HTPC build for Plex three part series:

1. Hardware build and Storage Spaces
2. Plex server and clients (You are Here)
3. Performance

I’ve had a single disk Home Theater PC (HTPC) running Plex for a while now but with my ReadyNas nearing the end of its useful life, I decided to kill two birds with one stone: build an updated HTPC with drive redundancy to also take over the functions of my aging NAS. My HTPC stays on 24/7 anyway so this makes perfect sense. My design goals for this were to build a small, quiet, low power, data redundant and sufficiently performing box that I can stuff into my TV cabinet. The extent of the duties for this HTPC will be video streaming and file sharing/ backup, no gaming. This series details my build, Plex server, Plex clients, Windows Storage Spaces, as well as the performance of the storage subsystem.

Plex

So what is Plex and why do we need it? Plex is a very simple, very powerful media center server that can stream videos, music and photos to almost any device…most importantly TVs. Plex can be installed on many NAS devices as well as Windows/Mac/Linux based PCs. Without Plex, DLNA is available to watch supported content from network accessible locations and works fairly well most of the time, but this is simply a list of content. Plex can also talk DLNA but the media server greatly enhances the overall experience by providing art, posters, synopsis, which media has been watched/ which hasn’t, the ability to resume where you left off, remote streaming and transcoding. Plex also supports many file containers (AVI, MKV, MP4, etc), codecs and subtitles. I personally used the DLNA method for years before seeing the light on Plex and no way would I go back. I love Plex and you will too!!

First, create an account on http://plex.tv, you’ll need this later for remote access and it will make management much simpler. Setup is simple: install the Plex media server on the supported platform of your choosing, open the Plex console in a web browser and point Plex at the locations of your media by adding libraries. Media is best categorized by type which will make browsing, searching and updating content much easier. Plex makes this process very easy for you:

I use the following categories and will add one for photos soon:

Plex will then automatically connect to a variety of online sources, such as Freebase or The Movie Database, to download media information and art.  Once complete all of you media will be organized and accessible in the Plex console with full posters and even background music, if you want it.

Plex content can be browsed via normal folder structures if you like or you can use the Plex Dashboard where you will find “On Deck” and “Recently Added”. The latter should be self explanatory, On Deck is where you will find movies that you started and stopped or the next episode of a TV show in a series. This is Plex helping to keep your place in your media universe and it is incredibly useful. 

Plex provides three primary methods for playing content: Direct Play, Direct Stream and Transcoding. Bottom line is that Plex will play your media one way or another, you don’t have to worry about it, but this is how it does it.

• Direct Play is the best and exists in the ideal scenario. 100% file compatibility with very little resources consumed on the media server itself. The file is sent to the Plex client as-is, easy breezy.
• Direct Stream is used when a media file is mostly compatible but some element within is not and requires transcoding. The example Plex uses is a media file where compatible audio/video codecs are streamed direct and the non-compatible container is transcoded.
• Transcoding is used when either the audio or video format isn’t compatible and has to be converted into a compatible format. Audio transcoding is not very CPU intensive but video transcoding is.

Recommended Tweaks

Overall, you could change almost nothing post install and Plex will work fine right out of the box. Here are a few tweaks that I recommend to enhance your experience.

In the server settings, click Connect on the left, make sure to log into Plex (your online account) as this will allow you to connect to and stream media to any device anywhere you are. This is honestly one of the coolest features of Plex and you do not need a Plex Pass to do this! Once signed in on your server, you can now connect to your Plex environment from any smart phone, tablet or PC anywhere you have internet connectivity by using the IOS/ Android Plex app or by logging into Plex.tv. Traveling? As long as you have internet connectivity, you can browse and watch anything from your library. No USB thumb drives required!

To maximize ease of use when you add content, make sure the following settings are enabled. This will ensure that Plex will automatically scan your library when files are added vs having to run a manual or timed scan. Plex will see that you’ve added a file and will automatically add it to the library for playback and download related art.

Under the Web settings, click Player on the left, you can control the streaming quality based on where you will be streaming to. 1080p for local streaming and a lower setting for remote streaming, for example. I have found that setting the local quality to 4Mbps/ 720p greatly increases local streaming responsiveness and makes it easier to skip around in a given media file.

Further customization at this point is highly preferential and you’ll figure it out by clicking through the available options. Plex has made this all VERY easy. In Windows, Plex runs as a process launched by an interactive user so does require that a user account is logged into the desktop. There is no Windows service offering yet but there are ways to work around this. I have an account set to login automatically after a reboot then the screen locks after 1 minute for security. In lieu of a Windows service starting with the OS, this works fine.

