A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.
arnorhs.com
arnorhs.com
When you're accessing from your phone (at least when not on your home WiFi) or a computer that's not at your house, it would access the one in the cloud, which would make it faster and not rely on your home Internet working.
Most importantly, if your house burns down, you're not totally fucked.
So the local device interfaces with TVs and such and keeps you from having to wait for anything to download because it's all cached on there. The cloud piece keeps your data safe and makes it a lot less likely that you won't be able to access your data because your Internet is down.
It's possible that you could use Dropbox as the cloud piece and sync mechanism and put together a special server that can do all of the TV/remote control/stereo integration he wants.
One issue is that even 100GB may not be enough for everyone.
I've set it up like this using Windows Home Server. I use a few backup services to point it to some of the folders on the server that are important to me (my work folder for instance).
WHS has the ability to stream remotely, and I haven't found any speed issues doing so from my local network. I would like what you're describing, which is local=cache and cloud=realtime, except technology isn't there yet -- disk space in the cloud is still too expensive and ISP <-> home bandwidth still too slow/throttled/capped.
I keep all my important files in there (my mp3 collection, projects, documents, etc.). I have Dropbox set up on 3 machines (main machine, family computer and my laptop), so I get automatic syncing of all these files, plus backups of all the files on 3 computers, plus access to all these files in the cloud.
As far as I'm concerned, it's a revolution in how I work. Dropbox is now my guardian angel, silently backing up everything I do.
The only problem with this arrangement is that 50gb is too small for all my files (videos, mostly), and even their 100gb offering is too small for that. I expect this to change in the near future.
So something like:
1 - always back up to primary backup locations in full. 2 - back up to primary backup locations if it's not too much trouble (some sort of configurable threshold for space) 3 - like 2, but a lower threshold 4 - only back up to secondary backup 5 - do not back up.
I know that there's a lot of configuration that would have to go into this, but I think as data becomes a bigger part of our lives, we need to have a more intentional attitude towards how we store our data, and not just 'let the computer back it up.' Until movies are as easy to store as text is currently, there will always be tradeoffs that we will want to think about.
Having said that, the latest beta does allow you to choose to only sync some of the folders. So you can, for example, install Dropbox on your work computer, and choose not to sync your mp3s to it, etc. This should solve a lot of the use cases you have.
The only thing really missing, for me, is the ability to exclude specific files/folders from the Dropbox folder (like, for example, per-computer configuration files). I assume they'll allow that at some point, but for now I have to work my way around it. Still worth it though!
Here's a list of features from the wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server):
<list removed because formatting made it unreadable. see Wikipedia entry for details>
I've looked into alternatives, (PS3, dedicated media players, etc, etc) but nothing else has everything I wanted.
Specialize. I want a device that stores my media (I already have this), and I can then replace the "display media on television" part with whatever I like. When a device tries to wear too many hats, quality of each hat tends to suffer, in my experience.
(As a totally tangential rant, I've been using Opera recently for no particular reason, and it's been frustrating me how left-behind it's been, even by the tech crowd. The latest version is both faster and more responsive than Chrome, which had been my browser of choice.)
I can't quite put my finger on why, but Opera always seems to get ignored.
Lets face it, as much as we would like to believe we judge technology based on it's merits, the truth of the matter is we're just in High School 2.0 and what really matters is that we're hanging out with the cool kids. In this case Opera isn't a part of the in-crowd, a real shame.
If you look at the usage trend during the first few months, you'll notice that it starts high and curves down, then slopes back up again. I think this supports my argument. The reason that it gets a lot of share has little to do with branding so much as the fact that they made it in to a great browser after a lot of hard work on their part.
The litmus test to my observation is that if this is really true, then Opera should pick up a lot of usage share from people like me who switch between browsers based on the latest and greatest. I remember trying out 10.10, and although it was good, it was no where near this good.
