I think this is literally the 3rd thread I've made about this but with recent additions to the family and rearranging of computer rooms we're going to be in need of a NAS box to stream videos to the lounge room. I'm not after a massive one, 2TB is probably heaps, I just want something good quality, reliable and easy on the pocket.
i suppose if you want a consumer product something like a Drobo or something in the Synology series would be the best (and probably most expensive, but justified by quality of product) choices you could make.
or the hot potato among the geeks at the moment is the Proliant little NAS box that might.
lower down the vertical you come to the Netgear / DLink / etcetera
I'm currently doing some research on the case at the moment, I was under the impression 4 or so years ago PoE was shit, please correct me if I'm wrong and that's not that case as PoE would solve quite a few networking issues we currently have.
Get yourself a HP Microserver. If you ring HP direct, they have a 'special offer' on it for $199, including shipping. If they quote you $599, try, try again :P
Those options recommended look a bit too hard core for my needs, both in price and functionality. I just want plug and play HDD, not interested in backups or RAID, it's just for storing and streaming TV and music.
I don't fully understand why so many people are grabbing NAS boxen.
I have a simple, quiet, dual-core xbmc box next to my TV with an 802.11n wireless stick. It streams from my main (download+games) PC over wifi - average speed of 10-15MB/s which is already overkill for 1080p. For situations where I have an insane amount of media on more drives than I have bays on my main PC, I use a good-quality SATA tray ($25), and use AHCI ejection so I can swap drives over at any time. The wireless connection is fast enough that I even do automated incremental backups over wifi daily to the xbmc box.
Are NAS boxen mainly used when you don't want your main/download box on all the time? If someone could explain this to me, that would be great.
I've got a TPLink 200mbps ethernet over power setup running at home. It's pretty good considering the intertubes are only ~18mbps.
NAS boxes are good when you want everything online at once. Imagine sitting on the couch all comfy under your snuggie or some shit and you think "hmmm, now I'd like to watch x. oh shit, it's on another disk! oh well cbf getting up and replacing." it's about as annoying as having all your media on dvd.
NAS boxes are good when you want everything online at once. Imagine sitting on the couch all comfy under your snuggie or some shit and you think "hmmm, now I'd like to watch x. oh shit, it's on another disk! oh well cbf getting up and replacing." it's about as annoying as having all your media on dvd.
I'm not sure I follow. I have two hotswap trays on my main PC solely for streaming/storage media to other boxen. How does your average (expensive or slow, take a pick) NAS with the same number of bays benefit over this cheap setup?
If it's about having your main PC off most of the day I can understand. But most threads I read about NASs is that people seem to get them just for the hell of it?
you can get 3Tb WD Book Lives for $300 and they're plug and play.
I don't fully understand why so many people are grabbing NAS boxen.
because we have 2 PCs, 2 TVs, a beyonwiz and an xbox, all of which are capable of streaming TVs to them over the network. we currently duplicate our music library on 2 machines so we can access them and if my wife wants to watch something over the network she has to turn on and wait for my machine to boot up before she can watch anything. A NAS boxes removes the need for us to replicate data on our network and give us an instantly accessible library of content from any outlet on the network.
Yeah that's what I was keen to know, I don't wanna have to fuck around with setting a NAS box up, I just wanna get something with HDDs in it or get one that I can just throw HDDs without hassle.
Someone recommend something called a readyNAS from netgear that appears on the surface to do that, as well as having the option to access the NAS box over the internet somehow.
you can get 3Tb WD Book Lives for $300 and they're plug and play.
for $88 more you can get a full computer with a 3TB drive and a 250GB drive (the HP Microserver)
You can install windows or linux on it, it can be your media PC if you want it to be.
HP Microserver = $199
3TB Hitach Drive = $189
Total = $388
just install a livecd like ubuntu and be done with it
the point of the exercise is all the extra grunt you get out of the machine rather than having the ability to use it as a desktop
qnaps and a like dont offer you anything more than just storage (occasionally you'll get a bittorrent client etc)
they dont offer the same kinda read & write speeds you'll get out of the HP either
But that's my point, I only want storage. The only other piece of tech I might find slightly beneficial is the access via the internet thing that readyNAS box has. I'm pretty much coming at it from a consumer level rather than enthusiast.
Chiming in with a hands-off option, mate of mine just got a Thecus n5200xxx for $709. Seems a good balance between capacity and capability. (plus drives but hey, they're cheap)
@parabol: we have a NAS for storing media to stream but also for our digi photos and normal saved documents and stuff. It's RAID-1 (mirror) so it has redundancy to protect the photos (which are occasionally backed up) whereas our desktop PC's just have single HDDs and we assume can die at anytime. Just keeps things centralised so we can both access photos or whatever when we need.
WetWired, if you want my suggestion (at the expense of the other guys about to laugh at me) go for a Netgear ReadyNAS or similar. Cheaper option, still reasonable features in the back-end to let you play around a bit. I have a ReadyNAS NV+ and have been very happy with it.
I'd like to get that HP but I need something idiot proof :S
Can you burn a CD? if the answer is yes, you can install linux.
Download "Ubuntu LIve CD", burn it and chuck it in, reboot, let it load up, then click "install"
voila
@WetWired fair enough, however unless you are going to do something like the WD Live (network ready hdd cady basically) you're going to be paying more for less
Those WD things are good, but they're pretty expensive for what you get
You could just buy one (or two if you wanted redundancy) of these
OK going to buy a video card for mine today teq head
1080 HDMI what should I get
We should have a sticky thread called 'Ask teq tech'
I actually realised how I can make my own sticky threads on this forum by accident. Have been waiting for something good to make one just to demonstrate my h4X0r prowess. trog would just smite it with his infinite fury though.
I think this is literally the 3rd thread I've made about this but with recent additions to the family and rearrangement of priorities we're going to be in need of a Sand box to keep the kids out of the lounge room. I'm not after a massive one, 2x4 is probably heaps, I just want something good quality, reliable and easy on the pocket.
for $88 more you can get a full computer with a 3TB drive and a 250GB drive (the HP Microserver)
You can install windows or linux on it, it can be your media PC if you want it to be.
Not anymore Teq, best I can figure the 'uber microserver deal' is all done and dusted... unless you bought a few spares :P
as I've stated earlier... monthly pay sucks the big one.
(I'm all ears if someone else has found somewhere to buy a 'HP Proliant MicroServer' for ~$200)
I think I'm leaning towards one of these geezers now, with 2x 2TB drives is $380 for 4Tb (I wouldn't be needing RAID). Looks easy to set up but it seems to have some other options if I wanted to play around with it.
no idea jmr, i have a mac mini for my media box pc
I would just buy the cheapest pci-e card w/ hardware decoding and fits inside the enclosure
i dont imagine you would need to spend more than $80 to fulfill this requirement though
i've got 2 of the usb 3.0 versions and their usb 3.0 card, having a similar issue
we are having some problems when trying to copy HUGE amounts of data to the drives in one hit, the drives are overheating
ie transfer 3TB to a blank (brand new) drive and it would stop all the time, a quick refresh of the destination and source directories got it going again, but what a PITA
I dont think it's the enclosure though, because I dont have the same problem with different drives (WD 2TB Black drives)
I think a simple fan blowing on the drive would solve the problem, but it would clutter up the caddy a bit
someone will figure out a way to incorporate a nice fan soon enough
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