Plex Clients

With the HTPC built and Plex installed, let’s talk about client connectivity. There are a number of ways to go here which is another benefit of Plex: extreme flexibility. The methods below are my top 3 in order by preference.

Smart TV app

If you own an internet connected Samsung Smart TV then you already have access to the best free Plex client available. Nothing is required externally, just install the Plex app from the Samsung app store on your TV, launch and it should find your Plex server on the network. Your TV remote will navigate the Plex menus and this will provide the richest experience you can get while navigating Plex on your TV screen. Sadly, if you own a Panasonic TV you will have to use an external client. There is no and will be no native Plex app in the foreseeable future.

Google Chromecast

Chromecast is a very simple and very cheap option that I personally use on my Panasonic plasma. $35 gets you an HDMI-connected dongle that simply casts or displays content on your TV via wifi. This is an important distinction to make when considering the Chromecast. There are no on-screen menus to navigate and there is no integration with your all-in-one remote. Your PC, tablet, or phone is your remote and where you select the content you want to display on your TV. This does require that you purchase the Plex app for IOS/ Android ($5) or if you choose to pay for PlexPass, you’ll get the app for free. Chromecast for Plex works great, the downside is the other services currently supported are a bit limited compared to Roku and the like (if you care). Chromecast is powered via a USB port on your TV or from a wall adapter.

Chromecast setup is very simple and pretty neat in what they do. Initially the Chromecast turns itself into a wifi Access Point (AP) by broadcasting a SSID that you connect to for configuration using the Chromecast app on your device. Once the local wifi network SSID and password are selected, Chromecast will disable its own AP and connect to yours.

Once Chromecast is configured, launch the Plex app on the device of your choosing and navigate to the content you want to watch. Connect Plex to the Chromecast by pushing the “Cast” button in the top right corner and select the Chromecast, this will also automatically change the input on your TV to the correct HDMI slot. Press play on the chosen content. This method is definitely different than the more traditional on-screen navigation approach but having used it for going on a year now, I really like the experience this solution provides. Your more technically challenged family members may not like or fully understand this method without some training.

Roku Streamstick

Roku is a favorite of many home theater aficionados and provides several client options with varying price points. The Roku Streamstick is the Roku answer to the minimalist HDMI dongle but with the majority of the value that Roku provides. I use this client on my older Samsung plasma that doesn’t have built-in wifi support. Roku Streamstick is powered via a USB port on your TV or from a wall adapter. Setup is simple and handled via the specialized Roku remote included. Connect Roku to your home wifi and you are good to go.

Roku uses the more traditional on-screen navigation approach and has an impressive catalog of connectable services you can use. One of the neat things Roku provides is an impressive search function that gives you multiple options as to where you can find/ buy/ play the content you’re looking for. Roku works using a concept of “channels” which are really apps that you add to your client. Plex, Netflix, Amazon, etc. Plex is one of those channels and costs $5 just like the IOS/ Android version. PlexPass members get this app for free as well. Unlike the Smart TV or Chromecast methods, Plex on Roku is a very minimalist affair that provides a very basic visual experience.

While Roku does ultimately provide the essentials for Plex, it is my least preferred method and comes with the following caveats:

• Separate non-IR Roku remote required to control on-screen navigation. No integration into traditional IR all-in-one remotes possible.
• Very slow boot up compared to Chromecast and takes a very long time to get to a point you can actually use it.
• $50 vs $35 for the Chromecast
• Least rich experience of the 3 options with a very basic user interface.

Please also see part one of this series which details the hardware build and part three which discusses performance.

References:

https://plex.tv/

Converting ISO, Video_TS and other disk image formats

HTPC build for Plex three part series:

1. Hardware build and Storage Spaces
2. Plex server and clients
3. Performance

I’ve had a single disk Home Theater PC (HTPC) running Plex for a while now but with my ReadyNas nearing the end of its useful life, I decided to kill two birds with one stone: build an updated HTPC with drive redundancy to also take over the functions of my aging NAS. My HTPC stays on 24/7 anyway so this makes perfect sense. My design goals for this were to build a small, quiet, low power, data redundant and sufficiently performing box that I can stuff into my TV cabinet. The extent of the duties for this HTPC will be video streaming and file sharing/ backup, no gaming. This post details my build, Plex server, Plex clients, Windows Storage Spaces, as well as the performance of the storage subsystem.

HTPC Build

Trying to keep my costs in line while building in performance where it mattered, I decided to go with an AMD-based mini-ITX (m-ITX) form factor system running Windows 8.1 x64. The motherboard and CPU were sourced a year ago but still provide more than adequate performance for my purposes. I went a little higher on the CPU than I really needed to but since video transcoding is very CPU intensive, more horsepower there is certainly not wasted. All parts were sourced from Amazon, who has officially conquered the PC parts space, New Egg can no longer compete (price or return policy). A decent 2-bay ReadyNas or Synology NAS will set you back at least this much, plus this way I get a full featured box without compromises. 