Of course, Opera doesn't have that nice bump that Chrome does where Google puts "Hey you! Try Chrome!" on incredibly popular websites, so we'll see.
Ultimately, competition is good for the user, but a nightmare for the web developer. It was hard enough dealing with the multitude of IE versions, but today's developer needs to support the entire cross-section of users on a variety of platforms ... most of which command a non-negligible user-share.
Firefox's thing was openness, and an ecosystem of extensions. Chrome's is speed (and openness, and being sponsored by Google). Opera? It's fast, but not as fast as Chrome. Not open. No extensions. Built-in mail client? Gmail is better and easier.
When switching to a new browser, people have to put up with the inconvenience of some sites being broken, in return for some payoff. With Opera I can't see an appealing reason to do this.
Finally, I think Opera has given up on desktop users and concentrated all efforts on sales in the embedded market.
EDIT: Forgot to mention one of the biggest pluses. Microsoft pioneered a special file system for WHS called Drive Extender. There are no drive letters, just folders, and it spans across all your hard drives and future hard drives. No more "oh that video is in H:, oops I mean K:", it's just "It's in the video folder." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server#Drive_Exten...
The best thing is that WHS is tightly integrated with Windows, so it has things like autobackup (selective and not), health monitoring (if any of the PC's hooked up at your home springs an alert, like virus found, or low disk space, etc, it notifies the other computers through dismissable systray popup), central user/password management across all your machines, and other cool things. Many companies have also developed plugins for WHS as well (useful things like PerfectDisk for defragmentation). It also works/integrates with Mac environment.
For playback of media content, I have two HTPCs connect from two different rooms as well as some Xbox 360's (yea, the xboxes just found the folders and was able to play the content. it just works). Also, I installed Air Video to stream videos to ipad/iphone.
And since it needs to be always-on, I hooked up a UPS battery to it. It's headless -- just the machine is needed, which is great for a server in the closet. You'll manage the WHS through remote desktop/web ui. You'll also want to get the Rosewill RSV-S8 -- you will need more and more space! (Some people have gone the "octopus" -- lots and lots of external hard drives hooked up through USB. I initially went this route but the throughput became a bottleneck so I got the Rosewill - See: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132...).
Some use-cases: I've got private directories for myself, then I've got public directories such as Photos and Videos, with Photos being writable by certain members of the family. This means I can create a folder, say "07.04.10 July 4th in Boston", and each of us can upload our iphone/camera images to that folder. Now we have a global picture folder for the event we shared together. With Videos, since WHS supports Windows Media Center as well as just normal file streaming, I outfitted my WHS box with 1GBit ethernet card and the machine can stream out files to each of the HTPCs and other consuming devices.
Oh yea, the new Windows Home Server release coming out later this year is going to be even better. If you've got an MSDN subscription, download it and mess with it. You won't be disappointed. It's one of the best products Microsoft has put out.
Autobackup can be done by rsync, file access by Samba, printing through CUPS. Oh yeah, you can run all of the above on an $50 wifi router with custom firmware. It will also barely use any power and not make any noise.
EDIT: I am not attacking MS, and I don't hate people who don't use Linux. Just pointing out there is a way to achieve this functionality with mostly off-the-shelf software and hardware. Startup idea? Nah, more downvotes :)
RE: concept, understood it may be used for other OS's. Was pointing out that WHS uses a different file system than normal windows, one built to scale in terms of drives.
in terms of drive failure, in my experience it's less about the drive and more about the data you have. so, for instance, if you value your Photos directory like I do, you can select that to be duplicated across multiple drives. This will make sure there are multiple copies of that folder in case of any single drive failure.
I've also got an external RAID that I've connected to my WHS. WHS sees this as one drive, while in reality it's two drives in RAID config.
I've trusted my WHS build with 10TB of very valuable data. So far so good.
Do you know if it verifies data integrity? I have heard about WHS from a few people now and it seems like the best solution. I don't even have a Windows machine so that may sound odd, but afaik there's no Unix-based equivalent available today.
