NAS (Network attached storage) help

[pepitko]

I'd like to hear some advice on NAS. I'm thinking of getting one for my home network, in which I have a PC laptop, a MacBook Pro (on its way), desktop PC, two iPhones and an xbox 360. So having all tv shows, movies, music, in one place and accessible from anything is really what I'm looking for.

I already have two 2.5'' USB2 external HDDs, 160GB and 500GB, both are 90% full, and they don't want to work when plugged into my ASUS router (WL-500g premium) by USB.

I don't want spend too much money on a "professional" solution like the very cool but expensive Drobo NAS, so instead I'm thinking $200-400 should do the trick.

From what I've researched so far this looks good:
1) D-Link DNS-320 - 2 arrays, has iTunes server, Upnp, etc. into which I would slot in two WD Caviar Green 2TB drives (what drives would you suggest for NAS? I've read somewhere that "greenline" drives are not recommended?) or
2) Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220 (but only 2TB as 4TB gets quite pricey), but I've read people have problems to stream videos on xbox with the Blackarmor drives, which would pretty much ruin one of the biggest selling points for me.

What do you guys think? What are your solutions?
Thanks for all comments and suggestions .

 

[prizrak]

The first question you need to ask yourself is do you want expandability? If you think that you will be content with just the 2 TB for a while then go with that. If you think you might want more storage soon then I would suggest looking into something with more bays. Also keep in mind that in some cases it is not easy to add more drives to the NAS because of some internal limitations.

Now as far as the Greens go you have to ask yourself what set up you want to use. It looks like you are looking more into capacity than reliability so I am assuming you would want to run a RAID 0 or a JBOD. Now a JBOD has some advantages over RAID, mainly the fact that you can use different sized drives with it. Some of the drawback is that you get no performance boost (depending on your network speed might not matter) and in the case of my enclosure it doesn't look like I can add more drives after the original JBOD was set up. RAID 0 will allow you to add drives later but you will have to use same size drives for it. I have heard of Greens timing out of the array but I have no first hand experience to base advice on. WD themselves recommend Black series for RAID configurations. If you are running them as separate drives it makes no difference at all, Greens will use slightly less power.

For specific enclosures I suggest you look at the reviews on Newegg.com, they have a fairly large geek base so there tend to be a good number of reviews from people who know what they are talking about. I believe that Viper built a NAS using a 4 bay enclosure and 4 drives for under $600, maybe he will poke his head in here and give you his experience with the box he chose (if not bug him on the PM ) You could go with 2 drives instead of 4, which should bring the price to where you want it.

I tend to shy away from embedded solutions that advertise a large number of features. It's nice to have a million and a half things that the NAS can do but more often then not I find that the hardware they put in is just not up to snuff.

If expandability is a priority for you then I would suggest setting up a desktop as a NAS. You generally wouldn't need much power and most mid tower cases can hold 4-5 drives. You can run FreeNAS on it for the OS and that would give you a boatload of features including a torrent client.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THE WORLD DO NOT USE THE 360 FOR VIDEO STREAMING!!! IT SUX HUGE AMOUNTS OF DONKEY NUTS!!! I used to use it myself and it was terrible, half the time it doesn't see the shares, it cannot recognize files with an .mp4 extension despite them being SPECIFICALLY encoded for it. It a supports a very limited range of formats and not all of them well. For instance I had it play a file one day and not another day, it was the same file. For it to be even somewhat bearable you would have to use some sort of a streaming server that knows how to talk to a 360 and even then its a hit or miss.

If streaming media to your TV from the network is a priority I would highly recommend picking up a WD Live TV Plus or similar, it's basically a small box that understands a million formats and plugs right into your TV. I had replaced my HTPC with it recently and couldn't be happier. They are around $100 here, you might be able to find a used one for cheaper or a cheaper device altogether in your neck of the woods. If it's not a high priority then I suggest encoding files as h.264 in an .AVI container so that 360 can pick it up.

