Anyone using a NAS for a media server?

[nick_simpson17]

Hello,

Was thinking of buying a NAS to run as media server for all my bits and bobs.

Just wondering if anyone had any experience with them?

Ideally I would like it to run 1080p through media player with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound through my surround sound system.

Any recommendations?

Cheers

Nick

[gooberling]

IMHO a professional NAS is a bit of overkill, noise, power consumption, etc. (I run a few at work... Aberdeens and Dells). I find that having a decent older machine that can function as server that can pool drives is great. Windows Home Server 2011 will do it with a plugin and Linux will do it via LVM natively.

I'm running mine (WHS 2011) on an old AMD chip with 2GB of ram and I have no problems streaming 1080p to my home theater setup.

[Artemis]

I'm not really sure where the concept of overkill comes in in power consumption on a standard 4 bay home NAS. They typically use between 40 & 70 watts of power, it is one of the main reasons for switching from a PC based server to a NAS, the power savings.

The NAS itself doesn't need to do any decoding, if you have a player on the network then this can handle the audio/video decoding. It doesn't even need to be a PC, you can use any of the common multimedia players like the AC Ryan Playon HD3, the Popcorn Hour, or the WD Live. The NAS itself will set itself up as an SMB share on the network, it will also work via DLNA, so other digital devices can share the content.

I don't want to sound like a sales brochure so ask some questions, but a NAS is an efficient way of storing a large amount of data.

[gooberling]

You're right Artemis, I'll admit when I hear NAS, in my head I think of the bigger enterprise one's that I'm used to dealing with that belong in a datacenter. I completely forgot about the consumer grade stuff that is out there. Of course one of those would work and would certainly use less power than a PC.

[ocubillo]

HP NL54 microserver can be a good reliable NAS.

You can use FreeNAS on it.

[dcipha]

I have a Synology DiskStation DS413. I stream 1080p MKV's to my TV using the Western Digital TV Live Plus.

[stsigoun]

I have used Freenas in the past and found it very reliable and easy to use and set up. Actually learned alot about data redundancy and different types of RAID. My system was using an Intel Atom CPU with two mirrored 2TB sata hdds.

[StriderDADDY]

Synology http://www.synology.com or Drobos http://www.drobo.com/ are good if you just want something that is easy to use and powerful.

[tigerknee]

Custom build NAS running Ubuntu.

[fafner]

Custum build FreeBSD box with Plex Media Server running on top

[maxxim00]

Netgear ReadyNAS has worked great for me. Runs the plex server great. Then you pair it with a $99 Roku 3 you can stream your entire digital movie collection to any tv in your house without ever needing a pc. Its the simplest and cheapest method I have found to play mp4, mkv's...etc on your tv at 1080p 5.1 surround without needing a fancy computer hard wired to your tv.

[maxxie]

i would be looking for a used hp proliant microserver a la this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8tngCNaeSE
HP ProLiant MicroServer

[Artemis]

Since the original poster asked about a NAS box why is virtually every reply not about a NAS box? The only advantage you have in using a computer is that you can retask older hardware for this purpose. But then if you are running on this kind of a budget the other part of the scenario is to retask older hard drives into a JBOD array and then run an appliance OS like FreeNAS.

Now while this approach is cheap, there are disadvantages. The first and major disadvantage is power. You now have a PC running 24/7 and since it is running a RAID array it will be running under an active power profile, so the power consumption here is quite large. In order to run a RAID array efficiently there should be a decent power reserve so a fairly large power supply is needed for reliable operation, therefore the power usage is high.

The next VERY common problem/stumbling block is that often mismatched drives are used in a JBOD array. Now by mismatched I mean in terms of the drives rotational speed and very importantly design type. You see all hard drives are not created equal, drives are designed for different usage roles and sold at different price points to reflect that. One of the most common mismatches is the use of WD Caviar Green drives in an array especially in JBOD mode with some drives staying active while the Green drives going into power save and park the heads. This mismatching causes lags in the array and will eventually cause the array to either stop functioning or if the mismatch is too great the array will simply fall over. Now using an appliance OS like FreeNAS only gives you limited ability to physically control the RAID array and if you are retasking a PC for the purpose rather than a purpose built server machine, then once again the ability to control the array in the BIOS will be limited.

The safest way to avoid this is to use matching drives in a RAID 5 array rather than JBOD. I am taking that posters in this thread at least understand RAID technology rather than explain RAID levels. My personal recommendation are the Western Digital RED drives. These are purpose built NAS hard drives designed for high availability and usage.

The advantage of running a NAS box from one of the major vendors like QNap, Synology, Netgear or even ASUS with their new ASUStor line of NAS boxes is that they have a very small energy footprint, typically a four bay NAS box will use between 40-70 watts of power, a fraction of that required to run a PC doing the same job. The physical footprint of these NAS boxes is very small too, making them convenient to place out of the way since once running, in theory there is no real reason to go back to the device again.

The dedicated OS that comes with these devices too gives you functionality that you will not find in a PC running FreeNAS, although this functionality varies by vendor, I have configured devices from QNap, Synology and Netgear and find the functionality broadly similar. With cloudbased administration you can even monitor/administer the NAS box from a mobile phone/mobile device and of course access data remotely.