Pros and cons abound in that setup, of course, but setting aside the lack of integrity checking ala ZFS for a moment, I have personally taken advantage of the file-level software RAID 1 portion when my first WHS server encountered an internal hardware issue and I had to pull its drives (normal NTFS drives full of the files) and bring them online in a replacement WHS server. Each drive was brought online out of the storage pool, its files copied into the pool volumes, and finally the drive was added to the storage pool. It requires an extra drive already in the pool to pull this off, but given that it worked very well, far better than some of the horror stories I've heard about people trying to transplant RAID 5 and 6 setups when other NAS solutions have failed at the server level. A part of me of course wishes for a ZFS-style WHS, and perhaps MSFT will get there some day, but in the meantime I can certainly see how WHS's design decisions were reached.
I haven't experienced much data corruption but it has bitten me here and there. With terabytes on each disk these days I really wish more systems verified our data, even if they can't repair it I want to know when my disks are no longer reliable. Ah well, can't have it all. We'll get there eventually.
edit: at least we have SMART
What about web access and/or being able to copy a public URL to any file like you can with dropbox?
I guess you'd have to set up your own web server with some software to do that, right?
Is it easy to use with a remote control? Browse movies and play them, etc?
You will automatically get your desired, password-protected https://[whatever].homeserver.com, pointed to your server. (It's autoconfig too with your router). When you access that remotely, you get access to your WHS server, plus all your connected devices. (it looks something like this: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5B259B0F-B5B...)
For public URL, you can install dropbox on the WHS box or one of the connected PCs, if you'd like.
For movie playback, that's separate from the WHS. You need to think of the WHS as the Server and the playback devices as the Client. In this way, the WHS is very extensible and your playback options are limitless. You can use windows media center on a different PC, or just use VLC or windows media player.
Effectively, WHS is a very "insanely great" home server that stores your files and serves it, allowing you to decide how you want to consume it.
For what it's worth, I use windows media center on a machine connected to the TV, and a logitech dinovo mini for remote (see: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/keyboards/keyboard/devices/384...).
Because I'm a home theater junkie, I did start a side project called http://www.intellimote.com that uses the iPad as a remote to browse and play movies.
And the remote access does look nice.
My blog post was originally about a device that just worked like I described out of the box with no other requirements.
Preferably it would be a small box like my media playing storage device that I have or like the tonidoplug, which costs $100 and is already set up.
Your WHM solution is super awesome, but it's not something I can buy from the store, plug in, maybe configure a little bit and start using. It's a project. It's something you work on to get it working the way you want it to.
What I'd like to see is somebody create a pre built solution, similar to the tonidoplug, with more media capabilities etc, video outputs etc.
If some startup or company would build that, people would buy that.
Your solution is awesome, I must go ahead and try WHS, I didn't even know that it existed.
Size wise, it's small (photo: http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/wp-content/uploads/hp_mediasmart...). Cost wise they're relatively cheap (considering it comes with enclosure, cpu, motherboard, hard drives, etc), I've seen them for ~$300-350.
It uses Windows Home Server plus their own custom add-ins. They're nice. You get everything I mentioned before, except this is pre built. They have things like integration with Tivo. I decided to build my own since I had spare parts lying around, otherwise I would have bought one of the MediaSmart machines.
Also, when you say something with "more media capabilities", it is doubtful you will be able to surpass a WHS-based system. This is because a system like MediaSmart, out of the box, will stream everything to any PC, any mobile device, any windows media center, etc. They've built it for streaming media, and all kinds of ways to access the content are already in the ecosystem. They have even included a silverlight/flash based streamer if you decide to only use a browser (they transcode on the fly then stream it to your browser). Devices (eg. xbox 360) and even entire OS's are designed to work with WHS (Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7).
