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It's the NAS (Network Attached Storage) Thread, yo.

M

Marty Chinn

Member
Cheech said:
Look at the Synology feature web page.

The main problem I have with WHS is just that, it's Windows. I have to pay $99 for the software, and then whatever the hardware costs, which certainly isn't going to be as energy or cost efficient as a dedicated NAS device. Poking around the WHS pages, it looks like you can get some dedicated WHS devices, which are universally more expensive than what I spent on the Synology device.

As far as flexibility, unless I'm mistaken, WHS doesn't do half of what the Synology device can. Any type of RAID using a modern filesystem(EXT4), baked in support for various mobile devices, e-mail server, torrents, news server, FTP, DDNS, web site hosting, and yeah, it does ADS/ACL through Samba (which obviously WHS is going to do as well, heh).

WHS looks like a neat product. It's something that I'd set up for my parents. But the Synology appeals to the IT nerd in me.
Click to expand...

I'm still digging through that link, but I think you might not have looked into WHS enough because I would think the IT nerd in you would have it appealing to you since WHS is just a different flavor of Windows Server 2003 which if I'm not mistaken is what is used in a lot of business environments by IT. WHS allows you to setup all those services since it is just Windows Server.

Where the flexibility comes in is the fact that you can run and install Windows apps. You don't need to work within the confines or restrictions of whatever a different NAS offers you. You like a particular e-mail server, you just install it. Does Synology work with Logitech Squeezebox? Can I have it interface with my Backup Power Supply for automatic shutdown in the event of a powerfailure? It's that type of flexibility I can get with WHS.

Certainly this seems more capable than other NAS solutions I've looked at before and I'll continue to look at it in the event I ever need to change hardware down the line. Does Synology offer pooled storage?
 
D

Deleted member 12837

Unconfirmed Member
I have an HP MSS right now, but I'm wondering if for my needs I could migrate to a simpler linux box or hack one of these NASes or something (and moving away from WHS would be nice too). Could the MSS be overkill for what I need? Really all I use it for is to stream media throughout the house, access some of my files remotely, and the "Big Pool Of Data" + software duplication (instead of RAID) features. Eventually I'd like to play around with it as an app server with some little web apps I write, maybe set up a proxy server or mail server, etc.

Are there NASes that have more than 4 bays (or the ability to add enclosures via eSATA or USB like the MSS allows)? Right now I have all 4 bays of my MSS filled with 2 TB drives, but at some point I imagine I'll need more space.
 
K

kehs

Banned
Marty Chinn said:
I'm still digging through that link, but I think you might not have looked into WHS enough because I would think the IT nerd in you would have it appealing to you since WHS is just a different flavor of Windows Server 2003 which if I'm not mistaken is what is used in a lot of business environments by IT. WHS allows you to setup all those services since it is just Windows Server.

Where the flexibility comes in is the fact that you can run and install Windows apps. You don't need to work within the confines or restrictions of whatever a different NAS offers you. You like a particular e-mail server, you just install it. Does Synology work with Logitech Squeezebox? Can I have it interface with my Backup Power Supply for automatic shutdown in the event of a powerfailure? It's that type of flexibility I can get with WHS.

Certainly this seems more capable than other NAS solutions I've looked at before and I'll continue to look at it in the event I ever need to change hardware down the line. Does Synology offer pooled storage?
Click to expand...

Yup, Synology NASes support third party applications/plug ins. There's built in UPS support. (Not sure about email server, but I vaguely remember something about it in the documentation). I'll be honest though is your running an email server your target is well beyond a NAS.

The synology feature set really is quite abundant for the price point even at the entry level.
 
J

JoseJX

Member
I'll put in another good word for Synology, I've got a 209+ with two 2TB drives mirrored for my important stuff, music, movies, etc. It does have a server built in to do file sharing, so we use it as a server for the PS3 as well. It's a really nice setup, small, and more power efficient than my old setup which was a P3 running Linux with a few drives mirrored. :)
 
C

Cheech

Member
Copernicus said:
Yup, Synology NASes support third party applications/plug ins. There's built in UPS support. (Not sure about email server, but I vaguely remember something about it in the documentation). I'll be honest though is your running an email server your target is well beyond a NAS.

