watched a couple of home movies that I had put on the server so that there would be something there and they played pretty good.  I think I need to compress them from uncompressed AVI files to something smaller though because there was some jerking and stuttering of the video.

I also purchased an HD Homerun networked TV tuner just so that I could try out the TV functions of WMC.   I got it up and running and configured in WMC and I have to say that it is pretty cool too.  I just used an over the air antenna so I don’t get too many channels, but I can certainly see who WMC could replace my DirecTV at some point (more on the reasons it probably won’t though, later).  I was not really planning on keeping the tuner, but I am not sure that I want to send it back now that I have seen what it can do J.

DVD playback through My Movies worked great, no problems or slowdowns or anything.  The experience is just like popping a DVD into the DVD player!  The only complaint my wife had about it was that I didn’t let her finish watching the movie that I picked to try out (Star Trek)!   On Monday night the kids watched a movie, which was actually the first full movie watched through WMC.  It worked just fine, no problems at all.  I was even ripping DVD’s to the server while they were streaming the movie from it and there were no problems at all!   Once again, very happy!

Blu-Ray playback was a little different.  PowerDVD came up to play the Blu-Ray disc just fine, but once we got into the movie it did not play fine.  It was very jerky and pretty much unwatchable.  When I tried it out in the Den, the Blu-Ray’s played just fine.  The difference is that in the Den, the Zotac was connected to a gigabit switch and in the family room there is just a 100Mps switch.  On Sunday I switched out the 100Mps switch with a router a friend gave me that had a gigabit switch.   When I tried to play the Blu-Ray again, it worked just fine!!!  No slow-downs or jerking at all!  Thank goodness that is all the problem was.   We bought Iron Man 2 on Blu-Ray Sunday afternoon and I immediately ripped it to the HD.  We were going to watch it Sunday night, but ran out of time so hopefully later this week we will watch it see how watching a 2 hour movie through WMC works out!

I also kept feeding DVD’s (and Blu-Rays) into my server all weekend long to rip them to the HD.  I am at about 115 DVD’s that I have ripped, but  lot less movies total than that.  A lot of my movies are special editions that contain 2 discs, plus the Friends DVD set that contains 40 discs of which I have ripped about 20 of them so far.

I also have about 5 remotes sitting on my table now to control everything.  I am going to need to do something about that very soon…

So after months of talking about it and planning, I finally have my setup working and almost the way that I want it!  My biggest problem now is that ripping all of these movies to the server is eating up my 4TB of disc space very quickly!!!

Blu-Ray player update and Storage

I got the Blu-Ray player to work last night!  Apparently the problem was the DVD that I was trying to rip.  It looked scratched so I guess that was what was causing the problem.  Not sure why the discs after that didn’t work, but now they are so I guess I am happy.  I now need to put the other Blu-Ray player (the LG burner) back in the server and see if it still works…

I have not ripped that many DVD’s and Blu-Rays yet, but I only have about 50% space free on my server out of 4TB of storage!!!  Of course after I add up what I have on there, it makes senses…

·         800GB in DVD’s and Blu-Rays

·         200GB in Home Video

·         60GB in Music

·         200GB in Pictures (not quite all of them either)

And everything is duplicated!!   Plus all of my PC backups are there, but there are not duplicated yet (I have BDBB installed, but haven’t done anything with it yet).

Blu-Ray Player

The other night after ripping several movies, I noticed that my DVD never ejected after a while.  I checked it out and the movie that was in there never got ripped.

After some trial and error, it seems that there is something wrong with the Blu-Ray player!   So this morning I swapped out the Blu-Ray player with one that I bought for the PC that I am going to build for my kids.  It had the same problem!  I put the movie in and it wasn’t recognized…actually I couldn’t even eject the disc!!!!   Not sure what is going on.  Will need to investigate further.

It is always something…not okay!

File copies and Laptop Backups

I initiated a copy of my music and home videos from my old desktop PC to my server last night.   I believe it said about 200GB of video and about 50GB of music.