• CPU – AMD A4-5300 FM2, dual core, 3.4GHz, 65w, $50
• MOBO – MSI FM2-A75IA-E53, $100
• Case – Cooler Master Elite 130, $50
• RAM – Corsair 8GB DDR3/1333 Memory, $60
• PSU – Silverstone SFX 450w, $70
• Disk – 1 x Crucial M500 120GB SSD (OS), $72
          – 3 x WD Red 3TB (spaces), $122 each

Total: $768

This A-series 65w AMD APU (Trinity) includes a robust dual-core clocked at 3.6GHz with on-die Radeon HD 7480D for graphics. The RAM isn’t anything special, just trusty Corsair 4GB DIMMs clocked at 1333MHz. The MSI main board provides all the connections I need and pairs nicely with the Cooler Master case. 4 x SATA ports, 2 x DIMM slots, and a PCIe slot should I ever choose to drop in a full length GPU.

I had originally spec’d this build using the WD GP-AV disks which are purpose built for DVRs, security systems and 24/7 streaming operation. This was the disk I used originally a year ago which has served me faithfully and quietly. Online benchmarks show this drive to perform higher than the Green and Red drives from WD. Due to a parts sourcing issue I was forced to look for alternatives and landed on the WD Red disks, which are actually a bit cheaper. Low noise, low power consumption, built for 24/7 NAS duty… these drives are very favorably reviewed. The WD Reds are no where near the highest performing HDDs on the market, with a rotational speed of ~5400 RPM, but for the purposes of an HTPC/ NAS, their performance is perfectly sufficient.

Quality SSDs are cheaper than ever now and make a great choice for your OS disk when you separate your data (as you always should).  These disks are capable of thousands of IOPS and make install, boot up and OS operations lightning quick.

For power I once again turned to Silverstone who have a 450w 80 PLUS bronze efficient unit in SFX form factor. Plenty of power with a very minimal foot-print which is ideal when working with m-ITX. This non-modular PSU has only 3 SATA connectors on a single string so I used a Molex to SATA power connector for my 4th drive. This PSU provides plenty of juice for these power sipping components and doesn’t block the CPU fan.

Finding the “perfect” case for whatever project can prove challenging. For this project I wanted a small m-ITX case that can house 3 x 3.5” HDDs + a 2.5” SSD and Cooler Master had the answer. Well ventilated with plenty of working room, support for a full length GPU and full size PSU. You can mount a BD-ROM if you like or use that space for a 3.5” HDD. The finish is matte black inside and out with all rounded corners and edges. My only gripe is the included front case fan which, although extremely quiet, has no protection grill on its backside. You have to be very careful with you wires as there is nothing to stop them from direct contact with the fan blades. With the one-piece cover removed there is loads of working room in this case. With four SATA connections, cabling gets a bit tight on the rear side but it’s completely manageable.

With the Elite 130 case loaded you can see the three WD Red drives, one on the floor, one on the wall and one on the top in the 5.25 bay. The SSD is mounted below the 5.25 bay, you can see the grey-beige rear of its case.

The SFX PSU sticks out the back of the case a few inches which provides even greater clearance for the CPU fan. With this case it did require using the ATX bracket to fit perfectly. Both the CPU and PSU fans are completely unobstructed with fresh air brought in by the 120mm front fan. This case comes with an 80x15mm fan mounted on the side by the SATA ports. I found this fan to be noisy and in the way, so removed it.

When all was said and done, power consumption for this build is at 29w idle and up around 75w under load. Awesome!!! See the performance section at the bottom for more details.

Storage Spaces

First debuted in Windows 8/ Server 2012, Storage Spaces provides a new very interesting method for controlling storage. Part of the “software defined” market segment, Spaces supplants traditional software and hardware RAID by providing the same data protection capability with a ton of additional flexibility. The biggest value propositions for Spaces in Windows 8.1 is the ability to thin provision (create drives with more space than you actually have or need), use disparate drive media (create a pool from several different disks, internal and external USB) and choose from a few different resiliency methods to control performance or provide greater redundancy. Server 2012 R2 adds a few additional features to Spaces, namely the ability to provide performance tiering between SSDs and HDDs and post-process deduplication which can have a dramatic reduction on consumed capacity. At the end of this exercise I will have two Spaces called Docs and Media both with 2-way mirror resiliency.