The synology feature set really is quite abundant for the price point even at the entry level.
Click to expand...

Yep, all that and it supports squeezebox as well. I actually just bought an APC today to use with it, heh. There's been APC drivers available for Linux for a decade or more, so it's no surprise that Synology's devices work with them.

What else I like about them is how often they've been updating the devices. Synology already has native Amazon S3 cloud support, if they could figure out how to use the consumer Amazon Cloud for an additional backup, it would be awesome. Might as well use that 20 gigs for something!
 
M

Marty Chinn

Member
Cheech said:
Yep, all that and it supports squeezebox as well. I actually just bought an APC today to use with it, heh. There's been APC drivers available for Linux for a decade or more, so it's no surprise that Synology's devices work with them.

What else I like about them is how often they've been updating the devices. Synology already has native Amazon S3 cloud support, if they could figure out how to use the consumer Amazon Cloud for an additional backup, it would be awesome. Might as well use that 20 gigs for something!
Click to expand...

Cool to see the plug in support. Amazon S3 cloud is expensive though. Does it support any other type of offsite storage? I just started using that myself. Also I couldn't find a clear answer, but does it support pooled storage? Or is each drive a seperate volume? Also in the event of device failure, what happens to your data?
 
J

JimmyBoy

Member
Got this some time ago and is perfect for my needs: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3952307

D700-2364-main.jpg


Currently on sale for 60 bucks.
 
C

Cheech

Member
Marty Chinn said:
Cool to see the plug in support. Amazon S3 cloud is expensive though. Does it support any other type of offsite storage? I just started using that myself. Also I couldn't find a clear answer, but does it support pooled storage? Or is each drive a seperate volume? Also in the event of device failure, what happens to your data?
Click to expand...

Offsite storage.. I'm not sure what else. I know that you can set up a second Synology device offsite, and you can set them up to automatically keep in sync with each other.

As for how the hard drives are set up, you can set the two drives up in RAID 1, so they're redundant. That's what I'm doing. So if one drive fails, just buy another 2 TB drive and plug it in. No loss of data/service. Not positive how many volumes a physical drive can have on one of these.

If you want to back the whole thing up locally, it supports USB hard drives.

If the device fails, put them in a new Synology and go on your way. Or, if you need the data right then and there, the drives are formatted EXT4. So, you can read them natively in Linux, or with Windows using a program such as Ext2Read.

This is another reason I would not stripe (RAID 0) these drives in something like this, BTW. You would not just be able to pop the drives out and read them in a PC if need be.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
i have a mac mini as a HTPC (Plex) client and server for other devices in the house. Its also running a minecraft server for our house only, and sabnzbd. I have two 1TB drives which are now full, and I need more storage. I can add another 1-2TB drive, but I'm wondering whether to look at a more overall solution - either adding a NAS, or possibly replacing the Mini with a server.

the simple solution for me is a WD studio edition II. I have a 2x1TB version set up as RAID1, so I get 1TB addressable. You can now buy them in 4 & 6TB versions too (so I'd get 2 or 3TB addressable). They're standalone, power down when not in use, and pretty compact. Plus you can swap the drives out in case of failure or even upgrade them to larger capacities later on. But you need a PC to attach them too, and I'm not sure how many USB drives I can keep adding before it gets unwieldy.

If I went NAS, it'd be handy if it could run sabnzbd and if possible sickbeard. Also expandable storage with some kind of redundancy. Not for critical data, just DVD/bluray rips, so RAID 1, 5 or UnRAID sounds good to me.


stretch target is a standalone server, running linux or possibly windows. That would let me sell my mini and use an appleTV as a client instead.