For the purpose of this thread, the enquiry was about a media server which a NAS box will do easily, they all have CIFS/SMB clients as well as DLNA integration, making them visible to virtually any digital device on the local network, but there are also other advantages/uses. The other major one being backup. With a separate NAS box with RAID5 redundancy there is far less likelihood of data loss, providing that backups are scheduled regularly.

[Kaesebroetchen]

I got a Zyxel NSA325 and am pretty happy with it.
It's relatively cheap and you can install custom packages onto it.
For me it's running SABnzbd, Couchpotato, Sickbeard and a few other services, as well as media streaming without an issue.

[Niels]

I use a low-entry Synology for storage and a Raspberry Pi B running XBMC. No problem so far.

[Mumei]

I have a NAS that I have used as a fileserver for years, and a couple of years ago, I upgraded the software and got a media server - this got me thinking.

I used to just use my playstation as a media server and connect to the NAS and stream it all that way, but I got annoyed having to convert MKV files.

the NAS was fine, but not ideal, now I use a Raspberry Pi - it's a much better media server (XBMC rocks, and RaspBMC or OpenELEC are so easy to use) - the pi allows phone remotes, bluetooth remotes, I also have a little touch screen monitor that acts as the media controller - all of this was easy to setup and so cheap (you can just plug as many external hard drives into the pi as you like - I have a 5 quid powered usb hub that has 2 drives hanging off it, and it still connects to my NAS

[shara2011]

Still sometimes using FreeNAS server that was build like 3 years ago.

[oldn07]

I use a QNAP NAS which apart from the external PSU going tits up just before Christmas has performed without a hitch for over 3 years, no disc errors or file corruption and streams full HD without issues to a Mede8er box.

[chrash]

I've got a D-Link DNS-320 which I bunged a couple of 2tb wd drives in as RAID 1. Works well, pretty cheap and has never let me down in the 2 years or so I've had it BUT the fan on it is very noisy and I haven't found an easy way to swap the fan. If it's going to be in a living room I'd recommend spending more on a quieter NAS box.

[ILOVEHIPHOP]

I'm in the market for a Nas device. I have narrowed my choice to Synology or QNAP. I think these Nas devices are perfect for everyday home users .

[anthoneous]

This is the QNAP in my home. I use it for full HD streaming of video and sometimes music for parties. It works great.

http://www.qnap.com/useng/index.php?lang=en-us&sn=862&c=355&sc=688&t=695&n=19640

[ghostman]

I have a Synology DiskStation DS413. I stream 1080p MKV's to my TV using the Western Digital TV Live Plus.

I use a Synology diskstation too, it's quite and reliable. Works perfectly well for streaming videos of any size as far as my experiences go!

[mos-to]

I use a Drobo 5D, but wish I had gotten the 5N. That said, works really well, especially through Thunderbolt on a Mac.

[jessd4life]

I have a NetGear NAS w/ DLNA enclosure and stuck x2 2TB drives. To get the media to my tv, I send my pc's hdmi slot to my audio receiver so that covers the surround sound and tv output.

[Beck38]

Hello,

Was thinking of buying a NAS to run as media server for all my bits and bobs.

Just wondering if anyone had any experience with them?

Ideally I would like it to run 1080p through media player with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound through my surround sound system.

Any recommendations?

Cheers

Nick

You need to sit down and decide what your goal is (the 'completion backwards' principle). From your initial question, I'll wager you want to be able to stream around the home to different rooms, not be 'locked in' to one output and one viewing area, so first off you need to figure on what kind of 'box' you'll be standardizing on to do that.

Then as far as a NAS, look to what is the cost per drive bay; most boxes do all the larger drives available not (upwards of 4TB, and some which support 6TB although the prices there are still a bit high).

There are a ton of dual-slot boxes out there, and a goodly number of 4drive ones. It's after that, that things get a lot more both expensive and limited. Ones like the Drobo and the free NAS OS's out there (like FreeNAS among others) made sense when drives were expensive, or one actually wanted to use all their old drives to populate some system. And then, of course, worry about which one would fail first.

The is a pretty good price rise above the 7-drive level, going to 8 or more. But in the 7-drive level, Thecus has, at least for the last few years, had the best OS and lowest prices. Their newest, the N7510, is an Atom powered box; I just got my 4th (3 other N7700Pro's before it) with 4TB drives in a RAID5 array, so 24TB of storage. Price was right around $90/TB, so storing a 'standard' 25GB HD movie (some 960+ of them per NAS) is around $2 per. Slide the figures up or down depending on how large each image is.

I have to remind folks every time about large scale NAS boxes, is that by far the cheapest and most expandable is blank BD25's with cheap bluray players; set up a good pc to recode/process/burn, and you're in business.

[NickA]

I have 2 Synology DS410j's which I use for everything from backing up files on my PC to streaming video and even running my website from home.

[NuxV]

i first got a synology ds209 (two slot) and a few years later got a ds412+ (four slot). i use it as a mediaplayer (WMC), and storage. using a synology raid allows you to mix and match different size drives which is a plus. they're pricey, but i've been pleased with the performance.