the Geeky PC thread, building a Media PC similar?

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  • And did you ever work out what caused the beeps?
  • bluechair84
    bluechair84 Posts: 4,352
    I'd removed the rear case fan and the bios was looking for it. It was having a fit because it had lost it's comfort blanket. So I jamed the metaphorical screwdriver in it's metaphorical frontal lobes, removing any memory of said case fan. Now it starts fine 8)
  • nicklouse
    nicklouse Posts: 50,675
    just got a new NAS. currently filling its 2Tb with Movies.
    "Do not follow where the path may lead, Go instead where there is no path, and Leave a Trail."
    Parktools :?:SheldonBrown
  • bluechair84
    bluechair84 Posts: 4,352
    nicklouse wrote:
    just got a new NAS. currently filling its 2Tb with Movies.
    :shock: That's a lot of porn for one man.





    I've just tried to move 5GB of movies across the network from the laptop to the HTPC and it wanted to saunter over the task, taking 4.5hrs :!: So I've given it 1.3GB to move and it's moving over at about 730kbps... is this normal? Because it's not what I expected :( The Wirless conection on the HTPC says it's is connected at 216Mps
  • nicklouse wrote:
    just got a new NAS. currently filling its 2Tb with Movies.

    Which one Nic? There's some great products out there right now and nothing beats the NFS for moving data over the network.

    I am quite tempted to invest in a NetGear ReadyNAS myself, saves me leaving the "Workstation" running when I want to access data
    It also uses an RSYNC copy facility as a backup, so I can backup/restore to/from the BSD Server with ease :¬)
  • nicklouse
    nicklouse Posts: 50,675
    already have a Netgear Duo which i run Squeezebox server on for my FLAC music files.

    this is a LG N2A2 which is mainly going to be for movies and iTunes. luckily I have a gigabit router and the NAS and the PC have also.
    "Do not follow where the path may lead, Go instead where there is no path, and Leave a Trail."
    Parktools :?:SheldonBrown
  • nicklouse
    nicklouse Posts: 50,675
    nicklouse wrote:
    already have a Netgear Duo which i run Squeezebox server on for my FLAC music files.

    this is a LG N2A2 which is mainly going to be for movies and iTunes. luckily I have a gigabit router and the NAS and the PC have also.

    it also came with a LG DP1B Media player
    "Do not follow where the path may lead, Go instead where there is no path, and Leave a Trail."
    Parktools :?:SheldonBrown
  • Sweet, I must look into it. The product manager at LG UK for that range is a good friend of mine, I'll see if I cannot evaluate one permanently
    What drives is it using?

    Agreed the Gig E makes a huge difference, I've had a Gig E switch between the machines for a couple of years and it makes a difference when shunting data to and fro
    It was only a question of time that appliances came out with Gig E now that our friends at Broadcom and Intel have got the technology into a single package.
  • nicklouse
    nicklouse Posts: 50,675
    it says Hitachi for the drives.

    would have liked an Intel chip for some software i wanted to try but maybe the next one :wink:
    "Do not follow where the path may lead, Go instead where there is no path, and Leave a Trail."
    Parktools :?:SheldonBrown
  • Not an Intel SOC? Is it ARM?
  • nicklouse
    nicklouse Posts: 50,675
    i was told ARM but not checked the spec...
    "Do not follow where the path may lead, Go instead where there is no path, and Leave a Trail."
    Parktools :?:SheldonBrown
  • nicklouse
    nicklouse Posts: 50,675
    Oh tell him the LG site IS total crap.
    "Do not follow where the path may lead, Go instead where there is no path, and Leave a Trail."
    Parktools :?:SheldonBrown
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    I've just tried to move 5GB of movies across the network from the laptop to the HTPC and it wanted to saunter over the task, taking 4.5hrs :!: So I've given it 1.3GB to move and it's moving over at about 730kbps... is this normal? Because it's not what I expected :( The Wirless conection on the HTPC says it's is connected at 216Mps
    Something sounds wrong. A standard 54Mb/s wireless G connection will usually get you a peak transfer speed of around 3.3megabytes per second, under ideal conditions.
    Wireless N seems to be near ethernet speeds from what I've found, so you're looking at roughly 10 megabytes per second.