I removed the connector from my laptop and reinstalled it so that my laptop was ‘new’ to the server, hoping that the backups would work better.  I kicked off the backup at about 10:30 pm.  At 11:00pm, it said 35% complete.  At 6:30 this morning, it was only about 48% complete???  What is going on?  I guess I will not have it backup my external drive and only backup the internal drive and see if that works.  I am already copying most of the critical data off of the external drive anyways, so I can just copy the rest and not include it in the back up?!

I also kicked off the backup of my desktop PC.  It didn’t backup overnight, probably because my laptop was trying to backup.  So it should be done by the time I get home tonight.

Weekend Update

I still haven’t got a good backup of my laptop.  The backup runs for hours and hours (well over 12hrs once) and at the most has made it about 55% done.  I think that I will remove the laptop from the server and re-add it and see what happens then.  I NEED a good backup.  I have succeeded in copy my data from the laptop to the shared folders so at least my critical data is backed up (and duplicated).   I have backed up my HTPC with no problem, so not sure what is wrong with the laptop.

I also started feeding in DVD’s to the server to rip them to the HD.  I am not sure exactly how many I have done…maybe 20 or so, but it seems to be taking a LOT of space quickly.    I guess it is because I have duplication turned on because once I rip them I do NOT want to have to rip them again!  If I have to I will just buy more storage I guess!!

Backups and old drive

This morning I had to cancel the file copy that I started last night since it was nowhere near done.  The backup of my laptop was also only 35% done again.  Not sure what the deal it, but I need to get a good backup of it on the server.  I will let go over the weekend I guess and see if it finishes…

I also connected my data drive from my old server (the one that died a couple of weeks ago) and began copying data from my shared folders off of it.  Wish I would have thought about that last night, would have save me from copying all of the files overnight.  Oh well.  By the time I get home today, they should be all copied, then when I run the backup to copy the files, it only has to copy the changed files so it will be much faster.

Blu-Ray Playback, ripping and backups

I hooked the HTPC up to my wired gigabit network tonight and the Blu-Ray playback problem I had is gone!!   The Blu-Ray played with no problems and no stuttering.  It looked beautiful.

I also begin copying pictures and documents from my laptop to the share folder on the server.  It was estimating over 2500 minutes to do the copy.  It will not be done by tomorrow morning…

I requested the free 2500 point trial from My Movies to experiment with the Disc Copier function before I drop the $50 on it.  It seemed to work pretty good.  I just put the disc in, it identified it and began copying.  I only tried it with a couple of Blu-Rays so it took a while to copy.

Movies and Backups

Last night I got My Movies setup and configured between the server and my HTPC.  I have a few movies ripped onto the server and My Movies found them and added them to it’s database.   One issue I had is that a couple of the movies that I ripped are special edition that contain two discs.  My Movies added both discs as a separate entry into the database.  I had to manually configure My Movies (in the Collection Management) to use the same movie entry for both discs.  I need to figure out how to fix this.  I have a lot of movies that have more than one disc.  I am hoping that by using the My Movies disc copier function, it will be smart enough to do this correctly.  I need to investigate.

I also experimented with playing the movies on the HTPC.  The DVD’s worked fine.  I was missing pieces to get the Blu-Ray to work.  I download Virtual Clone Drive and the demo of PowerDVD.  Once all of that was installed, I had success in playing the Blu-Ray movie!!!!  Unfortunately, the playback was not very smooth.  I hope that was because my HTPC is connected wirelessly right now.  I need to plug that cable in and try it over the gigabit connection.  That had better fix the problem!!!

I restarted started my laptop backup at about 9:00 last night and it was still only 55% done at 6:30 this morning!!!   My laptop was plugged in this time and not connected wirelessly.  I don’t know why it took so long.

More Updates

Unfortunately, my laptop never finished backing up last night.  There wasn’t enough time.  I may need to use the network cable instead of wireless for the initial backup.  The laptop drive is only 60GB (86% full), but I have an external drive that has about 300GB that needs backed up.  The backup was only 46% complete when I had to cancel it.