One more thing: the WHS and MediaSmart communities are great. Many websites/forums discussing ways to use it, how to optimally set up your home, issues you'll encounter (and resolutions), etc. (http://www.wegotserved.com, http://www.mswhs.com, http://homeservershow.com, http://www.whsaddins.com, http://www.homeserverhacks.com, http://www.mediasmartserver.net, to name a few)
If you're looking to start out with your first home server/theater, the community welcomes you.
Setup was a breeze, plug it in, let it do the windows update thing, while still running pop in additional hard drives (4 bays total), configure them, done.
For video clients I have both the Asus O!Play and the WD HD Live, they both work great but lack search and content download features.
The Acer Aspire Revo running XBMC seems to be a very popular and affordable option for that. The UI is beautiful, downloads movie info and covers from IMDB, very slick.
I agree that a consumer-oriented gadget to do the same thing easily could be neat. I don't know that there'd be that big of a market though. I suspect most of the general population wouldn't see the need, and the very geeky would tend towards existing free methods of doing the same thing (MythTV and the like).
I like the idea even better when the storage is in the cloud (with a possible local cache, would be nice).
The reason services like Dropbox succeeded is not because there are no alternatives.
We have always talked about adding a new edition for the home market. In fact, it is on the project roadmap for next year. It will be a labor of love of course since it would be difficult to build a business around an open source home server. As already mentioned in this thread, all the pieces already exist -- it's just a matter of putting them together into a coherent package. The "storage device of his dreams" is running in my house.
- file server w/ RAID - media center with PVR - backup to the cloud (documents, music and photos -- videos are too large for my crappy DSL line) - remote access via iPhone or web
Unfortunately, geek credentials are required to get it working and keeping it running. It saved the day when I had to start recording the World Cup overtime on Sunday. Fired up the iPhone on the road and added the new recording -- screenshot @ http://www.mythtv.org/w/images/7/7c/MythWebList.png
1 = Server
2 = NAS
3 = HTPC or Server w/ dongle
4 = HTPC again (any XBMC variant, with a receiver for audio)
5 = XBMC remote apps, I like Boxee's remote for iPhone
6 = FTP, VLC broadcasting, VNC
7 = FTP
8 = Capture Card, streaming to mobile = VLC/justin.tv http://apiwiki.justin.tv/mediawiki/index.php/VLC_Broadcastin...
9 = NAS
rsync for backups
This is all tech that's been around for a while.
- The ability to mirror the Mac Mini in the cloud
- Something like an Airport Express with an HDMI output
Basically it has every need filled. The only exception is the playback I handle through a ps3/apple tv's. Home NAS storage. Easy. Plus it's built on linux, modules are easy and fantastic.
www.thecus.com
That said, both Microsoft's Media Center and Home Media Server are also fantastic and extensible.
It's the backbone of my work/home network. All the Linux boxes have it mounted in the home directory, so all the machines with Rhythmbox think it's local. All the windows machines can access it easily.
There are a dozen services you can enable as your needs dictate. Setup is straightforward through a web interface. Extra bonus it runs headless on crap hardware, in my case a 433mghz Emachine.
or
http://go.iomega.com/en/products/network-storage-desktop/hom... ?
Does anyone know why the software is so bad on cable boxes? I mean, it is just so incredibly bad, in so many ways, it seems like it has to be deliberate.
there are many failed attempts at cracking the living room -- the cable companies make most of the money and they have little incentive to truly innovate the boxes that they are "renting" out to their customers.
to get truly elegant UI's that are powerful enough to do anything useful with all the TV signals (HD, etc) requires significant hardware. when Tivo was ported over to comcast boxes, most of the features that make it tivo were slashed since the boxes comcast gives to customers were significantly cheaper and underpowered.
most cable companies have a monopoly in the physical area they are servicing. where's the incentive to increase cost by upgrading equipment for your customers when the minimal viable product is happily received by the smith household?
I use to download now i find myself streaming what I want from the cloud. I.E. Im not hyper on quality so listening to music/songs and playlists using youtube on my iphone suits my needs.