Setting up Spaces in Windows 8.1 is a trivial affair once the drives have been physical added to your build. One of the only restrictions is that the disk where the OS is installed cannot be used in a Spaces pool. First open the Spaces management console by pressing Windows Key + Q and typing spaces.

Click create a new pool and select the unformatted disks you want to include. Additional disks can be easily added later.

Storage Spaces (aka virtual disks) can now be created within the physical disk pool and will be presented back to the OS as logical drives with drive letters. Give the new Space a name (for me I have functionally separated Spaces for Docs and Media), choose a drive letter and select a file system. Resiliency type will open an additional file system option called ReFS for mirrored Spaces which is the recommended file system for these Spaces types. NTFS will be the only option for all others. ReFS builds on NFTS by providing greater data integrity including self healing, prioritized data availability, high scalability and app compatibility.  Here is a quick breakdown of the available resiliency types:

• Simple (no resiliency) – just like it says, only one copy of your data so offers no protection. This is akin to RAID0 and can be useful if you simply want to thin provisioning a large logical drive with no data protection.
• Two-way mirror – writes two copies of your data on different physical disks thus protecting from a single disk failure. This requires a minimum of two disks.
• Three-way mirror – writes three copies of your data on different physical disks thus protecting you from two simultaneous disk failures. This requires a minimum of five disks.
• Parity – writes your data with additional parity information for recovery, similar to RAID5. This protects from a single disk failure and requires a minimum of three drives. Parity Spaces will give you more available capacity but at the cost of reduced IO performance. See the performance section at the end for more details.

The images below show the capacity impact of resiliency using a two-way mirror vs parity. The two-way mirror mode will consume 2x of the stated capacity for every file stored (50% reduction of available capacity). All spaces can be thin provisioned and adjusted later if need be. As you can see below, a 2TB logical Space requires 4TB of actual storage should it fill completely.

Parity will consume 1.5x of the stated capacity for every file stored. Based on the 2TB logical Space shown below, if that volume were to fill completely it would consume 3TB of total available capacity.

Once a Space has been created only the size and drive letter can be changed. If you wish to change resiliency type for a space, you’ll have to create a new Space and migrate your data to it.

New drives can be added later to an existing pool very easily and with no down time. Note that adding a drive to an existing Storage Space will destroy any data currently on that drive.

Once configured, you will have a view of your logical Spaces, consumption stats as well as the physical disks backing them in the pool. Here you can see my three disk pool and two Spaces, each with a two-way mirror. Notice that the actual data consumed on the physical disks is evenly spread across all three. Having tried both Parity and two-way mirror resiliency, I decided to take the capacity hit and use the mirror method on both since it performs much better than Parity. Once finalized, I moved all of my pictures and videos into the new M drive.

This is reflected in Windows File Explorer with the two new logical drives and their individual space consumption levels.

Slabs and Columns

Underneath it all Microsoft has a few interesting concepts, some customizable which can be used to achieve certain results. I’ve linked to many good information sources in my references section at the bottom if you’d like more info on these concepts. Data that is mirrored is done so in 256MB slabs which is what is actually copied to each physical disk in a two-way mirror. Half of each slab is allocated to two separate disks. In the event of a disk failure, Spaces will self heal by identifying all affected slabs that were on the failed disk and reallocate them to any suitable remaining disk in the pool. You can take a peek under the covers if you’re curious by running the optimize-volume –verbose command in PowerShell:

Another important concept in Storage Spaces is that of columns which define the number of underlying physical disks across which one stripe of data for a virtual disk is written. This takes a minute to wrap the head around. By default, Spaces creates each virtual disk with one column when there are two disks present. So one column means one stripe on two disks. The interleave value dictates how much data is written to a single column per stripe, by default 256KB. For larger JBODs with dozens of disks the column count can go as high as eight. In my case only having three disks, one column is fine. Two columns makes sense if you have four disks, for example. Generally speaking, more columns means higher performance. The downside of more columns is that this controls how you will scale out later. A two column virtual disk will require you to expand your storage pool by two physical disks at a time. Creating a virtual disk with more columns or a different interleave is done so in PowerShell using the New-VirtualDisk cmdlet.  You can use the get-virtual disk cmdlet to view the lay of the land for your Spaces:

In the end I have met all my initial goals around cost, size, noise, performance and power consumption. I’m very pleased with this mix of hardware, especially my alternate WD Red HDD choice. Spaces provides a robust and flexible subsystem which is a great alternative to legacy hardware/ software RAID. For more information about the inner workings of Spaces and additional design considerations please see the references section below. Please see parts two and three of this series for more information on Plex and the performance of this build.

References:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/15200.storage-spaces-designing-for-performance.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831739.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/05/virtualizing-storage-for-scale-resiliency-and-efficiency.aspx

ReFS

Columns in Storage Spaces

*Updated 5/16/14 – Sync just announced a new Vault feature that allows you to keep some files in the cloud that you don’t want to sync down to devices.

Previously, I took a look at another promising secure cloud storage provider called Tresorit, currently my default, which you can read about here. Toronto based Sync.com (currently in beta) looks to be going after the same market during a poignant time of concern over privacy and data security. Ever more more relevant as Dropbox just updated their TOS so more users will be looking for a more secure offering. Due to the NSA’s ability to snoop data “on the wire” as well as within US datacenters, sadly, this is also a time where considering cloud storage providers outside of US soil is a good thing.

“Zero Knowledge” Architecture

Sync.com uses what they call a zero knowledge storage environment, meaning that they have no knowledge of nor ability to access the files you upload.  Just like Tresorit, Sync.com provides a cloud encryption solution, meaning neither solution encrypts your files on local disk, only files sent up to and stored in the cloud as they leave your PC.  

There is a degree of trust one has to be willing to accept with these solutions as we really have no way to definitely prove that what is stored in the cloud is actually encrypted. Nor are we privy to the security standards or mechanisms in place in these datacenters to keep our data secure. That said, Sync.com expresses interest on their website to make their client software open source so greater transparency will come when that happens.

Sync.com does not provide a detailed white paper like Tresorit does but they do describe their methods.  Pretty straight-forward stuff. Your Sync.com account password protects your private key (AES-256), this key is used to encrypt a “file unlock key” for every file you upload to the cloud. File transfer and authentication happens via SSL. Authentication strings are SHA256 (never clear) and stored in their database as a salted BCRYPT-hashed string immune to rainbow table lookups. This is their claim, I can’t speak to the validity of this. 

Looks like the packaging of private key-encrypted file unlock keys with each encrypted file is what enables Sync.com to provide access to your files via a web portal (unlike Tresorit). This is closer to the LastPass method which also provides a web portal for that offering. I created a quickie diagram that illustrates their method below.

Just like Dropbox, Sync.com ultimately rides on the Amazon infrastructure but uses the Elastic Computing service (EC2), instead of S3, and keeps many local processes running at all times. Three most notably are the taskbar process, several dispatch instances and a watch master process. Interestingly, one of the dispatch processes keeps a persistent connection to a Network Solutions domain which also receives the majority of all bytes sent into the Sync.com cloud. All files added to any Sync.com folder locally get pushed up to this netfirms.com address first. It’s unclear to me what happens from there. Dropbox file uploads establish connections directly to AWS as well as Dropbox servers. Sync.com appears to be proxying all file uploads to an unknown location.

Keeping processes alive with persistent connections to the cloud definitely enables speedy syncs, up and down. Tresorit still uses the timed sync approach where at specified times its processes are spun up, connections to the cloud made, files synced, then connections and processes torn down. Not as speedy to sync, but there are no persistent connections.

Sync.com Client

User accounts are created via the download and install of the sync.com client. There is no way to log into the web portal until the client has been installed and account created first. Just like Tresorit, Sync.com provides a 5GB free account which is much larger than Dropbox’s 2GB. They don’t specifically mention a file size limit so to test I uploaded a 600MB file then a 3.7GB file, they both went. This could be a byproduct of the beta so uncertain if this will stick around but if so, this could be very promising.

The basic functionality of Sync.com is exactly like that of Dropbox: one folder whose contents gets synced up and down. Drop in files or folders and they get uploaded to the cloud and other Sync.com clients. The software client itself is very reminiscent of earlier versions of the Dropbox client.

They do provide a more mobile-friendly up/down limiter for those who presumably would run up against mobile data limits, although there is currently no mobile client. Curious that they would include this here in the desktop client.

The one key point of differentiation here is that in the client preferences they provide a progress tab showing any activity and estimated time remaining. Neither Dropbox nor Tresorit do this.

The right-click system tray menu is almost identical to Tresorit’s.

Web Portal

From a local PC capabilities perspective, that’s about it. All other functions, including sharing, happen from the web portal. Considering that Tresorit does not currently have a web portal, this is a pretty big deal.

The aesthetic and design of the web portal clearly took many queues from box.net although the Sync.com team managed to make it much cleaner and more intuitive.

Navigation and file operation are fairly predictable along with the expected ability to upload files to the web portal directly. You don’t have to use the desktop client to create new files. At this time folders cannot be uploaded to the portal, but more than one file can be selected and added to the upload queue. Cool!

Box.net and Dropbox offer a nice online photo viewer with Box’s offering heads and shoulders ahead of the other two. Sync.com’s implementation follows pretty close to what Dropbox has in play.