I also noticed that the server was only up to Power Pack 2, so I clicked on the updates icons and installed the remaining updates that included PP3.

Once that was done, I installed the My Movies add-in and AnyDVD so that I could start ripping movies!!  I began ripping the Blu-Ray of Star Trek this morning before I left!  All 40GB of it!

Windows updates and File copying

Got home and installed the motherboard drivers which fixed the network connection problem.

I then started the Windows updates.  There were 99 of them.  Surprisingly, it didn’t take that long to install all of them.

I got the connector installed on my laptop and the backup configured so that my laptop would finally be backed up overnight!

I tried copying some movie rips from my laptop onto the server so that I could start playing with Media Center and My Movies.  Well, that didn’t work as planned.  Copying that big of files across the wireless network just does not work, it was going to take hours.  I tried the Blu-Ray movie too that is almost 40GB and Windows estimated over 5 hours to copy it.  It only took 2 hours to rip it!!!!  I think that I may just rip the movies again onto the server.  I have only ripped about 8 movies on my laptop so not that big of deal.   Or I may just plug a network cable into my laptop and see how much that helps that copy speed.

HD and OS install

Picked up a WD 320GB HD at Best Buy yesterday to use as the system drive for the server.

Installed it this morning and began install the OS.  I got ready for work and checked the install before I left and WHS was already installed?!  About 30 minutes and it was up and running!    I tried to start the updates before I left, but the network card wasn’t recognized and I didn’t have time to fix it.

Began Server Build...

I began building my server over the weekend.  I decided that I was just going to plug in the HD’s from the old server and backup the shares before I reinstalled the OS.  But I ran into an issue and it wouldn’t work.  Apparently the reason the my old server died was because the system HD went bad!    The new PC never got very far when trying to boot, it just kept restarting.  When I disconnected the HD and made the data drive the primary drive, it actually tried to boot and gave me the message that the disk wasn’t bootable.   So it wasn’t even reading the other drive.  The BIOS recognized it, but that was it.

This is fine, because I was kind  of nervous about using an older drive for the system drive of my new server.  The problem is that all of my newer drives are bigger (1TB or bigger) and I don’t want to use that big of a drive for the OS.  The old drive one was 250GB, dated 2004  and an IDE drive which I didn’t mind since that freed up a SATA port on the MB for storage drives.  I will buy a new 320GB or 500GB drive today and start the install tonight…

Blu-Ray Rip

I hooked up my new Blu-Ray burner to my old PC to see how it worked.  I ripped a Blu-Ray movie to an ISO file and it took almost 2 hours which I really hope it is due to the old, slow PC that I used!  The ISO file is almost 40GB!!

Now I need to see if I can play the movie...or see if I need to rip it in a different format.

Nervous

Starting to get very nervous about not having any backups done on any of my PC's since my server is still down!  I am hoping to have time this weekend to get the new server built.

Media Browser and Media Center

I installed Media Browser on my laptop after hearing good things about it for Media Center.  First impressions are not great.  Maybe it is just not configured correctly plus I don't have an internet connection on my laptop during the day.

I also continued to play with Media Center on my laptop to prepare for using it on my HTPC.  I have been playing with the parental controls and My Movies because eventually I am going to have movies ripped that are not appropriate for some (or all) of the kids.  The parental controls seems to work okay, but not perfectly.  On some movies it prompts me to enter the code to bypass the blocking, but on a couple of others, it flashes the screen quickly that it can't play it due to parental controls and then takes me back to the main screen for the DVD.  I guess as long as it doesn’t play the movies that I don’t want the kids to watch, that is okay for now, but this will require some research to figure out what is going on.

Big problem!

Got home from work and tried to Remote Desktop into Server to check the backups that I started in the morning, but I got an error saying that that server was not there!!  I then noticed that the server was powered off!   I turned it on and it appeared to boot, then I tried to connect again and it wouldn't.  