Such a server would need to be able to run Plex Media Server. Apparantly they have a linux version in their labs which will be officially released soon, so Linux/unraid is an option. But I'd need enough CPU (or GPU?) to transcode 1080p content for appleTV

It would also need to run a minecraft server on it. Server is java based but can be RAM hungry. Only for LAN users (me and the kids). Mini currently runs it no problem.



oh, and it'll most likely be in the lounge if it wants wiring to the network, so quiet and not too large.

There is currently a cashback deal from HP in the UK for the prolient microserver, not sure if thats a good option?
 
C

CRS

Member
I've actually been looking for one. It's starting to become a pain to transfer files between laptops.
IrishNinja said:
i never sleep, cause sleep mode is the cousin of death
Click to expand...
hahaha
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
just re-reading this, and I like the comments Marty made about data being freely available and reducing the data storage needs for individual devices. As our family gets more computers (wife's laptop, my laptop, kids now have a laptop, my gaming PC, mini HTPC), keeping track of backing all that up is a nightmare.

with dropbox I've effectively already got backups of critical documents across all devices and the cloud. that makes it safe, plus I don't care about backing up 'secondary' machines. I occasionally image the wife's and kids computers just to save reinstalling drivers/apps. But not for critical data safety, and I don't need to worry about weekly/monthly/automatic backups - dropbox handles that.

For media i have my USB drives on my mini, and I figure RAID1 is enough for that. worst case I get both drives fail and I have to rerip/download some stuff which is a pain but not the end of the world.

I do need to figure a solution for photos. They are critical for me, but too large to store online readily. They're stored locally on my MBP with time machine backups and occasional (monthly at best) offsite backup via external drive.



I think its worth categorising your content - eg music/movies&TV/photos/documents and allocating an importance to each, and a size. eg documents/files might be the most critical, but also the smallest and therefore easiest to secure. Music/movies/TV are probably the most data heavy and preferring a NAS, but maybe doesn't need security as its all ripped and you have archives in storage? one size doesn't necessarily fit all
 
Manp

Manp

Member
tokkun said:
NAS stands for Network Attached Storage.
Click to expand...

i think he mixed NAS (Network Attached Storage) and SAN (Storage Area Network)

:)

edit: holy crap! quote necromancy
 
T

TxdoHawk

Member
So if I want to back up a Macbook Pro and a PC to a NAS wirelessly, are the only real games in town the Time Capsule and LaCie Wireless Space? I know this way of doing things is going to be horribly slow, but this is fine for my needs, as after the first backup incrementals are going to be very small.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
TxdoHawk said:
So if I want to back up a Macbook Pro and a PC to a NAS wirelessly, are the only real games in town the Time Capsule and LaCie Wireless Space? I know this way of doing things is going to be horribly slow, but this is fine for my needs, as after the first backup incrementals are going to be very small.
Click to expand...

no, a bunch of NASes should have time machine support. I know QNAP ones do. The PC is the easy part, should be supplied software with the NAS for that or choose your own
 
T

The_Inquisitor

Member
Hi guys and gals. Once I get some work money, I am looking to either get a NAS or build one. NAS will be used to hold/back-up my photo raws, music, videos, and potentially system backup.

I will need a LOT of storage. My raws are 20-25mb a piece each. I don't want to spend on the fancient/ buy the most expensive, but I am willing to pay more than a few hundred.

I also am completely open to building my own.

Therefore are there any suggestions on a pre-built NAS that can fit my needs? If not, what should I look for on the DIY front. Thank you so much.
 
M

mike23

Member
The_Inquisitor said:
Hi guys and gals. Once I get some work money, I am looking to either get a NAS or build one. NAS will be used to hold/back-up my photo raws, music, videos, and potentially system backup.

I will need a LOT of storage. My raws are 20-25mb a piece each. I don't want to spend on the fancient/ buy the most expensive, but I am willing to pay more than a few hundred.

I also am completely open to building my own.

Therefore are there any suggestions on a pre-built NAS that can fit my needs? If not, what should I look for on the DIY front. Thank you so much.
Click to expand...

