Home Multi media NAS

[hairyhobo]

hi, just after some advice on what NAS i should go for to complete my home setup.

I have wired my house with cat6 cable and have network points all over the house. I have a couple imacs, which i would like to back up to the nas via time machine. I will also have 3 sono's amps which will run off a itunes server on the NAS. I also like the idea of being able to access my data via this "cloud" setup you can get on the NAS drives.

In my house I will be streaming movies to apple tv's and as above music to the sono's.

I have been tempted by the qnaps as the software does everything i need and seems to look quite smart. I am worried about speed as i did read a review about some one saying they struggled to steam 720 movies, but i dont know if this was via wifi and i think it was on a qnap 419 pro or similar.

Other option is to build a NAS and run freenas on. I have space to have a full tower with ATX instead of a mini ATX. But unsure what motherboard to go for and power supply and would a i3 be overkill? and which other kit would i need? The main advantage i can see with building my own is the ease of adding more HD's.

So with the freenas i would need it to do a itunes server, steam movies to hacked apple tvs with xbmc, allow me to back up with time machine and a "cloud" based service.

Also would i be best having a raid setup?

Hope this makes sense, so any advice would be great in what the best solution should be for me.

thanks

 

[hairyhobo]

as a custom build i was thinking....

Gigabyte GA-B75-D3V Socket 1155 VGA DVI 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard

Intel Core i3 2120 3.3GHz Socket 1155 3MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor

Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x 8GB) 1600MHz DDR3 Memory Kit

Casecom Black/Silver Trim Mid Tower Case

Akasa K32 Intel Socket 775 1155 1156 Processor Cooler

ACE 400W Grey PSU 12cm Fan SATA 20+4pin

4 x WD 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s Caviar Green Hard Drive - 64MB Cache - WD20EARX (to start with)

 

[stevech]

hi, just after some advice on what NAS i should go for to complete my home setup.

I have wired my house with cat6 cable and have network points all over the house. I have a couple imacs, which i would like to back up to the nas via time machine. I will also have 3 sono's amps which will run off a itunes server on the NAS. I also like the idea of being able to access my data via this "cloud" setup you can get on the NAS drives.

In my house I will be streaming movies to apple tv's and as above music to the sono's.

I have been tempted by the qnaps as the software does everything i need and seems to look quite smart. I am worried about speed as i did read a review about some one saying they struggled to steam 720 movies, but i dont know if this was via wifi and i think it was on a qnap 419 pro or similar.

Other option is to build a NAS and run freenas on. I have space to have a full tower with ATX instead of a mini ATX. But unsure what motherboard to go for and power supply and would a i3 be overkill? and which other kit would i need? The main advantage i can see with building my own is the ease of adding more HD's.

So with the freenas i would need it to do a itunes server, steam movies to hacked apple tvs with xbmc, allow me to back up with time machine and a "cloud" based service.

Also would i be best having a raid setup?

Hope this makes sense, so any advice would be great in what the best solution should be for me.

thanks

Did you compare/contrast and do the on-line demos of Synology, QNAP, Thecus?

Opinion/experience: RAID yes if it's a 4+ drive NAS. For a two-bay NAS, I suggest two volumes, one backing up the other. That way you're protected from drive failure, file system corruption and accidental deletion. I so that, with the second volume being "time machine" based. I tried the DIY NAS software - it was not at all what I wanted, even though I'm a geek by profession. I have a DS212.

 

[hairyhobo]

Hi Steve.

To be honest I didn't know you could do online demos. I had seen read/write speeds on another NAS website but I take these with a pinch of salt as everyone's setup is different and things can run differently in different setups. So was after a persons view really.

Where do I find the online tests??

Well I need 4 or more bays for the amount of data I have, plus I'm guessing if I do a raid setup I loose the full amount of space I start with??
Which is why I thought build my own as it will be cheaper. I know freenas wouldn't be as slick as qnap and syn but could it be setup easy enough for what I needed it to do seeing as I might need to add more drives.

Also I was picking up hints people might of put qnap or syn firmware onto a pc build, has anyone managed this??

 

[hairyhobo]

Has anyone used this....

http://www.amahi.org/

 

[stevech]

Hi Steve.

To be honest I didn't know you could do online demos. I had seen read/write speeds on another NAS website but I take these with a pinch of salt as everyone's setup is different and things can run differently in different setups. So was after a persons view really.

Where do I find the online tests?

Each vendor has an on-line demo at their home website.

Speed: I'd put that low on the product selection criteria: of the top brands I listed, they're all about the same. The criteria I suggest is the NAS management software - feature list and ease of use.

Opinion: That's why discriminating NAS buyers shun the likes of Netgear, LG, IoMega, Seagate, WD, D-Link, Buffalo, in favor of the companies that focus on having the best NASes on the market rather than a NAS as 2% of the product catalog. These specialists include Synology, QNAP, Thecus.

 

[stevech]

Has anyone used this....

http://www.amahi.org/

Interesting.. for DIYers. Reading user forum http://forums.amahi.org/. Looks like a shareware endeavor - heavy on the owner to create and sustain the Ubuntu or Fedora baseline. Lacks a Time Machine capability (been in development for a year per the forum). Maybe a far better choice than FreeNAS for DIYers.

 

[hairyhobo]

Certainly looks interesting and I found a time machine app...
http://www.amahi.org/apps/amahi-time-machine

 

[stevech]

by Time Machine... I meant a capability in the NAS to keep a history of files over time. Synology (and probably others) have that as an intrinsic capability. In mine, I setup a once-a-day schedule to create a snapshot in their Time Machine feature. There's a nice user interface to browse the histories and get a file from, say, a month ago. So this is irrespective of any of the client devices such as Apple's time machine.

the Amahi software says it's Apple-specific: "Amahi Time Machine is an App that provides a backup facility that is compatible with Mac OS X Time Machine software. It has been tested with Snow Leopard and Lion. "

 

[hairyhobo]

fair do's, i'll go away and give it some though!!