Are my NAS goals realistic?

[pahbi]

Thanks in advance for any insight provided.

This is what I currently have:

- HTPC connected via USB3 cable to a 4 bay non-raid external HD.
- Hard drives are formatted NTFS.
- I'm beginning to run out of storage space.


This what I would like to be do (I know how to do this part):

- Build a NAS box out of spare parts.
- I ordered a few hard drives to help in transferring data if necessary.
- Install hard drives.
- Copy data from NTFS drives to EXT3 drives.
- Use Ubuntu Desktop and create shared drives via samba (sorry, but i'm a linux novice)
- Watch movies on the HTPC via Windows Media Center from the shared folders.


The part I need help with is this:

- I would like to also have android and IOS devices be able to play music, movies, view pictures and read books from files on the NAS.
- Should I raid or would it be simpler just to keep the drives as separate volumes?

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
- P

 

[L&LD]

The parts that you need help with (ios and android device compatibility) suggests to me to get an off the shelf solution vs. a diy one.

QNAP and Synology are the two top solutions to consider for what you need.

 

[MikeKV]

It's been a while, and I don't see a lot of replies, so as a fellow Windows user, I can tell you what *I* did for a NAS / media playback solution.

Firstly, I run a WHS2011 system. This provides Windows client backups (full system backups that can be restored through a LiveCD WHS comes with). WHS2011 isn't required for the rest of my setup -- any version of Windows would work, you'd just lose the client backup (without another solution).

On top of WHS2011, I have StableBit's DrivePool. This allows you to create a single storage pool out of whatever HDD's you have (IDE, SATA, SAS, internal or external connected via eSATA, iSCSI, USB, etc). Like a Drobo, you can tell the pool to 'drop' a drive (so you can replace it with a larger one) and it'll move the data to the rest of the pool, then 'drop' it from the pool so you can remove / replace it. It does cost $20, but it was *totally* worth it so I could avoid RAID (I store nothing important on this storage pool).

In addition, I have sabnzbd, sonarr, and Plex installed. Plex is the key for you -- it allows you to play media via your HTPC, but it *also* supports Android / iOS devices. You can even play media via a web browser, if you desired. On your HTPC you can use Plex Home Theater, or you can completely replace the HTPC and use any number of streaming devices (FireTV, Roku, Chromecast, etc).

This all ignores the hardware I'm using. I won't get into a lot of detail now (unless you ask), but a while ago I combined all of my physical systems (including my "gaming" system) into a single beefy box (an HP Z800 with two Xeon X5677's and 24GB of non-ECC RAM). The WHS setup can be done on pretty well any hardware, but with Plex, if you're going to have the possibility of multiple HD streams, you'll want a processor that's beefy enough to do any required transcoding.

 

[stevech]

Another vote for Synology or QNAP.