NAS Setup
iDirtyPenguin
Posts: 327 Forum Member
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Folks
Looking to invest in a half decent NAS setup to share my films, music and photos throughout the house so parents and friends can access it via Laptop/PC and possibly iPads.
Can anyone recommend any half decent NAS?
I currently have 4/5 HDD sitting about the house and now looking to have them in one central unit.
any help/info/advice would be much appreciated.
Looking to invest in a half decent NAS setup to share my films, music and photos throughout the house so parents and friends can access it via Laptop/PC and possibly iPads.
Can anyone recommend any half decent NAS?
I currently have 4/5 HDD sitting about the house and now looking to have them in one central unit.
any help/info/advice would be much appreciated.
0
Comments
or would 2 suffice and copy between drives and consolidate 5 into 2
Aside from that if you want that many drives then an old PC is a good option. Dedicated NAS drive for that many disks is going to set you back a £300 at least.
Even 2 bays would be fine. As one of the HDD is 4TB and the rest are all 2TB.
I've seen a few on Amazon, I don't want to fork out stupid money. I have the router beside my PC, so I'm thinking:-
Router -> PC -> NAS -> <- Other users can access the NAS via internet as long as they are logged into the same network as the main PC or essentially the home internet? Or via the NAS web interface?
Or is it a little more complicated than that?
Are you thinking of plugging the NAS into the PC or what exactly? The much more common method would be to plug the NAS into the router. That way it is available to all devices on the same internal network (not really a home internet by the way
The whole point of a NAS system is that it is independent of any PC and has it's own operating system to control access and dole out files to users.
There are various ways of accessing the files on the NAS. A simple way is to "map" the NAS drives to drive letters on each user's PC. That way they are accessible to any application in much the same way as files on the local PC the application is running on. You just point the application at drive G rather than drive C for example.
What total capacity are you looking at? Your options and costs are going to be different depending on the storage size.
I'm a big fan of the Synology NAS devices. They aren't the cheapest but the functionality is fantastic. I currently have a 2x2TB drive system which is now getting full so I need to decide whether to get a bigger one or delete some stuff.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-4TB-Cloud-Personal-Storage/dp/B00FOKN7D8/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1412609373&sr=1-1
Very good NAS drive, I run my Sonos system off it. It's also so convenient being able to access it anywhere in the world
and raid technically is not a backup option its more of a 'we can limp on till you get it fixed and slap in a new drive' option
Switched on 24/7 that would cost £200 a year to run, where as a dedicated NAS box would cost only a fraction of that.
2 bay synology uses under 10w idle and around 20w under load
Microserver around 30w idle and 50w under load
You can build a low power PC that can still transcode that will use under 50w idle and 70w to 80w under load.
Yes know, it was in response to a suggestion of using 'an old pc'
My prediciment, old PC - free, Synology Play version £300 ish?, Microserver £130
I know, I was just giving you some data to help work out the cost.
Forgot to mention, Another great advantage of Microserver is that you can install XBMC on it, plus add £20 ATI 5450HD card and hook it up directly to your TV to turn your TV into a really smart TV.
I had an Iomega drive, which went bang so I bit the bullet and got a Synology drive and I have never regretted it - it is fantastic and the user interface is wonderful. Everything in my house talks to it with no issues.