I left the room and when I came back it was off again.   I disconnected the external drive just see if that was the problem.  I then connected the monitor back up to machine to see what was happening.

 When it booted again, I saw the blue screen that something was wrong, but I really couldn't make out exactly what.  It mentioned something about hardware and said to remove any newly attached hardware.  Then the computer played a series of tones and shut down again.  The only “new” hardware I added was the external HD to do the backup of the shares, but it connected fine and was backing up to it when I left in the morning.  Plus, at this point I had already unplugged the drive from the server.

I had this happen many times, but each time it was different.  Sometimes it would go all of the way into WHS and then play the tones and shut down.  A couple of time it just kept rebooting.  A couple of times it played the tones and shut down before it even tried to load windows.

I don't know what the problem is.  Luckily I have the parts to rebuild it and I don’t' think that was anything on it that isn't replacable...yet.  It appears that only about 80GB got backed up on the external drive out of 200GB, so the backup was never completed before it died the first time.  As long as I don’t have any problems with any of my PC’s that were being backed up by the server, I shouldn’t need to try to get the data off of the drives before I do the rebuild.  I should just be able to wipe them and start over.

Honestly, I am not too surprised by this.  The hardware that is (was) running my server is over 9 years old.  The processor is an AMD Athlon XP 1600 that ran at about 1.45Ghz.  I cannot remember what the motherboard is because it has been so long.  I even have a couple of SCSI optical drives in it, because when I bought them, they were the best and fastest!!

WHS Rebuild Prep

I attached my 1TB external drive to my Server to backup shared folders and began the back up which contains approx. 200GB worth of data.  Once I rebuild my server, I can then do a restore and have all of my shares back.  At least this is the understanding that I have of how this backup works from what I have read.

Ordered a few misc parts

I ordered a Remote and an HDMI to DVI cable for my HTPC along with a CPU fan/heatsink for my server and a couple of SATA cables.

More parts arrived

Received 2TB drives from Mwave.com.

More shipments

<>  Received ZOTAC MAG from Newegg today.  Very nice looking box. I Downloaded MultibootISO's Creater from a website (name to follow) to create a bootable flash drive with the Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit ISO.  Very nice utility. I plugged the flash drive into the ZOTAC and turned it on.  A menu came up asking what ISO to install...I choose the Win 7 64 bit since that is the only ISO that I put on the flash drive.   Win 7 then proceeded to install on the ZOTAC.   I have to say, the bootable flash drive worked flawlessly.  I need to have a bigger flash drive for this because the software can handle serveral ISO's so you can choose which one to install.  Awesome!

Parts arriving

Received first order of PC parts from Newegg and the HP monitor from Staples.com.

Podcasts

Downloaded my first Podcast regarding Home Servers and HTPC's!!  I am listening to The Home Server Show Podcast, The Home Server Shows BOYB Podcast and The Digital Media Zones HTPCentric Podcast.  I have to say that I am really geeking out and enjoying them immensely!!

Ordered Home Theater PC

Ordered a ZOTAC MAG HD-ND01 from Newegg to use as my Home Theater PC.  I have wanted a HTPC for a long time now, so I am very excited about this!

Placed order for PC parts...the Adventure begins!!!

I placed the order for all of the main parts for my Windows Home Server rebuild and the PC that I am building for my kids.


For my Server:

Antec Three Hunder Case w/430 watt PSU
ASUS P5KPL-AM/PS Motherboard (for my existing Pentium D 820 processor)
2GB PNY DDR2 RAM
LG 10x Blu-Ray Burner
2 2TB Seagate LP HDD's

For my kids PC:

Intel i5-650 Processor
Gigabyte GA-H57M-USB3 Motherboard
4GB OCZ DDR3 RAM
1TB Seagate 7200RPM HDD
Lite-On Blu-Ray Reader
HP 20" LCD 1600x900 Monitor