 

[Hidden_Hunter]

Never had an issue with media sharing on my 360,

I run a UPNP media server on my router, as well as a torrent client and my nas connected. Works brilliantly

 

[prizrak]

Never had an issue with media sharing on my 360,

I run a UPNP media server on my router, as well as a torrent client and my nas connected. Works brilliantly

The issue is not sharing media to it the issue is the limited amount of support.

 

[ESPNSTI]

I personally have one of these, absolutely love it:

QNAP TS-509 Pro

Tons of features, never had a problem with it, and it runs linux so you can customize it.
For example, I added a different torrent client, played around with i2p and recently added an rtmp stream download program.
I expanded from four drives to five at one point and that went pretty smooth.

For around $400, you should be able to find a four bay I think.

 

[Matt2000]

I use my X360 for media streaming and yes, having to convert everything to h.264 is a right royal pain in the arse, but since everything I get from iPlayer is in that format already along with most of the videos I get from elsewhere it doesn't affect me too much. MKVs get fed through GOTSent and come out as shiny MP4s...

...Unless they are 1080p, because my wireless network can't handle it. As of last week it's struggling with 720p too, but I'm suspecting that's more to do with my crippled router.

Anyway as far as NAS boxes go I'm torn, I've had one for two and a half years and it's been great, apart from the time when a disk crashed and I lost everything. It currently has 2 x 1TB disks in RAID1, my attempt to stop history repeating itself. I'll be swapping to a RAID0 soon to try and coax a bit more speed out of it and because I now have a backup drive for it in my machine.

They are excellent if you want something to just leave on and ignore, but if you're really serious I would build a mini media server using an old machine and some free Linux server software. The features on most of these NAS boxes are limited and you'll probably find that you can't fine tune it as much as you want, no trouble with a dedicated server. Backing up would also be much easier, it would probably be more reliable and I don't doubt it would be cheaper.

I apologise if I'm rambling, I should be in bed now but I spotted this and wanted to share my experience with these things.

 

[prizrak]

Also you didn't specify if your price was total or just the NAS itself.

 

[Dr_Grip]

I have several Synology DS209 in use at friend's places, they all work great.

Regarding hard disks: Use hard disks that are explicitly certified for 24/7 or server operation.

 

[pepitko]

Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions. With the budget, I was originally hoping to get to around $400 including two HDDs, now considering the fact that I will have to get more expensive HDDs, which are intended to for RAID use, I will probably have to increase that budget. I think I'll be more than happy with 2-4TB of total storage space, so if I got a 2 array drive with 2x 2TB HDDs I would use RAID1 to have some safety over the data.

I agree that the 360 has a limited support in video streaming, especially having to convert mkv files is a pain in the ass. So what about something like the QNAP NMP-1000P? It's a bit more expensive, but it combines a media box and a NAS with potentionally up to 2TB of network storage, but I'm not sure whether it will be able to do iTunes server. I also was thinking about a HTPC, but I don't really have a space for it in the living room and to use it for NAS as well would drive up my power bills.

The Synology drives look great, a bit on the expensive side but very fast, this will certainly be an interesting option. Speed seems to be the problem of the D-Link DNS-320, expertreviews.co.uk says it "wrote large files at 13.4MB/s and read them back at 11.8MB/s. Smaller files were even slower, writing at just 8.1MB/s and reading at 10.2MB/s."

 

[prizrak]

I agree that the 360 has a limited support in video streaming, especially having to convert mkv files is a pain in the ass. So what about something like the QNAP NMP-1000P? It's a bit more expensive, but it combines a media box and a NAS with potentionally up to 2TB of network storage, but I'm not sure whether it will be able to do iTunes server. I also was thinking about a HTPC, but I don't really have a space for it in the living room and to use it for NAS as well would drive up my power bills.

No experience with one of those.

Depending on how you wanna rig it up you could get a WD Live TV or WD Live Hub (has internal 1TB drive) both can share media over the network and have support for USB drives (also shared) as well as play them to your TV. This way you could get a USB enclosure that supports RAID or just a big external drive and plug it right in. There are going to be performance trade offs though I think.

