4/5 BYOD NAS to serve media content

[simon76]

I'm looking for a NAS device to store video content to be streamed through a wired network to a network media player (currently Egreat EG-M34A and PS3). What I'm looking for is enough bandwidth to provide a good user experience, even for high definition material (1080p) and as inexpensive as possible. The following requirements I'm looking for:

Must:

- sustained read throughput of at least 40 Mbps (with Raid 5)
- Raid 5 capability
- 4/5 drive bays
- BYOD
- quiet enough to be virtually unhearable from 15 meters (ca. 45 feet) distance
- support for 2 terabyte hard drive

Nice to have:

- ability to combine folders from different hard drives to one virtual folder (not JBOD) like the "folder aggregation" feature from QNAP NAS devices
- low energy consumption

A ready NAS solution would be the best, but if building my own NAS would be cost-effective (including the energy costs), I'm open to that alternative as well.

 

[yejun]

- ability to combine folders from different hard drives to one virtual folder (not JBOD) like the "folder aggregation" feature from QNAP NAS devices

If you use raid 5, there will be only 1 hard driver. You can use a single volume for everything.

 

[thiggins]

Virtually any modern NAS will meet your needs. 40 Mbps is 5 MB/s and there are plenty of products in the NAS Charts that well exceed that performance.

QNAP, Thecus and Synology primarily serve the BYOD NAS market.

 

[simon76]

Thanks for the replies. I have now limited the choice to the following:

• QNAP TS-439 Pro (cost including 4 x 2 TB hard drives, 137 Euro per TB)
• Synology 409 (105 Euro per TB)
• Synology 409+ (116 Euro per TB)

QNAP is the fastest, has hot-swapping and a metal casing, but is significantly more expensive. On the other hand, I'm already familiar with Qnap, as I have a TS-239 Pro, and quite like it. I guess the most rational solution would be to get the Synology 409, as the read speed over a wired network should be more than enough.