Hi,
I need a NAS for home use in order to store music, videos and other files between a couple of computers, an XBOX 360 and a smartphone. My budget is £250 for a diskless model, or £300 if it includes a hard drive of 320GB or greater.
I have a gigabit router and am looking for something that would make good use of the extra speed available.
My music library is about 50GB of FLAC files. As well as local access I am interested in the possibility of accessing the library through a web-based media player and streaming the files. I have seen the Synology music player and it seems pretty good. I also looked at the QNAP demo system but it didn't seem to be working properly.
I also have an MP3 player and I tend to convert my FLAC files to MP3 to save space. But this is a pain because the two libraries can get out of sync very easily. It would be really cool if I could have a background process on the NAS that automatically generates an MP3 version of each FLAC file and save it in a different folder. Technically I could just store the MP3 files on the MP3 player alone but this makes it harder to work out what files are not already on there, and it would be a pain to reconvert them all if I ever lost the player.
I have numerous DVD's that I intend to rip, although I have already ripped some of them to VOB files. Ideally I would prefer to store them all as VOB as I have struggled with converting them to other formats, partly because of interlacing and partly because there are so many options to do with quality. Handbrake seems pretty good but I have sometimes found the converted video to be noticeably inferior even though I have been setting high bitrates etc.
Obviously the XBOX and many video players can't handle VOB's so I do need to convert them. Ideally it would be done on the fly but I don't think a typical ARM based NAS is going to be able to handle this. So I may end up just storing them as H.264.
The NAS only needs to support one hard drive, although I suppose a two-bay device would be more future proof. I have an external USB 3.0 hard drive that I would like to be able to use for backups, and I really would prefer that the NAS has full USB 3.0 support.
I already have a HP MicroServer I was going to use as a NAS but I ran into various problems. I tried installing FreeNAS v7 but it wouldn't recognise the hard drive no matter what I/O mode I chose in the BIOS. I then tried v8 but it was missing too many features to be useful. So I then tried Ubuntu 12.04, but once I began the install it the TV I was temporarily using wouldn't recognise the display mode and just showed a blank screen. Also the lack of USB 3.0 and HDMI is annoying, and frankly it's a lot bigger and heavier than I would like (I live in rented accommodation and I move around a lot).
I am thinking of getting either the Synology DS112 or the QNAP TS-119P II (the upcoming USB 3.0 version). I have seen the NetGear ReadyNAS Ultra 2 for under £200 and it looks a lot more powerful than most other devices at that price, but the included firmware/software pales in comparison.
I was also considering getting the FoxConn NT-A3500 nettop instead, as it is incredibly small and light, it has USB 3.0 and is very competitively priced. But based on my experience with the MicroServer I can see that there is a lot of extra work involved compared to an off the shelf solution, and I'm not sure it's worth it.
What do you think is the best option? Are there any other models worth considering?
Thanks, James
I need a NAS for home use in order to store music, videos and other files between a couple of computers, an XBOX 360 and a smartphone. My budget is £250 for a diskless model, or £300 if it includes a hard drive of 320GB or greater.
I have a gigabit router and am looking for something that would make good use of the extra speed available.
My music library is about 50GB of FLAC files. As well as local access I am interested in the possibility of accessing the library through a web-based media player and streaming the files. I have seen the Synology music player and it seems pretty good. I also looked at the QNAP demo system but it didn't seem to be working properly.
I also have an MP3 player and I tend to convert my FLAC files to MP3 to save space. But this is a pain because the two libraries can get out of sync very easily. It would be really cool if I could have a background process on the NAS that automatically generates an MP3 version of each FLAC file and save it in a different folder. Technically I could just store the MP3 files on the MP3 player alone but this makes it harder to work out what files are not already on there, and it would be a pain to reconvert them all if I ever lost the player.
I have numerous DVD's that I intend to rip, although I have already ripped some of them to VOB files. Ideally I would prefer to store them all as VOB as I have struggled with converting them to other formats, partly because of interlacing and partly because there are so many options to do with quality. Handbrake seems pretty good but I have sometimes found the converted video to be noticeably inferior even though I have been setting high bitrates etc.
Obviously the XBOX and many video players can't handle VOB's so I do need to convert them. Ideally it would be done on the fly but I don't think a typical ARM based NAS is going to be able to handle this. So I may end up just storing them as H.264.
The NAS only needs to support one hard drive, although I suppose a two-bay device would be more future proof. I have an external USB 3.0 hard drive that I would like to be able to use for backups, and I really would prefer that the NAS has full USB 3.0 support.
I already have a HP MicroServer I was going to use as a NAS but I ran into various problems. I tried installing FreeNAS v7 but it wouldn't recognise the hard drive no matter what I/O mode I chose in the BIOS. I then tried v8 but it was missing too many features to be useful. So I then tried Ubuntu 12.04, but once I began the install it the TV I was temporarily using wouldn't recognise the display mode and just showed a blank screen. Also the lack of USB 3.0 and HDMI is annoying, and frankly it's a lot bigger and heavier than I would like (I live in rented accommodation and I move around a lot).
I am thinking of getting either the Synology DS112 or the QNAP TS-119P II (the upcoming USB 3.0 version). I have seen the NetGear ReadyNAS Ultra 2 for under £200 and it looks a lot more powerful than most other devices at that price, but the included firmware/software pales in comparison.
I was also considering getting the FoxConn NT-A3500 nettop instead, as it is incredibly small and light, it has USB 3.0 and is very competitively priced. But based on my experience with the MicroServer I can see that there is a lot of extra work involved compared to an off the shelf solution, and I'm not sure it's worth it.
What do you think is the best option? Are there any other models worth considering?
Thanks, James
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