Sharing

Something else that occurs via the web portal is sharing which can be done in a few different ways. The simplest method happens via Secure Links which enables the secure public sharing of single files or folders. This sharing method is probably best suited to blind read-only sharing amongst larger groups. First select the file or folder to create a public link for by clicking the chain icon next to a given item.

You’ll then receive a pop-up with the link URL that you can opt whether or not to include the link password in the URL itself or leave it separated.

Other more precise ways to share content involve explicit sharing to people you specify.  Clicking the “Create a share” button will create a new folder and allow you to invite specific people via email addresses. The people invitation part is mandatory, no invited people = no share, but you can invite only yourself to test.

The third way to share is by clicking the plus sign next to any existing file or folder and enable sharing directly.

The same sharing dialog will appear which, again, requires the entering of someone else's email address to create the share.

Once shares are created, they can be managed either from the top level sharing link or via the “Manage Share” dialog next to any shared item.

Sharing management is simple and provides almost everything you need. Member status, permissions, ability to re-invite or invite new as well as stop sharing. Permissions need to be a bit more robust here to include ideally read-only and editing levels.

Mobile Client

As of this writing there is no Sync.com mobile client which will be a deal breaker to some but this is obviously coming. Sync.com states in their blog that they will simul-release clients for both Android and IOS but that was printed July of last year. The web portal does work on the mobile device, however, and even has a nice photo viewer functionality. 

What Sync.com does well

• Files synced to the cloud are encrypted in transit (SSL) and at rest in the Sync.com datacenter (AES-256).
• Very large file limits or none at all (>550MB and 3.7GB verified on my free account, but this could and likely will change)
• The ability to store, access and share encrypted files via a web portal is a big deal, no one else in the business can do this today!
• Split-brain: Ability to host some files in the cloud only that don’t have to be sync’d down to clients.
• Multi-client subfolder sync (Have to check since Box has struggled with this)
• 5GB free accounts with 500MB referrals, no indication of limits
• Robust and granular sharing options
• Robust and well-known compute backend (Amazon EC2)
• Persistent cloud connections and watcher processes = near instant file syncs
• 30-day file history to restore deleted or previous file versions

Where Sync.com falls short

• Amazon EC2 is a flexible compute service for web services, not a storage service like Amazon S3. Where is Sync.com actually storing our data? 
• No mobile Android or IOS client yet, but they say this is coming soon in their blog.
• No mobile client = no camera uploads
• Web portal provides upload ability for multi-select individual files only, not entire folders like Box does.
• Single bucket root folder like Dropbox. I like Tresorit’s approach of multiple root folders residing anywhere you like better. Sync the folders you like on the clients you like, save local space if you need to.   
• No LAN sync like Dropbox but seems they have the framework to make this a reality at some point.
• No MS Office mobile previews like Box.net but this too could be accomplished.

Watch this space!

The Sync.com team has clearly tried to preserve the best of what makes Dropbox great while incorporating some other useful features, the likes used by Box.net, while also providing data security in the cloud. The current climate of public technology will make this a requirement soon, no longer merely a luxury. This will leave the cloud storage pioneers (Dropbox) left to retool and scramble as they figure out how to make their now very mature offerings more secure, if they hope to survive. There’s too much good competition appearing in this space with nothing really compelling that will keep people using a less secure service. Building this type of offering with security as a focus first is absolutely the right approach and one that will pay dividends for companies like Tresorit and Sync.com.  After a few days using Sync.com there’s really not much to dislike. There are a few key features I’d like to see before I consider (another) switch. Tresorit better hurry up with their web portal or they will be outdone here. Hopefully Sync.com will offer some of us beta testers a 50GB+ opportunity soon. :-)

Feel free to use my referral link if you want to check out Sync.com with some free bonus space: here.

References:

Sync.com Privacy

Sync.com Blog

The Google universe is a wonderful place for the advanced user. It’s a pretty damn good place for the non-advanced user too, with seamless integration of Google products and cloud services across devices. Chrome, search, gmail, maps, calendar, drive, voice…all synced with a consistent experience no matter how you access them. Couple these awesome services with a highly customizable and feature rich mobile OS, and you have an almost unbeatable solution. And to think, I used to only want a phone that was good at being a phone!

Most Android-based devices have the same general problem Windows does on PCs, which is that these platforms are allowed to be mucked with by the OEMs that ultimately sell them (read: wireless carriers). While both Android and Windows are great products when properly implemented, the public perception can be less than ideal due to the OEM’s addition of bloat, trial products, customized UIs and other unnecessary additions or changes that negatively impact the overall user experience.

