NAS Devices

Russ77

Russ77

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Russ
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OK, I know my way around a PC/Laptop/Network etc but NAS is something that's completely new to me.

Current situation is as follows:

Laptop with 500GB HDD (approx 60GB free-space)

1TB portable HDD with a full copy of image library (approx 750GB free... it's new :lol: )

Old Dell Desktop being used (loosely) as a media centre with two 1TB ext HDDs attached (these contain movies & music and full back ups of all my images). It has windows XP installed and I run iTunes/WMP on it.

Been toying with the idea of a NAS device (something like this http://www.maplin.co.uk/4tb-seagate-blackarmor-nas220-591604 for a while with the theory being that I will still work with my images on my laptop but maybe only have the last year or so of my collection on it (as opposed to the entire 10+ year collection :lol: )

All of my movies, music and photos are stored on the NAS (run the NAS as RAID1) and my photos are periodically copied to the 1TB portable drive which would be stored away from my flat.

Current data volumes are (roughly) 500-700GB movies, 200-250GB music, 250-300GB photos so worst case is 1.3TB. I know that running in RAID1 only give me effectively 2TB storage (if I've understood RAID correctly) but I may only copy over some of my music & movies and leave the rest on the ext HDDs.

Any thoughts and/or suggestions as to whether this sounds like a viable storage setup would be appreciated. Also, would I need any other "skills" to set up the device itself?

Cheers

Russ
 
neil_g said:
yeah as long as youre not using it as a single point of storage thats fine.

shouldnt need any specific skills, just follow the setup prompts :)
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Cheers Neil.

Just to add that photography isn't my living, it's purely a hooby but having said that, there are 10 odd years of family memories which are priceless......
 
Just to reinforce the point... a raid array should be thought of as a single storage not the original plus a copy. If the controller goes wrong as it did on my NAS unit then both (or more) healthy drives can become unreadable.

Setting up isn't that hard. You do it all via a web page interface. It seems to me if all you want is network shares that computers can access you don't need much processing power in the NAS unit.
If you want the NAS to run media servers so you can browse it with a player program and be presented with a library type view then you do need some go in it. I'd have thought something of the level you linked to would do it OK.
 
RobertP said:
Just to reinforce the point... a raid array should be thought of as a single storage not the original plus a copy. If the controller goes wrong as it did on my NAS unit then both (or more) healthy drives can become unreadable.

Setting up isn't that hard. You do it all via a web page interface. It seems to me if all you want is network shares that computers can access you don't need much processing power in the NAS unit.
If you want the NAS to run media servers so you can browse it with a player program and be presented with a library type view then you do need some go in it. I'd have thought something of the level you linked to would do it OK.
Click to expand...

Thanks Robert.

So for a more robust backup solution, it might be best to still use the 1TB drives I have to take copies of the files on the NAS unit periodically? (say one for music and one movies?)

That way the data is stored in more than one physical location.
 
I have just got one of these, http://www.ebuyer.com/247319-synolo...pid=8&tmad=c&gclid=CKexsaXQ5q0CFaEntAodbQv7VA

With a 2TB drive. They seem to be feature packed and the support via the forum is good with lots of 3rd party's developing apps for them.

I have only just scratched the surface of what it can do. I find the USB backup option so handy, plug a USB device in hit the button and it creates a folder and copies everything from the device to it. When the green light has stopped flashing you know it is done.
Its also good for movie and music streaming to my blu-ray player and Xbox.
I need to spend some more time exploring all the other features.

When I was reading reviews Synology and Qnap come out top.
 
neil_g said:
My synology certainly wees all over my old netgear
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The cheek of the netgear is the yearly fee for remote access after the first year.
 
jezgb said:
I have a QNAP and I'm very impressed both with it and the support from QNAP. (I had a small issue...)
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I can second Synology and QNAP [pretty similar is design and OS]. Both work well and are pretty straight forward to setup.
I had an issue with a Synology box and found their support to be pretty good
 
synology support is great, theyll remote diagnose/repair your box if you open a couple of router ports.

RMA process is good too after my slot 5 started putting out IO errors, got a nice new unit rather than a mouldy old refurb from netgear.
 
The Synology boxes look interesting........ Although I can't help thinking a lot of the functionality they offer would be duplicated with my media centre PC.

