[Jstraw]

I am looking at purchasing a nas box... I have quite a few harddrives laying around with saved material and everything is just a mess. I have used an ATV2 with xbmc and love it, i just ordered 2 fireTV's with xbmc loaded... NOW I NEED TO CONSOLIDATE.

My big issue is I have resorted to dumping videos to a thumb diive to watch through my xbone, i have lost the interest to play music because that is just a mess, and i am terrified to lose the media data i have collected throughout the years... Right now I have a Gaming PC that I do not want to run 24/7, i want it to remain the house PC that powere on and off. I have another PC dedicated to music creation, and i have a Nighthawk 7000 router.

My goal is to put ALL of my data on a NAS and store the drives I have acrued throughout the years as an archive.

My problem is WHAT NAS BOX should I buy I have been looking for days! I cannot find good reviews on anything that does not already provide harddrives and is a competative name (like WD)... I have narrowed things down to the QNAP TS-253 Pro 2-Bay Professional-grade NAS, Intel 2.0GHz Quad Core CPU Supports Virtualization Station ( TS-253-PRO-US )... It states the RAM is upgradeable and it contains XBMC onboard. I do not want to buy junk, this stuff is expensive. I do not want to build a PC NAS (freenas) as it is complicated and i have a laptop reserved for learning that software someday, I am looking for a thumbs up or thumbs down, and if thumbs down, what is a good replacement contender.

I like that the NAS box above has XBMC, i may never use it on a screen, but having XBMC(KODi) on board tells me it will be easy for my other xbmc boxes to use access the library on the NAS with relative ease.

My other concern is Harddrives...? I have been reading that WD has gone south on their craftmenship and seagate is the next low budget choice...?

PLEASE HELP

[kuldan]

Well, if you ask me - go for a 4-Bay QNAP like the TS-420. ARM-Based, cheaper than the Intel Versions - and the onboard XBMC may be nice, but will not be used anyway due to it being too loud (HDD!) next to a TV...

(I have a QNAP TS-419p+ myself and absolutely love it. The only bad thing I can think of right now is that the mysql version for that box is a bit outdated right now.. but should be fixed in the next OS release). OS Support for these is stellar, I have received a constant flux of updates for 5 Years now...

As for Disks, Seagate is still a "good luck" option... the best (and most expensive) is the HGST Enterprise series, and for home use, the best bet is still WD Red (not Green..or Purple... Red).

[bry]

Much experience working the qnap, synology, and the readynas brand. Imo if you have many mismatched drives your best bet is a drobo. If all drives are the same size make sure you check the compatability of the drives with the Nas hardware as not all drives play well with the hardware.

[tk2k]

Synology has been my preference so far. heard great things about the qnap


I would avoid a drobo at all costs. Poor performance, not amazing reliability, and a pretty weak user interface.

[kortina]

Get yourself a HP Microserver (NL54), head over to the unRAID forums.

It is not building yourself, you can re-use your existing drives. Or maybe just buy 2 x 3Tb to get you started.

[ars92]

You already have two fireTVs,why would your even need a NAS with xbmc?
Get yourself a simple pc with unraid NAS OS on it and you will be fine. It's dead simple to get one up and running compared to freenas. And if you get a cpu and mobo which supports vt-d,you'll be able to run xbmc on it just like the qnap,only difference is that this will be a much more cheaper yet more powerful and flexible system

[shabuboy]

My previous NAS was a Dlink DNS-320, in which you add your own drives, never had any issues with it. However, after a couple of years realized redundancy was overkill for my needs. Sold it and bought a WD MBL 2TB almost 3 years ago. Love it!
WD NAS and Dlink, for home usage are fine plus affortable. But again, it all depends on your needs.

So if you just want a NAS to host your files and stream to the Kodi clients, keep it simple and cheap.
Also, most NAS devices, will be running some flavor of Linux, so they are highly customizable.

My current NAS is:
Media Server for AFTV, tablets, PCs, phones
Backup server for tablets, PCs and phones
Torrent client
SSH/SCP/SFTP/remote access

[wrxtasy]

The WD MY CLOUD is popular for home use at a good price point with impressive performance.