What's a lot? I mean, 20-25mb isn't that much. You're looking at 40,000 images per terabyte. When I hear "a lot" now-a-days, I think 10TB+. You probably could do with 3TB and be perfectly fine, but that's up to you.

I definitely suggest going with something with raid-1 or raid-5 support minimum, so you can suffer a drive failure without losing all your data. You could go with a 2 disk box for raid-1 with two 2-3TB drives for ~$200 plus drives maybe. 4 bay diskless NAS boxes seem to be in the $350-400 range and you could do three or four 2TB drives with one of them for redundancy.

When I was building mine I decided to kill two birds with one stone and upgrade my current desktop and reuse the scraps to make the NAS. So now I have a Q6600 with 12GB ddr2 running as my NAS and nice new desktop with a i5 2500k and 8GB ddr3 and it only cost me about $200 more than if I had kept the old pc and built the NAS from scratch or bought a stand-alone box.

Some people might suggest that you go with an atom cpu build if you go DIY, but you won't max out a gigabit ethernet connection with them from what I can tell. Especially if you have your drives encrypted.

I'm a big fan of ZFS and you won't find that in many standalone boxes, so for that reason I prefer DIY and a free NAS OS like freenas, napp-it, etc . If you do it on the cheap, you could do

$50 case and power supply - make sure the PS has enough sata power cables or buy adapters. It's usually cheaper to find a PS with more sata cables than to buy the adapters in my experience.
$60 for Athlon II X2 255 (not sure how much this compares to a Q6600)
$50 for AM3 mobo - make sure it has enough sata ports and gigabit lan.
$20 video card (or a mobo with onboard video)
$40 2x2GB ddr3
$5 2GB-4GB usb flash drive for the OS

So, $225 or so plus drives and it should run well enough. Can probably save a bit with combos on Newegg. I don't know how this will be power consumption-wise. Mine pulls like 100-140 watts according to my UPS with the q6600 and six 3TB drives. So, I imagine it will be a bit less than that. (I would also recommend saving up for a UPS, you can get a decent cyberpower 900 watt box for 200 bucks. It runs my desktop, monitors, nas, modem, and router for 20 minutes during a power outage if I leave them all on, so no worry of data loss. Or it'll last almost 3 hours if it's just running the modem and router while I use my laptop it's own battery power.)

How many drives you can support depends on how many sata ports the mobo has and how many power cables the PS has. Also, keep an eye on the slots available in the case.

Another option is to avoid a NAS all together and get an external enclosure that supports raid-1 or raid-5. They tend to be a bit cheaper than NAS solutions.
 
P

Polk

Member
mike23 said:
$60 for Athlon II X2 255 (not sure how much this compares to a Q6600)
$50 for AM3 mobo - make sure it has enough sata ports and gigabit lan.
Click to expand...
Instead of Athlon I'd take something on AMD Brazos platform (like ASUS E35M1-M) or new Pentium Dual Core G620T + mobo with integrated gpu. It's more then enough for NAS (or even movie machine) and more power efficient.
 
T

The_Inquisitor

Member
mike23 said:
What's a lot? I mean, 20-25mb isn't that much. You're looking at 40,000 images per terabyte. When I hear "a lot" now-a-days, I think 10TB+. You probably could do with 3TB and be perfectly fine, but that's up to you.

I definitely suggest going with something with raid-1 or raid-5 support minimum, so you can suffer a drive failure without losing all your data. You could go with a 2 disk box for raid-1 with two 2-3TB drives for ~$200 plus drives maybe. 4 bay diskless NAS boxes seem to be in the $350-400 range and you could do three or four 2TB drives with one of them for redundancy.

When I was building mine I decided to kill two birds with one stone and upgrade my current desktop and reuse the scraps to make the NAS. So now I have a Q6600 with 12GB ddr2 running as my NAS and nice new desktop with a i5 2500k and 8GB ddr3 and it only cost me about $200 more than if I had kept the old pc and built the NAS from scratch or bought a stand-alone box.