The PC is connected to my TV and Home Theatre set up so I can watch movies/listen to music. Looking at these units I'm guessing media playback is via a web browser type app on a laptop/PC which would still need connecting to the TV/AV amp?
 
I currently have my old slow NAS unit with music on it and Twonky server running.

I can open say windows media player on a laptop, go to library, other libraries and the twonky server with all its media listed by artist, album etc is there just like music on the laptop would be. no importing or adding to library needed.
having chosen what I want to play I can right click it and 'play to' my AV amp via DLNA and listen to the music.

The old NAS unit just about copes with this so something more powerful would be needed to even think about doing the same with video...but it works.
 
Russ77 said:
The Synology boxes look interesting........ Although I can't help thinking a lot of the functionality they offer would be duplicated with my media centre PC.

The PC is connected to my TV and Home Theatre set up so I can watch movies/listen to music. Looking at these units I'm guessing media playback is via a web browser type app on a laptop/PC which would still need connecting to the TV/AV amp?
Click to expand...

i dont use half the features on mine, i have DNLA enabled for streaming FLAC to my iPad otherwise its just a straight file sharing box. they are good performing boxes though compared to some other makes.

you can use the audio station web frontend if you want, id just use it as a share personally. unless you have airplay devices you can access it with.
 
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Don't have a NAS here (unless you call a fileserver with an AMD quad core a NAS) - not sure what I'd do if I were starting again - I have 8 disks in my "NAS" and that sounds like it could be expensive if I went the route of prebuilt system. For media streaming I use xbmc and Intel Atom/Nvidia ION based boards running Linux. Everything is mapped from the server via shares. I don't like DLNA systems - think they are more trouble than they are worth.

Just ordered my third box last night - completely silent Shuttle unit (fanless CPU/GFX with SSD) for the bedroom :) If it works nicely wireless, I can see myself treating the bedroom to a cheap 42" Panny plasma to replace the awful LCD we have in there :)
 
neil_g said:
synology support is great, theyll remote diagnose/repair your box if you open a couple of router ports.

RMA process is good too after my slot 5 started putting out IO errors, got a nice new unit rather than a mouldy old refurb from netgear.
Click to expand...


Yes - that's what QNAP do too. Very impressive turn-around time on queries as well. I don't think I ever waited more than five minutes for a reply to emails.
 
Liking all the suggestions/ideas here.

Just to clarify..... I suppose my media centre PC and ext HDDs attached to it are kinda doing the job of a NAS device.

The only drawback being the PC has to be on to access the files on the HDDs and I don't have full back ups of all my data.

The PC is old and noisy so I only turn it on if I want to listen to music, watch films or back up my data. Moving files wirelessly from my laptop to my PC/ext HDD is a slow and painful exercise and I believe this isn't helped by having different O/Ss on the two machines.

By having proper NAS, the device will always be available without me having to turn it on/off all of the time (or that's how I assume it'd work?)

As far as streaming media is concerned, I did try this using my PS3 but found the sound quality suffered a little so gave up on that idea and went for a physical connection between PC and Amp.
 
Russ77 said:
By having proper NAS, the device will always be available without me having to turn it on/off all of the time (or that's how I assume it'd work?)
Click to expand...

Yes, or like me you can set up up to switch on and off when you want. Mine comes on at 7am till 9am when I leave for work then on at 7pm till midnight when ill be using it in the evening.

The advantages to these systems is there much smaller and use a lot less power than running a media PC.
 
Thanks Dean and Neil! That info is making the decision a little easier ;)

Fingers crossed for this year's bonus :lol:
 
DpM said:
The cheek of the netgear is the yearly fee for remote access after the first year.
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Which Netgear NAS did you have? I have two ReadyNAS NVX and am not aware of any fee for the remote application at all. I may have overlooked it, but are you sure?

I would also add that the NVX is a fantastic machine in my opinion. I had an old NV+, which had a painfully slow interface, but was ok. Then I sold it and bought the replacement 4 bay model, the NVX. And then another to back it up.

I find them simple to setup, feature packed and fast.

I would highly recommend one of the four bay models over the two as they are rather quicker when fully populated (expensive at this time though).

Qnap, Synology and Netgear all have great model choice. Compare the features and price to see which suits you best. I doubt you will be disappointed with any of them, provided you avoid the very cheapest.
 
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