Speed seems to be the problem of the D-Link DNS-320, expertreviews.co.uk says it "wrote large files at 13.4MB/s and read them back at 11.8MB/s. Smaller files were even slower, writing at just 8.1MB/s and reading at 10.2MB/s.

This is more or less same problem as consumer grade routers, the internal components are on the cheap side and just can't handle the throughput. You will only notice this if you are on gigabit though as 12MB/s is the practical limit of 100mbit.

 

[pepitko]

Depending on how you wanna rig it up you could get a WD Live TV or WD Live Hub (has internal 1TB drive) both can share media over the network and have support for USB drives (also shared) as well as play them to your TV. This way you could get a USB enclosure that supports RAID or just a big external drive and plug it right in. There are going to be performance trade offs though I think.

This is more or less same problem as consumer grade routers, the internal components are on the cheap side and just can't handle the throughput. You will only notice this if you are on gigabit though as 12MB/s is the practical limit of 100mbit.

I am a bit afraid of USB2 being slow, which is why I am considering NAS, which I would put on a gigabit LAN. My apartment has LAN wall sockets in all rooms, so I would only need to get a gigabit LAN switch, which is only like $30. In my ideal scenario, I would download a video to my MBP and then push it through LAN to NAS, so the higher speed would be a plus. That being said, the WD Live Hub looks good, I'll have to give it a thought and read some reviews.

Actually, my search for NAS started with a search for a Thunderbolt external HDD, but as none are currently being sold and if I could get a speedy NAS instead I wouldn't need one at all. Also I wouldn't need a large HDD for the MBP, so I could replace the HDD with a smaller and faster SSD . Btw, in the end I ordered the 2.2GHz 15'' MBP with the stock screen and the 750GB 5.4k HDD. Originally I thought that my work colleague would bring one over from NYC, but that didn't work out so I had to order one over here and they charge huge mark-ups for BTO MBPs and it takes ages for them to be delivered. So possibly, I could rip out the 750GB put it into a USB enclosure and plug it into NAS or WD Live for additional storage.

So many options...

 

[ESPNSTI]

I'm not familiar with the QNAP NMP-1000P either.

Personally, I decided to go with separate NAS and media player boxes as opposed to a combination one.
I bought a NAS box first and had plans to add a media player box, but I found that I just ended up using my main PC instead.

I have my main PC in one room and my TV in another, but I have a DVI to HDMI cable running between them (I ran it through the basement).
In the TV room I have a wireless keyboard with a trackpad and I have X10 devices in order to turn the PC on or off.
By using hibernate rather than shutdown in Windows, it doesn't take long for it to start up.

I used to use PS3 for streaming, but that was pretty awful compared to using the PC.
With Windows Media Center and Media Browser, it's a pretty good experience.

 

[TechZ]

I'm a ReadyNAS person, convinced Viper to get one too and I doubt he's got any complaints so far. 330$ for the ReadyNAS NV+ 4bay model.

Alternatively the Synology DS411J 4bay model is also a very good buy.

All these have/use upnp+dlna, but just read before hand. I stream (basic shared folders) both my NASs on my gigabit network to a popcornhour player + a WDTV Live+ player.

 

[prizrak]

I am a bit afraid of USB2 being slow, which is why I am considering NAS, which I would put on a gigabit LAN. My apartment has LAN wall sockets in all rooms, so I would only need to get a gigabit LAN switch, which is only like $30. In my ideal scenario, I would download a video to my MBP and then push it through LAN to NAS, so the higher speed would be a plus. That being said, the WD Live Hub looks good, I'll have to give it a thought and read some reviews.

Actually, my search for NAS started with a search for a Thunderbolt external HDD, but as none are currently being sold and if I could get a speedy NAS instead I wouldn't need one at all. Also I wouldn't need a large HDD for the MBP, so I could replace the HDD with a smaller and faster SSD . Btw, in the end I ordered the 2.2GHz 15'' MBP with the stock screen and the 750GB 5.4k HDD. Originally I thought that my work colleague would bring one over from NYC, but that didn't work out so I had to order one over here and they charge huge mark-ups for BTO MBPs and it takes ages for them to be delivered. So possibly, I could rip out the 750GB put it into a USB enclosure and plug it into NAS or WD Live for additional storage.