Some people might suggest that you go with an atom cpu build if you go DIY, but you won't max out a gigabit ethernet connection with them from what I can tell. Especially if you have your drives encrypted.

I'm a big fan of ZFS and you won't find that in many standalone boxes, so for that reason I prefer DIY and a free NAS OS like freenas, napp-it, etc . If you do it on the cheap, you could do

$50 case and power supply - make sure the PS has enough sata power cables or buy adapters. It's usually cheaper to find a PS with more sata cables than to buy the adapters in my experience.
$60 for Athlon II X2 255 (not sure how much this compares to a Q6600)
$50 for AM3 mobo - make sure it has enough sata ports and gigabit lan.
$20 video card (or a mobo with onboard video)
$40 2x2GB ddr3
$5 2GB-4GB usb flash drive for the OS

So, $225 or so plus drives and it should run well enough. Can probably save a bit with combos on Newegg. I don't know how this will be power consumption-wise. Mine pulls like 100-140 watts according to my UPS with the q6600 and six 3TB drives. So, I imagine it will be a bit less than that. (I would also recommend saving up for a UPS, you can get a decent cyberpower 900 watt box for 200 bucks. It runs my desktop, monitors, nas, modem, and router for 20 minutes during a power outage if I leave them all on, so no worry of data loss. Or it'll last almost 3 hours if it's just running the modem and router while I use my laptop it's own battery power.)

How many drives you can support depends on how many sata ports the mobo has and how many power cables the PS has. Also, keep an eye on the slots available in the case.

Another option is to avoid a NAS all together and get an external enclosure that supports raid-1 or raid-5. They tend to be a bit cheaper than NAS solutions.
Click to expand...

I have a computer I just built last year. I could buy a new case and use my current mobo+cpu+ram, and just pull my GPU. A i5 750 might be overkill though haha.

In fact, I was thinking of doing my own anyways, So if I bought an enclosure, I could stick my ATX mobo with processor and hs212 heatsink, along with my 700W PSU into a new box and stack some HDDs. Case recommendations?
 
C

CoachKevin

Member
Do you guys have any recommendations for NAS that support SATA? I would rather not go through ethernet, just want some redundant back up.
 
D

Deleted member 12837

Unconfirmed Member
For any WHS-based system owners out there that access their stuff remotely, how do you secure your stuff (both from viruses and external attackers)? I have an MSS and I'd like to set up DynDNS so I can start accessing services running on the server remotely, but I'm worried about the extra security concerns that come with that.

Also, are there any good BitTorrent add-ins for WHS, or would I be better off just installing a BitTorrent client directly? Are there compatibility issues, or for all intents and purposes is WHS essentially just like a regular edition of Windows when it comes to installing most programs? I've always shied away from installing anything extra on my MSS that isn't an actual add-in, but maybe that's not a necessary approach.
 
R

RevoDS

Junior Member
404Ender said:
For any WHS-based system owners out there that access their stuff remotely, how do you secure your stuff (both from viruses and external attackers)? I have an MSS and I'd like to set up DynDNS so I can start accessing services running on the server remotely, but I'm worried about the extra security concerns that come with that.

Also, are there any good BitTorrent add-ins for WHS, or would I be better off just installing a BitTorrent client directly? Are there compatibility issues, or for all intents and purposes is WHS essentially just like a regular edition of Windows when it comes to installing most programs? I've always shied away from installing anything extra on my MSS that isn't an actual add-in, but maybe that's not a necessary approach.
Click to expand...
It both behaves like a regular version of Windows, and has some compatibility issues. In terms of programs, you can pretty much install anything you want without any problem, but stuff that integrates more deeply into the system (anything that requires external hardware or specific drivers for instance) may not run properly. (but then again, Windows XP/Server 2003 drivers will often work)

As for torrents, I personally just run uTorrent while controlling the server via Remote Desktop. I find that most add-ins aren't that great; WHS' real power comes from the fact that virtually any Windows program can run in the background.
 
