joepimentel
New Around Here
So I'm running out of space to store my media (movies, shows, photos, music, etc.) and I've been contemplating a NAS. However, after thinking my needs and what I'd really like to get out of it I'm now leaning more towards a new Mac Mini with a few Thunderbolt Drives (when they come out). My current set up is two USB2 500GB drives that are mirrored using SuperDuper! and a nightly schedule. What I would like is:
- Speed. USB2 is slow, especially as I'm starting to save movies and shows in HD. Gigabit over my network seems fast enough for me when I've copied files between two computers (I could care less that I need to be wired). Thunderbolt speeds would be awesome. Firewire 800 seems okay but I see it as an older and eventually dying technology now that Thunderbolt and USB3 are out.
- Space. 3TB of usable space at a minimum.
- Redundancy. 3TB is a lot of data to lose so I need to make sure I have a way of protecting against drive failure. RAID would be nice (even if it's only software RAID) but I can even live with my current SuperDuper! set up if I went the Mac Mini route.
- Expandability. I'm currently thinking of 2 drives but something that allows for more drives in the future would be awesome.
- Extensibility. At the minimal I'd like for the solution to run Sabnzbd, Couch Potato, and SickBeard with no problem. Having it do some Handbrake conversions will be nice. At the moment, I could care less about some of the user management features that come with NAS devices since this is for a simple home network.
- Other. I would like to possibly include some media player functionality. If I had a NAS I'd go with an Apple TV or Western Digital TV Live Hub. If I had the Mac Mini I'd just run Plex or XBMC on it.
- Price. My budget is roughly $1,000 (before tax).
At first I thought about buying a Synology DS710+ or a Synology DS411+II (or even something from QNAP). Those two models seem to be pretty fast (90+MB/s read and write speeds from what I've read) and seem to be able to run Sabnzbd, Couch Potato and SickBeard. I still don't know if I would have to buy 7200 RPM drives or if 5400 RPM drives would saturate the gigabit link on those models. Also, I'm not sure how easy I could get HandBrake to run on it since everything I managed to find online about getting it to work seemed more complicated than I would have liked. Then the new Mac Mini came out and I started thinking that it would be great to serve the needs as the "brain" for my storage and media player needs and I could always tack on as many Thunderbolt drives as I need. I could get all the apps I want to work fairly easily and have better CPU and RAM. Of course, I would lose the benefits of hardware RAID and my bottleneck would still be Gigabit but at least my investment in Thunderbolt drives would be better than buying USB2 storage. Of course the problem is… Thunderbolt drives don't exist YET and I'm not sure how long I'd have to wait for them or what their price would be.
I'm new to NAS devices in general but I've thought about this as much as I could but I can't come to a decision. Would the NAS be a better solution or would it be more than I need since I don't need much of the services and management features they provide? Would I be missing out on anything if I go the Mac Mini route? Any advice, things to consider, or comments would help.
Thanks.
- Speed. USB2 is slow, especially as I'm starting to save movies and shows in HD. Gigabit over my network seems fast enough for me when I've copied files between two computers (I could care less that I need to be wired). Thunderbolt speeds would be awesome. Firewire 800 seems okay but I see it as an older and eventually dying technology now that Thunderbolt and USB3 are out.
- Space. 3TB of usable space at a minimum.
- Redundancy. 3TB is a lot of data to lose so I need to make sure I have a way of protecting against drive failure. RAID would be nice (even if it's only software RAID) but I can even live with my current SuperDuper! set up if I went the Mac Mini route.
- Expandability. I'm currently thinking of 2 drives but something that allows for more drives in the future would be awesome.
- Extensibility. At the minimal I'd like for the solution to run Sabnzbd, Couch Potato, and SickBeard with no problem. Having it do some Handbrake conversions will be nice. At the moment, I could care less about some of the user management features that come with NAS devices since this is for a simple home network.
- Other. I would like to possibly include some media player functionality. If I had a NAS I'd go with an Apple TV or Western Digital TV Live Hub. If I had the Mac Mini I'd just run Plex or XBMC on it.
- Price. My budget is roughly $1,000 (before tax).
At first I thought about buying a Synology DS710+ or a Synology DS411+II (or even something from QNAP). Those two models seem to be pretty fast (90+MB/s read and write speeds from what I've read) and seem to be able to run Sabnzbd, Couch Potato and SickBeard. I still don't know if I would have to buy 7200 RPM drives or if 5400 RPM drives would saturate the gigabit link on those models. Also, I'm not sure how easy I could get HandBrake to run on it since everything I managed to find online about getting it to work seemed more complicated than I would have liked. Then the new Mac Mini came out and I started thinking that it would be great to serve the needs as the "brain" for my storage and media player needs and I could always tack on as many Thunderbolt drives as I need. I could get all the apps I want to work fairly easily and have better CPU and RAM. Of course, I would lose the benefits of hardware RAID and my bottleneck would still be Gigabit but at least my investment in Thunderbolt drives would be better than buying USB2 storage. Of course the problem is… Thunderbolt drives don't exist YET and I'm not sure how long I'd have to wait for them or what their price would be.
I'm new to NAS devices in general but I've thought about this as much as I could but I can't come to a decision. Would the NAS be a better solution or would it be more than I need since I don't need much of the services and management features they provide? Would I be missing out on anything if I go the Mac Mini route? Any advice, things to consider, or comments would help.
Thanks.