If you buy into the Google Nexus line of products you will get an unfiltered Google experience as it was meant to be but only if your brand name carrier or MVNO of choice is supported there (GSM).  I am one of the lucky few that has an unlimited data plan with what is, in my opinion, the best CDMA/4G network available in the US: Verizon. At the price point my plan is locked at, I’m not giving it up, so sadly no Nexus love for me (yet). No problem, I can take the best selling Android smartphone of all time, the S3, and make it the way it should be. 

The Galaxy S3

In default form this phone comes with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), Samsung’s TouchWiz interface and a ton of bloat courtesy of Samsung + Verizon Wireless. There are some interesting, albeit gimmicky, features centered around motion such as pushing the screen and rolling the phone to jump to the camera or holding and moving icons by turning your body. The phone is plenty fast and the 2100mAh battery life is great, even with the stock softs. To truly make this phone great, it needs zero bloat and Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) in a pure Google experience.

Root, ROM, & Recovery

It goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway: I will be in no way responsible for anything bad that happens to you or your device by following this guide. Following any advice or steps written here will be done so at your own risk or peril.

To reach Android nirvana a few things must be done prior, this is the fun part. The S3 has a locked bootloader from the factory so it must be replaced/ unlocked. The stock recovery is also too limited and should be replaced by the defacto-standard and feature rich ClockWordMod recovery (CWM). There are a couple of ways to go about this, one involves the Samsung Odin tool and reverting to a factory image while the other can be used on OTA builds by flashing bootchains. I opted for the first method which is the cleanest in my opinion. The following steps are how I turned my S3 from good to great.

Step 1: Prep

You’ll need to gather a few items before getting started. I’ll explain what each is used for in subsequent steps.

• Download and install the Official Samsung USB drivers on your PC: link
• Download and extract the Samsung Odin v3.07 utility on your PC: link
• Download the stock VRBLK3 factory image with no data wipe (courtesy of open1your1eyes0 on XDA): link
• Grab SuperSU + Unlocked Bootloader: link
• Download CWM touch recovery flashable via Odin: link
• Download Backup/Synergy zip: link
• Download QPST backup/ restore tool: link
• Download the latest Jelly Bean M snapshot from Cyanogenmod (CM 10.1): link
• Download the applicable Google apps for your ROM (this must match!): link

Step 2: Odin the factory image obtained in step 1

To do this you need to first put the phone in download mode then connect it to your PC via USB.
To reboot into ODIN/Download Mode:

• Make sure your device is completely off
• Key Combos: Volume Down + Home
• While holding both of them simultaneously press the Power button until you see a disclaimer on the screen
• Then press Volume Up and Power to accept the disclaimer
• Once the green robot is visible on the screen this indicates that handset is in now ODIN/Download mode

Once in download mode the screen on your phone will look like this:

Once your phone is connected to your PC, Odin should recognize it and its assigned COM port. Check the box next to PDA and select the no wipe file. DO NOT check any other boxes here or select a pit file. Under options, only Auto Reboot and F. Reset Time should be selected. When ready, click Start.

Once the flashing is complete the phone will reboot and begin the start up sequence. Before you do anything, reboot immediately to download mode again and flash the CWM recovery.

Step 3: Install custom recovery

Recovery is the pre-boot runtime that allows us to easily take nandroids (full system backups) and ultimately load other ROMs. Reboot into download/Odin mode again following the key combinations above. Using the same Odin method shown above, select the CWM md5 file in the PDA field. Uncheck Auto Reboot under options. Click start when ready. Once finished, disconnect the USB cable, pull the battery and put it back in. If you boot to recovery now, you should see the custom touch enabled CWM recovery, which some complain about but I really like.

To reboot into Recovery Mode:

• Make sure your device is completely off
• Key Combos: Volume Up + Home
• While holding both of them simultaneously press the Power button
• As soon as the phone vibrates, let go of the Power button but keep holding Volume Up + Home
• When you see the "Samsung Galaxy S III" logo (not just the word "Samsung"), right after that, the next screen you should see is your recovery
• Don't let go of Volume Up + Home until you see your recovery

Step 4: Unlock bootloader, Achieve Root

This next step is easiest done in a single fail swoop. Each of these items can be addressed individually if desired but since we’re starting from a factory image here, I‘d like to get both done at once. Now that we have the custom recovery (CWM) in place, we will unlock the phone from there. Reboot to recovery and flash the SuperSU_Bootloader_Fixed.zip. Go ahead and perform a wipe/ factory reset now while you’re still in recovery.

Congrats, the phone is now rooted and unlocked. If you have no desire to flash a custom ROM you can stop here.