D

Deleted member 12837

Unconfirmed Member
RevoDS said:
It both behaves like a regular version of Windows, and has some compatibility issues. In terms of programs, you can pretty much install anything you want without any problem, but stuff that integrates more deeply into the system (anything that requires external hardware or specific drivers for instance) may not run properly. (but then again, Windows XP/Server 2003 drivers will often work)

As for torrents, I personally just run uTorrent while controlling the server via Remote Desktop. I find that most add-ins aren't that great; WHS' real power comes from the fact that virtually any Windows program can run in the background.
Click to expand...

Any advice on setting uTorrent up for WHS (including security procedures)?

The only thing I could find was a guide here, but it's a couple of years old so I'm not sure if it's out of date or anything...

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3412
 
W

wetwired

Member
I've got a readynas duo with 2 x 2tb in it on raid 0. It's been going fine so far, only issue I have is that the transmission bittorrent client for it crashes, I'd really like to get that up an running so I font have to leave my whole pc on while downloading linux isos
 
T

The_Inquisitor

Member
Hi everyone. I am still looking to get a NAS.

Big things I want.

-Ability to FTP into my files(probably pretty standard)
-standard multimedia sharing with an xbox or even playstation 3.
-Back-up of my main rig.
-Hold my large collection of camera raws.

What's on the market for me? I see lot's of people buying Netgear stuff, but lot's of horror stories.

I'm unsure if I have the time to put something together with work atm, so I think i'm going the pre-built route.
 
T

The_Inquisitor

Member
Okay looking at the Synology 211j. Looks like what I need exactly for 199.

Here's my question. I currently have a 1.5 TB 5400 RPM hdd. Can I buy a 2 tb HDD to have it backed up to as my second hdd, or do I just need to buy another 2 tb hdd?
 
S

suffah

Does maths and stuff
Interesting timing, I just built my NAS this weekend.

I spent weeks poring over all the vendors, reading reviews, and talking to a co-worker that had a sweet little QNAP box.

But in the end, the price-to-performance ratio of a home-built NAS is incomparable.

I went with the following:

Case: LIAN LI Q08
PSU: Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D Green 380W
Motherboard: ASUS E35M1-I Deluxe
Memory: Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1333 ECC Unbuffered KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G
Disk(s): 5x 2TB 5900RPM Seagate ST2000DL003
Configuration: RAID-Z2, 4k blocks

FreeNAS is free and works fabulously (so far). Granted, I'm linux savvy but it was smooth sailing for the most part.

The system was probably around $400 (without the disks)...that's for a 5+ bay machine with 8GB of ram. The closest offering from the big boys would run $800-1000 easily.
 
M

Marty Chinn

Member
The_Inquisitor said:
Hi everyone. I am still looking to get a NAS.

Big things I want.

-Ability to FTP into my files(probably pretty standard)
-standard multimedia sharing with an xbox or even playstation 3.
-Back-up of my main rig.
-Hold my large collection of camera raws.

What's on the market for me? I see lot's of people buying Netgear stuff, but lot's of horror stories.

I'm unsure if I have the time to put something together with work atm, so I think i'm going the pre-built route.
Click to expand...

Sounds like something running Windows Home Server is right up your alley. Great flexibility and works really well with what you want to do. Think about the future like Cloud Storage if you want to backup the camera raws online like I do just in case something terrible were to happen.
 
D

Deleted member 12837

Unconfirmed Member
suffah said:
Interesting timing, I just built my NAS this weekend.

I spent weeks poring over all the vendors, reading reviews, and talking to a co-worker that had a sweet little QNAP box.

But in the end, the price-to-performance ratio of a home-built NAS is incomparable.

I went with the following:

Case: LIAN LI Q08
PSU: Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D Green 380W
Motherboard: ASUS E35M1-I Deluxe
Memory: Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1333 ECC Unbuffered KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G
Disk(s): 5x 2TB 5900RPM Seagate ST2000DL003
Configuration: RAID-Z2, 4k blocks

FreeNAS is free and works fabulously (so far). Granted, I'm linux savvy but it was smooth sailing for the most part.