Its the #1 Best seller for this reason.

[Jstraw]

Thanks, I like the idea of xBMC on my nas, glad to hear of the support. I am definitely running 6 TB drives in a mirrored setup while my "other" drives are being filled and archived for that triple redundancy. My fear with WD is I have a few usb3 passport versions and they are starting to park hard, however, I did reformat them fat32 for direct connection to the Xbox, unbenounced to me, the drives ran 24/7 instead of a spin down even when the Xbox was shut down... I really wanted to steer clear of a pc, I don't want the noise and would like a decent box, hot swap bays look nice, but if you really think my advantages would be to go that route, can you point me to a proper quite box enclosure, board, and chip combo that would look nice?

[ars92]

Im using the following
I3 4130
Asus h87i plus
8gb g skill ddr3
2x3tb wd red
2x4tb wd red (just got this,unraid is awesome as you can mix and match hdds of different sizes without worry)
Fractal design node 304 case
Super flower golden green hx 550w psu


Super silent using the default fans. I usually watch movies late at night too,cant hear a thing from it although the server is right beside my plasma.

[malcolmbarr]

jstraw - I think you need to be aware that many of the nas boxes you are looking at have their own fans inside and these are not always particularly quiet. You state you don't want to build your own box, partly on the grounds that pc's are noisy. But with careful choice of components you can certainly build something that would be as quiet as an off the shelf nas, if not quieter.

I run a qnap nas box hosting 8 drives, but it is not in any of the rooms I watch media in.

[Acid0057]

Just to throw in my two cents. I'm running kodi on two raspberry pis with a third pi hosting the library and a 3tb Seagate external drive served via samba. It all passes through a wired ethernet connections on my Asus rt-n16 router. No buffering or streaming issues. The pi uses less power per year then the External hdd and sits headless in my basement. I can access it via ssh and vnc. The headless pi also runs couch potato and sickbeard for downloading. My two pis running kodi (raspbmc) are connected via HDMI to the TV's and use Flirc with universal remotes for control. IMHO it's a wicked setup. I can walk by the server pi and not even know if it's on. Might take a little more setup but that's the fun part.

[evangelion]

I have more or less an identical set-up, an early Model B RPi running headless with two 2 TB WD External hard drives attached via a non-powered USB hub, serves two other RPi set-ups attached to the main L/R TV, and a bedroom TV, works brilliantly, and as you say, next to zero power usage.

Found this the other day though, the definitive way to use a RPi as NAS: https://melgrubb.wordpress.com/2014/08/0...ver-index/

[joelbaby]

I have a Nighthawk 7000 router.

cheap solution:

Just plug a 2TB USB drive into the USB3 port on the front of the R7000 router. Your existing router is one of the fastest available for USB sharing speeds: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/...l=&start=1

My laptop writes onto my R7000 at 20MB/s via wifi, and using a wired connection I can write at 40MB/s. This is for an NTFS formatted drive, the speed would be quicker if I used ext4.

You can also plug another drive in at the back, but you will be limited to 20MB/s maximum speed (USB 2.0 max speed).

[Acid0057]

I have a Nighthawk 7000 router.

cheap solution:

Just plug a 2TB USB drive into the USB3 port on the front of the R7000 router. Your existing router is one of the fastest available for USB sharing speeds: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/...l=&start=1

My laptop writes onto my R7000 at 20MB/s via wifi, and using a wired connection I can write at 40MB/s. This is for an NTFS formatted drive, the speed would be quicker if I used ext4.

You can also plug another drive in at the back, but you will be limited to 20MB/s maximum speed (USB 2.0 max speed).

I was just about to suggest that after reading the op again. Really would be the easiest.

I have more or less an identical set-up, an early Model B RPi running headless with two 2 TB WD External hard drives attached via a non-powered USB hub, serves two other RPi set-ups attached to the main L/R TV, and a bedroom TV, works brilliantly, and as you say, next to zero power usage.

Found this the other day though, the definitive way to use a RPi as NAS: https://melgrubb.wordpress.com/2014/08/0...ver-index/

Glad to hear it's working good for you too.