Step 5: Backup IMEI

This is purely a precautionary step and one that could save hours of trouble later should anything ever go wrong with your device from flashing ROMs. Now is a good time to perform this step, before you flash your custom ROM. Initially the S3 is supposed to have an IMEI backup (nv data) of the device stored locally should this info ever get wiped from EFS. Some had the unfortunate pleasure of finding this to not be the case after bricking their devices and having to go through an arduous process to rectify things. This procedure will properly backup this IMEI info should it ever need to be replaced.

The easy way to do this is by running a command from the phone in the Terminal emulator:

su
reboot nvbackup

• Reboot to recovery and install the Synergy_Backup_HWKeys_signed.zip. Reboot the phone again.
• Install the QPST utility on your PC and connect your phone via USB.
• Follow the remaining steps in this post to backup your IMEI to your PC for extra safety: link

With a local and external backup of your IMEI, you should feel confident to flash ROMs now that you can restore this critical bit of information if needed.

Step 6: Flash custom ROM

Firstly and very importantly, you need to use ROMs for your specific device! These are not ubiquitous across Verizon, ATT, etc. The device codes for all S3 phones follow the naming standard of d2<carrier>. So in my case since I have a Verizon device it’s d2vzw, an S3 on the ATT network is d2att and so on.

There are other ROMs out there but I am seeking a pure Google experience, so I am going with one of the most respected and highest quality Android developers on the planet: Cyanogenmod. Currently Jelly Bean aka Android 4.2.2 aka Cyanogenmod 10.1 is experimental, there is no “stable” ROM yet. That said there are M snapshots which are monthly culminations so are more stable than nightlies which can be very unpredictable. I have been running cm-10.1-20130304-EXPERIMENTAL-d2vzw-M2.zip for several weeks now with no problems whatsoever.

Download the ROM to the internal or external SD card on the phone, reboot to recovery, install zip. Important to note is that Google Apps are not included in the CM builds so these must be flashed in CWM as well. Do this right after the install of the ROM, before you reboot. Once finished, reboot, walk through the initial setup steps and you’re good to go. JB on the S3 is simple, clean, and fast.

Enable Reboot to Recovery

Jelly Bean comes with a few unique changes under the hood from how certain functions worked in previous Android builds. The option to reboot to recovery from the power button menu is notably absent in JB. Developer options are also absent from the system menu which first must be enabled to turn on recovery rebooting. Pains were taken to hide this for some reason.

In the settings menu, go to About Phone and tab the build 7 times. You should see a pop up that developer options are now enabled which will also now be visible in the root of the system menu. Within developer options push the slider to on and check the “advanced reboot” box. Recovery will now be in the power button menu.

Location Services for Maps (GPS or 3G/4G)

This one was tricky and made far too difficult to enable for no really good reason, other than to get you into Google Now. By default even GPS can’t find your location in Google maps. Before any location services can be used they must be enabled in 2 places. The first is in the expected place within the system menu under location access:

It was frustrating to find that even after enabling location access, maps could still not use location data. The other place this must be enabled is within Google Now which can be accessed by tapping the search bar on the home screen or launching the Google Search app. From Google Now, right click into Settings, choose Privacy & accounts, click Google location settings, push the slider to on to allow Google apps access your location. Huge pain to get here. I mean, wow Google, what the hell??! After enabling, maps should now work correctly.

Other items of interest

Another change I’d recommend to make is install the DNS Changer app from the Play store. I use OpenDNS for DNS resolution which is likely faster than your carrier enabling faster web browsing, but also cuts down on their all but certain spying of URLs from their DNS resolvers.

The notification LED on the S3 is very cool as well for custom alerting. Under Settings, System, Notification light, you can change the LED to different colors based on the type of alert desired. For example I turn the light green for text messages and red for emails. Any color you like, any notification you like. This is an awesome feature.

Another useful feature is Quiet Hours under System Settings, sound. Mute notifications, vibrations etc for a given time period.

JB also offers some native hardware overclocking if you’re so inclined. Extreme care should be taken here of course.

Conclusion

Overall I couldn’t be happier with my S3 running CM10.1. The only weirdness at all that I’ve experienced is vertical scrolling in the app drawer doesn’t work and the home button has forgotten itself a few times by opening the running apps list only. Super minor stuff. Functionally everything else works perfectly on this buttery smooth and snappy interface. There should be another M snap released today or tomorrow which I will install the minute it drops. With the S4 right around the corner and the Android devs lining up to say they won’t support it, I’m very happy to have my well-supported S3. It really doesn’t get much better than this!

References:
XDA: Stock Jelly Bean images
XDA: Root, recovery etc for OTA JB
QPST backup of IMEI
ODIN flashing guide