So many options...

You should look for a NAS that has built in torrent client, this way it can do all the downloading w/o having to bother with running your PC for them.

Congrats on your MBP, I'm having lots of annoyance with mine, mainly the fact that Apple shipped me a wrong replacement and I'm waiting for ANOTHER one....

USB2 would be slower, your can expect transfer speeds of around 25MB/s or so, less for smaller files of course. Also there are some caveats as certain enclosures are really really bad at handling writes to the point where I had writes of under 1MB/s to SATA drives... As usual its a matter of reading reviews

I have my main PC in one room and my TV in another, but I have a DVI to HDMI cable running between them (I ran it through the basement).
In the TV room I have a wireless keyboard with a trackpad and I have X10 devices in order to turn the PC on or off.
By using hibernate rather than shutdown in Windows, it doesn't take long for it to start up.

I used to use PS3 for streaming, but that was pretty awful compared to using the PC.
With Windows Media Center and Media Browser, it's a pretty good experience.

Similar set up to my old one. Media Browser is indeed excellent however I wanted it to be controlled by my remote completely and with HTPC it was a bit of a pain. I do miss the info scrubbing from Media Browser though.

 

[Dr_Grip]

You should look for a NAS that has built in torrent client, this way it can do all the downloading w/o having to bother with running your PC for them.

The Synology can run Transmission

 

[prizrak]

The Synology can run Transmission

Yep was just reading about it. Personally based on hardware specs and features I would go for this one:
http://www.synology.com/us/products/DS411j/spec.php you can run a single 2TB in it and still be within your budget and get another one later. Reason why I would suggest more slots is because I know how quickly one runs out of room when downloading is involved Also it supports AFP and can be used as a Time Machine target drive so its always a plus

 

[ESPNSTI]

The Synology can run Transmission

That's what I'm currently using on my QNAP.
Apparently, uTorrent now has a headless linux version with web interface, I think I'll give that a try.

 

[Dr_Grip]

I'd always run RAID setups on NAS'es. Storage space is one thing, peace of mind is another.

 

[prizrak]

I'd always run RAID setups on NAS'es. Storage space is one thing, peace of mind is another.

That highly depends on how valuable w/e it is that you have is. Pretty much all my stuff is music/movies/tv shows. Out of that only music is something that would really suck to lose (but it's also the thing that is backed up in multiple places). The few important things I either have backed up to the cloud or over multiple machines. Also I have had one HDD failure in my entire life and I have HDDs that are like 9 years old and running all the time.

 

[pepitko]

I'm a ReadyNAS person, convinced Viper to get one too and I doubt he's got any complaints so far. 330$ for the ReadyNAS NV+ 4bay model.

I personally have one of these, absolutely love it:
QNAP TS-509 Pro

What HDDs are you guys using? Because from what I read and what Dr_Grip said, I should be using server/enterprise grade HDDs if I want RAID 1. And these HDDs are considerably more expensive and obviously you need two HDDs for the same space, so it ends up costing 4 times as much per GB/TB then a regular desktop HDD without RAID 1. To be more precise, when targeting 2TB of space I could get a WD20EARS HDD for like $120 or for RAID1 two WD RE4-GPs for $280 each. And when thinking about filling up a 4-5 array NAS with network grade HDDs the prices are starting to get scary.

That highly depends on how valuable w/e it is that you have is. Pretty much all my stuff is music/movies/tv shows. Out of that only music is something that would really suck to lose (but it's also the thing that is backed up in multiple places).

Same here, which is why I'm not that convinced about spending the extra cash for protection of RAID. This has me leaning towards a combined solution of NAS+media player such as the QNAP NMP-1000P. The model with 2TB of NAS space costs $670 over here, they even have a refurbished one for $435, which sounds like an excellent deal. I could potentially get a standalone NAS (like the DS411/211j you guys pointed out) later on when my budget recovers .