The system was probably around $400 (without the disks)...that's for a 5+ bay machine with 8GB of ram. The closest offering from the big boys would run $800-1000 easily.
Click to expand...

What do you like about FreeNAS? I hear that and unRAID come up a lot in conversation about home-built NASes.

I've been contemplating all sorts of server set-ups lately (as you might be able to tell from my recent posts in this topic) and am now starting to lean towards a combo of a Mac Mini running as a server, and a dumb NAS that is used for nothing but storing all of my media, having some redundancy to handle drive failure, and making it accessible on the network via Samba or something.

I think I like the idea of a dedicated machine for each rather than a NAS that's also running BitTorrent, media streaming + transcoding, etc.
 
Bboy AJ

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
bump. I'm looking to buy a NAS. It'll be used for streaming media in my apartment. Videos and pictures mostly. I would like a ton of space and an auto backup solution. I don't care about backing up my PC data, just the media on the NAS.

It'll be an OSX and Windows network. Wireless. I'd like to be able to manually download media on my Windows machine and have the NAS see it and copy it over to its storage.

I'm open to other solutions for what I'm trying to do.

It's now mid 2012. I wondered if there were any significant updates to the info in this thread. Please point me in the right direction. Thanks!
 
F

FillerB

Member
Bboy AJ said:
...
It'll be used for streaming media in my apartment. Videos mostly.
...
Wireless.
...
Click to expand...

I hope you're fine with 720p because even with a Wireless-N network the signal is too unstable and/or slow to stream 1080p without some stuttering.

Bboy AJ said:
...
I'd like to be able to manually download media on my Windows machine and have the NAS see it and copy it over to its storage.
...
Click to expand...
Never used it myself by Synology's CloudStation seems to be what your looking for.
 
Bboy AJ

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
FillerB said:
I hope you're fine with 720p because even with a Wireless-N network the signal is too unstable and/or slow to stream 1080p without some stuttering.


Never used it myself by Synology's CloudStation seems to be what your looking for.
Click to expand...

Doh. I guess I'll have to find a way to rig it up wired. Germany doesn't seem to be big on wired connections.

Thanks. Any hardware suggestions?
 
R

rabhw

Member
I bought my first NAS recently. Synology DS411. Absolutely love the thing, perfect for what I need it for (streaming media to various rooms throughout the house). Doesn't skip a beat streaming multiple 1080p streams, all while downloading/extracting stuff via sabnzbd. It's a beast!
 
Bboy AJ

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
mike23 said:
How much are you looking to spend?
Click to expand...
Whatever they cost. I don't want to spend more than it costs to accomplish my use. I was thinking around $500?

rabhw said:
I bought my first NAS recently. Synology DS411. Absolutely love the thing, perfect for what I need it for (streaming media to various rooms throughout the house). Doesn't skip a beat streaming multiple 1080p streams, all while downloading/extracting stuff via sabnzbd. It's a beast!
Click to expand...
This sounds perfect for my needs.
 
V

Valkyr Junkie

Member
The Synology devices look really nice, and are definitely high on my list to replace my WHS v1 device in the near future now that support for it is about to end, and MS is completely abandoning the Home Server platform. My only concerns are backing up the data on the NAS since it's a proprietary file system.
 
M

mike23

Member
Bboy AJ said:
Whatever they cost. I don't want to spend more than it costs to accomplish my use. I was thinking around $500?


This sounds perfect for my needs.
Click to expand...

My post #117 looks like it's still fairly relevant. Check it out if you're interested in building your own as a possibility.
 
