Confused in which route to go

[tommyboy70]

Hi

I have been using USB hard drives attached to 3 different media players and i know there has to be a better way.

Anyway i decided to try Streaming and used an old dual core PC and attached a 4 bay usb external hard drive and everything works good.

I see most people use a nas but was wondering what are the advantages over the way i am currently doing it

All i want to do is stream movies and nothing else, i don't need Raid and if a drive fails its no big deal

the media players are 2 PCH's and a Boxee Box

thanks

[accident]

Technically you just built your own nas with your test. You could go more low energy great for this usage hardware and drop your monthly costs, you can run more software on it, you can add more drives as needed.

Or you can go the nas appliance route where it's more set and forget. there's less to maintain except the files stored on the unit and this is really what most people are after. For example, I hated coming home from work to find out I needed to work another 4 hours just to fix up my home setup. I baught my first nas because I didn't want to deal with it. I paid extra money for a set and forget setup. Someone else deals with software updates, hardware design, I just put in drives and time to time click an update button.

It comes down to how much tinkering you want to do and what your willing or able to spend to do it. Some people don't mind it and like the savings over an appliance. Some people aren't technical enough to be comfortable doing it themselves. I just want to watch videos with my daughter and never have to say "sorry I need to fix this first, maybe we can watch that video tommorrow"

Now the big advantage over a PCH having your drives is speed. a nas is going to be much faster than the pch. Also the pch has more power to play your videos so generally it becomes a little more stable because it's not busy with extra work. Software you might be running on a nas will run faster and not get in the way of streaming on the nas. Sick/couch/headphones, torrents, etc.. they will work much better on the nas.

And your in the multiple player house setup. It gets to be a huge pain to maintain multiple rooms.

[tommyboy70]

thanks accident

great info

[accident]

side note, I recommend the raid. it's the cost of 1 extra drive, most nas appliances if you go that route handle what raid will work best for your drives installed (and will autochange it). The big advantage of raid is when a drive dies, all your files still work. The repair of a broken drive is just replace it before a second drive dies. That's it. nothing to tinker, no videos to get again, just pop the drive in and enjoy your videos while it's dead and while it fixes itself.

BTW, it might take some time but my house is 99% automatic now. My day is "what new tv shows start today" and "do I want to get an episode to watch it". the actual recording or transfering of the video is automatic, adding it to the jukebox is automatic, running any tools I might want to fix up certain videos just happens. I literally sit at the tv and my eversion tells me when something new is available to watch. this all happens on the nas.

time to time I'll clean up some things or check it all. maybe spend 10-15 hours a year doing that.

[WhiteVanMan]

Which brand/model would you recommend on a tight budget i heard the qnaps have a problem when nearly full, i was thinking the new synology ds413j what about you?

[tommyboy70]

accident Wrote:BTW, it might take some time but my house is 99% automatic now. My day is "what new tv shows start today" and "do I want to get an episode to watch it". the actual recording or transfering of the video is automatic, adding it to the jukebox is automatic, running any tools I might want to fix up certain videos just happens. I literally sit at the tv and my eversion tells me when something new is available to watch. this all happens on the nas.

that sounds awesome, i have been following eversion pretty much since its inception and would love to have my setup like that

[accident]

Look for a unit that supports different sized drives and is expandable for more slots in the future. It's all about being able to grow into it. today you'll put in your existing drives. in a year maybe a 4tb or larger if they exist drive. The cheapest way to do this is not save $1 today to spend $50 extra tommorrow.

Synology is the company offering both right now and they run really well. Even has a yamj plugin.

[WhiteVanMan]

Thanks for that accident i think i'll stick with the one i said and expand over usb (das) when i've researched what restrictions that will cause.

[aesalazar]

One question about running something like a raid 1 on a nas: If a drive fails does the nas have some way of notifying you? n other words, something like a ReadyNAS which I was considering - can it be configured to broadcast a message or send an email?

Thanks
Ernie

[accident]

Now your getting into part 2 of expanding it later. Make sure it'll expand the way you think. I'm 99% sure a usb drive added to a synology is standalone, meaning you'll need a second share and it won't join the internal drives into a large storage pool. Also USB drives in a nas will be slower to copy files. generally you see about 25MB transfer rates to them vs the 80 to 150MB internal drives do. Might not seem bad but when your talking 3 players trying to play videos on the same usb drive it' will stutter.

You have to think of how your going to use the files in a whole house setup. I have 12 test players I use with eversion and dentedboxes, I then have another 4 players used around the house. I never have stuttering.

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(09-09-2012 02:50 PM)aesalazar Wrote:  One question about running something like a raid 1 on a nas: If a drive fails does the nas have some way of notifying you? n other words, something like a ReadyNAS which I was considering - can it be configured to broadcast a message or send an email?

yes they can all notify you in several ways. email has been an option on all models I've tried.

I would recommend a synology over a readynas right now. 2 years ago I was saying the opposite. Synology really gets what people want and need in their house. I have had several readynas's and they run reliable, but they can be a little more limiting in expansion options. Also the people packaging plugins for it have become assholes and popular plugins you need to pay them money just to download their precompiled version to install...

There's also a couple gotcha's on the readynas diffrent sized drive support that synology dosn't have. for example if you want to add a 4tb drive later you can, but to use the extra space you need 2 of them. They also don't expand well meaning you can't add 5 or 10 extra slots later for a fraction of the cost of a new nas..

[chris57]

The thing about NAS devices is that you also want to buy it and make it last far longer than say a PC. My Synology is a CS407, so a 2007 basic model, and runs well to this day. It doesn't get any firmware updates any longer but it runs well and has no problem pushing our full Bluray rips etc. The equivalent of the DS413j, in fact its the same case but in black. The 413j has a faster cpu and memory over my CS407 and the benefit of more recent DSM software and firmware.

So spend a little extra if you can to get a decent make and then you'll get the extra years from it.

[tommyboy70]

is the DS413j a good unit or should i go the $600 route(don't think i want to go much more then that)

something from here

http://www.canadacomputers.com/advanced_...d=SYNOLOGY

[accident]

one thing I forgot..

GET A UPS BATTERY BACKUP. you don't need a mega model, but you want a model with support to connect the ups terminal cable to the nas. This will allow the ups to safely turn off an on with power problems in your neighrhood. It's an always on device and to have all your storage lost because of a $50US battery you skipped is avoidable. Not having one WILL cause problems with the storage. You'll probably post online how the device sucks, never use this model and the problem was a 1 second power outage that a ups would have prevented.

I personally get slightly larger models and also connect my router and wireless access point to it. I think I spent $110 for an apc model. In a power outage, my nas will remain on for about 30 minutes and I can grab the laptop or tablet and watch a video. After that it will turn off an my internet still works for another 8 hours before the batter is completely dead. Offers some battery powered device entertainment.

[WhiteVanMan]

Thanks chris57 i can't see me having >16tb in the next 5 years so on the reliability - got to be the main thing for me i've fryed too many hdds over the years - i'll take the budget friendly 413j Edit - i mean 12tb backed up raid 5 or shr

[accident]

This is exactly the mistake we all make. I didn't see needing that either. Funny thing about space, when you have it you stop deleting things just in case. Now I have 112TB of storage, about 2TB free and replace 1 or 2 broken drives a year. Took 10 years to get to that point, but the first nas took only 6 months to need a bigger one.

Look at willem, he's one of the users who is happy using the NMT as his nas and works well for him. He has something like 16 USB drives attached to it.