    Sounds like there's some bottleneck in your wifi network. Could be the router? I guess it's possible that even though it "connects" at N speeds, it's not capable of transmitting data at the same rate.

    Can you connect the two via ethernet cable just for this transfer? You'll only have to do it this once.
  • nicklouse
    nicklouse Posts: 50,675
    at the moment i have one transfer at 11.2MB/second and another at 22.5MB/second
    "Do not follow where the path may lead, Go instead where there is no path, and Leave a Trail."
    Parktools :?:SheldonBrown
  • bluechair84
    bluechair84 Posts: 4,352
    I've just tried to move 5GB of movies across the network from the laptop to the HTPC and it wanted to saunter over the task, taking 4.5hrs :!: So I've given it 1.3GB to move and it's moving over at about 730kbps... is this normal? Because it's not what I expected :( The Wirless conection on the HTPC says it's is connected at 216Mps
    Something sounds wrong. A standard 54Mb/s wireless G connection will usually get you a peak transfer speed of around 3.3megabytes per second, under ideal conditions.
    Wireless N seems to be near ethernet speeds from what I've found, so you're looking at roughly 10 megabytes per second.

    Sounds like there's some bottleneck in your wifi network. Could be the router? I guess it's possible that even though it "connects" at N speeds, it's not capable of transmitting data at the same rate.

    Can you connect the two via ethernet cable just for this transfer? You'll only have to do it this once.

    I don't have an ethernet cable handy but I'll look into connecting the htpc to the router to start locating the bottleneck.
    A friend who sleeps with computers has thought that their is a compliance issue between win7 and XP which is the bottleneck - he's emailed me a link to try and adjust 7 to match XPs criteria... or something fancy sounding like that. I'll feedback when I've figured some more.
    And I just changed some FTP settings in the firewall which has helped the computers 'see' the shared folders.
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    A friend who sleeps with computers has thought that their is a compliance issue between win7 and XP which is the bottleneck
    I doubt it. I have several XP and Vista computers connected via gigabit at work, and all of them scream along, shovelling immense quantities of data through the network.
    Since 7 is basically similar to vista, I doubt that they're causing the problem.

    There might be a problem that only presents itself when WiFi is used, though. hmm.
  • bluechair84
    bluechair84 Posts: 4,352
    He has suggest I go to the local area network properties and set the following options:

    Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4) - Disable
    Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6) - Disable

    However, I cannot find the LAN properties :oops: . Everything in the menus around the network icons, including any right click options, gives me only minimal things to change. Any advice for uncovering these settings in Win7?
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    He has suggest I go to the local area network properties and set the following options:

    Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4) - Disable
    Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6) - Disable

    However, I cannot find the LAN properties :oops: . Everything in the menus around the network icons, including any right click options, gives me only minimal things to change. Any advice for uncovering these settings in Win7?
    Those options are generally in the driver property pages. I wouldn;t recommend changing them, but if you want to give it a try, you get there by...
    (Vista)hit the windows key, or click the start menu
    Type in "network"
    You should see that "Network and sharing center" is near the top of the list, click it (spelling mistake is Microsoft's, not mine! It should be centre, surely?)
    On the right, click "Manage network connections"
    right click whatever network adapter you want to change and choose properties
    near the top, click the "configure button"
    And finally, on most network cards, the options he specified are in the "advanced" tab.

    XP is similar, but I cannot remember the exact steps to get there. I think you can right click on the network icon in the system tray (lower right) and choose network properties, or something like that. That's right, getting there is simpler in XP! :lol:
  • That's right, getting there is simpler in XP! :lol:

    +Potato, the reason that as antiquated as it is, XP is still my Windows OS of choice, it works and it's easy to drive.
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    That's right, getting there is simpler in XP! :lol:

    +Potato, the reason that as antiquated as it is, XP is still my Windows OS of choice, it works and it's easy to drive.
    Whilst I prefer the new start menu in Vista, and the complete, and mostly subtle GUI overhaul in XP, there are still some things that are easier (well, not easier, but quicker) to get to in XP.
    However, the times I actually NEED to get to those hidden away places is quite rare, so it's no big problem. At least the options are still there.
    And it sure beats editing antiquated, mostly indecipherable text config files in Unix/Linux.
    Now, where did I leave that SMB.config file, and the other one that I can't even remember the name of that ties usernames and passwords to SMB accounts, dammit! :lol:
  • whyamihere
    whyamihere Posts: 7,715
    At the moment, I'm transferring 25GB of films and music from my laptop to my desktop over the network. I'm getting a throughput of around 1.4MB/s, which is just below the theoretical limit for the SATA1 drive I'm transferring to. I really need an SATA2 capable mobo. SATA3 would be even nicer.
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    whyamihere wrote:
    At the moment, I'm transferring 25GB of films and music from my laptop to my desktop over the network. I'm getting a throughput of around 1.4MB/s, which is just below the theoretical limit for the SATA1 drive I'm transferring to. I really need an SATA2 capable mobo. SATA3 would be even nicer.
    SATA 150mb/s should get you a throughput of around 18mb/s :?
    SATA 2 should be 300mb/s, but I've seen them exceed that by a long way. We've got some very high speed drives on the workstations here, which I'm almost certain are on SATAII, (300mb/s, right?) but I regularly see transfer rates well over 100 megabytes per second.

    I guess they could be SAS ports, but I am absolutely certain that they were not listed as such in the motherboard specs.
  • bluechair84
    bluechair84 Posts: 4,352
    whyamihere wrote:
    At the moment, I'm transferring 25GB of films and music from my laptop to my desktop over the network. I'm getting a throughput of around 1.4MB/s, which is just below the theoretical limit for the SATA1 drive I'm transferring to. I really need an SATA2 capable mobo. SATA3 would be even nicer.

    #reads on dreamily...#

    The trouble with this kind of home project is that there are so many damn problems with software configurations... getting the hardware right was no problem and something I damn well enjoyed researching. But this will drive me crazy.

    I'll have a poke with your steps tonight Yeehaa.
  • whyamihere
    whyamihere Posts: 7,715
    whyamihere wrote:
    At the moment, I'm transferring 25GB of films and music from my laptop to my desktop over the network. I'm getting a throughput of around 1.4MB/s, which is just below the theoretical limit for the SATA1 drive I'm transferring to. I really need an SATA2 capable mobo. SATA3 would be even nicer.
    SATA 150mb/s should get you a throughput of around 18mb/s :?
    SATA 2 should be 300mb/s, but I've seen them exceed that by a long way. We've got some very high speed drives on the workstations here, which I'm almost certain are on SATAII, (300mb/s, right?) but I regularly see transfer rates well over 100 megabytes per second.

    I guess they could be SAS ports, but I am absolutely certain that they were not listed as such in the motherboard specs.
    Hmmm, you're right, clearly. I was having a thick moment there.
    Hmmm, they're connected via gigabit ethernet, so that's not causing the slowdown. There's a bottleneck somewhere, I'll have to try to find it.
  • whyamihere wrote:
    There's a bottleneck somewhere, I'll have to try to find it.

    It's all the crud between the keys on the beyboard from eating, picking your nose, scratching your head and fingering your ears while on the laptop...
  • nicklouse
    nicklouse Posts: 50,675
    I wonder if my issue is the SATA cable!!
    "Do not follow where the path may lead, Go instead where there is no path, and Leave a Trail."
    Parktools :?:SheldonBrown
  • nicklouse
    nicklouse Posts: 50,675
    nope.

    I give up.

    it works fine on another PC....
    "Do not follow where the path may lead, Go instead where there is no path, and Leave a Trail."
    Parktools :?:SheldonBrown
  • Yes, but it's an informative topic and my workstation rocks...
  • nicklouse
    nicklouse Posts: 50,675
    Well I had to give up.

    it is at the PC Docs.... We are thinking hardware incompatibility issues. If so I may just have to build another just for the drive.

    but small and silent.
    "Do not follow where the path may lead, Go instead where there is no path, and Leave a Trail."
    Parktools :?:SheldonBrown