F

FillerB

Member
Whut? Synology formats the HDDs as EXT3\4 depending on the version.Aka the Linux-filesystem. Sure it makes it a tad annoying to directly mount the HDDs to a non-linux computer in case the NAS dies but it isn't impossible.

edit:
TurkishEmperor said:
Nas+htpc combo great or only 1 suffice?
Click to expand...
Greatest combo. While a HTPC with a sufficiently large HDD will suffice, a htpc with a small SSD with the bare essentials (Linux, XBMC) that streams the movies from a NAS (by wire) is far cheaper, blazing fast and all-around awesome.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Unraid setup? HP proliant microserver is a great little computer that you can install UnRaid on, and has space for 4-5 drives. I have 8TB usable space on mine (5x2TB drives with one used as parity).

It shares content between Macs and PCs, but also runs my Sabnzbd, sickbeard and a minecraft server.
 
C

Canis lupus

Member
FillerB said:
Whut? Synology formats the HDDs as EXT3\4 depending on the version.Aka the Linux-filesystem. Sure it makes it a tad annoying to directly mount the HDDs to a non-linux computer in case the NAS dies but it isn't impossible.

edit:

Greatest combo. While a HTPC with a sufficiently large HDD will suffice, a htpc with a small SSD with the bare essentials (Linux, XBMC) that streams the movies from a NAS (by wire) is far cheaper, blazing fast and all-around awesome.
Click to expand...

I'll add a nas then. Is it possible that I stream to my htpc and laptop at the same time?
 
V

Valkyr Junkie

Member
FillerB said:
Whut? Synology formats the HDDs as EXT3\4 depending on the version.Aka the Linux-filesystem. Sure it makes it a tad annoying to directly mount the HDDs to a non-linux computer in case the NAS dies but it isn't impossible.
Click to expand...

What about their Hybrid RAID? Are there any distros that would be able to pull data off the cluster should the box fail? Although I guess that's a pretty universal problem with anything other than a dedicated RAID card.
 
F

FillerB

Member
Valkyr Junkie said:
What about their Hybrid RAID? Are there any distros that would be able to pull data off the cluster should the box fail? Although I guess that's a pretty universal problem with anything other than a dedicated RAID card.
Click to expand...

Ah.. Shit... Totally forgot about RAID as I'm at the moment running a setup with just 1 HDD. Disregard what I said, you're completely right.
 
K

kehs

Banned
Bboy AJ said:
bump. I'm looking to buy a NAS. It'll be used for streaming media in my apartment. Videos and pictures mostly. I would like a ton of space and an auto backup solution. I don't care about backing up my PC data, just the media on the NAS.

It'll be an OSX and Windows network. Wireless. I'd like to be able to manually download media on my Windows machine and have the NAS see it and copy it over to its storage.

I'm open to other solutions for what I'm trying to do.

It's now mid 2012. I wondered if there were any significant updates to the info in this thread. Please point me in the right direction. Thanks!
Click to expand...

You don't need to worry about "syncing" data from your computer to a NAS, just map the share as a network drive and save directly to it.

Nearly all NASes support Windows/Mac/Linux without much setup.

I'm still recommending Netgear's ReadyNAS and Synology. They have everything from $300 up to the thousands. With and without disks. Though I recommend you follow their compatibility list very stringently.

FillerB said:
Whut? Synology formats the HDDs as EXT3\4 depending on the version.Aka the Linux-filesystem. Sure it makes it a tad annoying to directly mount the HDDs to a non-linux computer in case the NAS dies but it isn't impossible.
Click to expand...

I had to do this when my NAS got power surged to death (sidenote: get a surge protector!), and the easiest way is to just load up Ubuntu on a USB drive and read the data that way.

Valkyr Junkie said:
What about their Hybrid RAID? Are there any distros that would be able to pull data off the cluster should the box fail? Although I guess that's a pretty universal problem with anything other than a dedicated RAID card.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure about Synology but Readynas use an underlying ext partition setup under their Flex-RAID setup so the data is still accessible (only in mirrored mode though).

TurkishEmperor said:
Damn nas prices are insane, 4 bay nas +500 euros wtf?
Click to expand...

Price is a pittance after you lose important data just once.
 
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