Help, I think I want a NAS

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#643257 19-Jun-2012 15:34

jonherries:
Skolink: If you have an old PC and don't care about power consumption or size you could use FreeNAS. I have tried it on a fanless PIII 700 with 400MB RAM, but transfer rates were only 4MByte/s up 7MByte/s down. Strangely I can get 8-10MByte/s in both directions to my similarly spec'd XBox.

I had a Welland ME-747ANS but it was also too slow.

The Synology DS212j looks nice but is beyond my budget.

+1 - you say you have an old laptop, with an ethernet port you could use this as a NAS, and add a switch timer to wall so you keep using the battery (UPS), maybe for 30 mins every night. This way you have an itunes server running 24/7. Drives can be connected to the USB ports, or through a hub.

I have done this with an old emac, which runs Leopard and the latest version of iTunes. Runs 3 external drives of differing capacity's, from various previous purchases.

Jon

No need for the timer, Lithium Ion batteries mainly degrade as a result of being hot, and also charge/discharge wear. Cycling the charge won't extend their life.

Just noticed the DS212j supports IP cameras! It's value has suddenly jumped for me, as I have spent many hours looking for an IP camera that would write to a NAS drive, but eventually gave up.

The DS112j (single bay) is quite alot cheaper, and I have no use for RAID (either speed or redundancy) so I think that may be a winner for me. It apparently does at least 30MB/s which is faster than my 100Mbps network is capable of.

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#643274 19-Jun-2012 16:31

Mark: The NAS is configured with 4 * 2TB drives in RAID-5 - WD "green" ones ;-) and connected to an 8-port managed switch it can sustain about 215MB/s read and 200MB/s write ... so more than enough performance for what I do!

Surely you mean 200 Mbps (megabits per second)? 200 MB/s (megabytes per second) is about 1720 Mbps, way over gigabit?

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#643293 19-Jun-2012 17:00

Megabytes :-)

2 * 1gigabit using LACP. Then hammer at it with multiple clients to see how much it can handle...

It's a good little NAS, just the software is a bit rough around the edges.

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#643295 19-Jun-2012 17:05

freitasm:
Mark: The NAS is configured with 4 * 2TB drives in RAID-5 - WD "green" ones ;-) and connected to an 8-port managed switch it can sustain about 215MB/s read and 200MB/s write ... so more than enough performance for what I do!

Surely you mean 200 Mbps (megabits per second)? 200 MB/s (megabytes per second) is about 1720 Mbps, way over gigabit?

thecus NAS comes with 2 Gigabit ports

edit: as above

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#643304 19-Jun-2012 17:13

Nice. Just that throughput can be high, but when you are actually streaming, even HD, you won't need to use all that anyway, seeing most clients will be single connection...

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blackjack17

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#643355 19-Jun-2012 18:29

I have just got xbmc running on my W7 MSI netbook U100+ with a 1.7 atom CPU with 2 gig of ram. I have it connected to a 42 inch 1080p LG

Wirelessly connected to the network I have added 7 TB of data to it's library and it runs fine, not the snappiest in menus but no problem with playback even HD stuff. It did take over 24hrs to add everything to the library.

I am sure your old laptop is higher speced than my netbook, and doing it this won't cost a cent.

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crackrdbycracku

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#643363 19-Jun-2012 18:39

Yeah, looks like 'old laptop as file server' is going to keep things running on the main TV via the xbox.

As for the second TV I think I'll just get a USB plug in media player and plug the HDD into that on the odd occasions I want to watch movies in bed.

These looks cheap:

JCMatthew Palm Sized Media Player

http://www.noelleeming.co.nz/shop/tvs-dvds/media-players/generic-lhd50-palm-sized-media-player/prod108723.html

only $60 and the second TV is only HD not Full HD. Hopefully it supports NTFS

When the old laptop dies I'll probably buy or build a basic HTPC to serve files to the xbox, but that could be a way away.

Sad there isn't an 'elegant' solution but it's about watching movies, not about endlessly buying more gadgets.

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#643366 19-Jun-2012 18:42

The NAS that freitasm has mentioned, is USD$190 (DS212J + USD$35 shipping) from Amazon. I ordered it last week and now awaiting delivery. Read reviews and they are all very positive. On Synology's website, there is even a demo of DSM 4.0 that you can play around with to see how good or bad the software is.

Ended up costing me NZ$250 incl delivery. Same drive is NZ$550 at PBTech.

http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-Diskless-Network-Attached/dp/B005YW7OLM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340088052&sr=8-1&keywords=synology+ds212j

Do whatever you want to do man.

freitasm

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#643373 19-Jun-2012 18:51

You didn't use the Geekzone Amazon link? How dare you?

Seriously though, that is without the HDD. Factor that in - or use your existing drives.

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#643378 19-Jun-2012 18:59

I ordered the Kindle for my wife via that GZ link. I see that it takes to the amazon store directly now when ordering. I remember when I ordered the kindle few months back. there was a selection of kindles on a custom geekzone page. Now I know. Always buying something from Amazon so will support Geekzone this way!

Do whatever you want to do man.

freitasm

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#643386 19-Jun-2012 19:15

You can enter Amazon through that page - any product you buy will generate a commission, not only Kindle.

Back on topic... The NAS devices are much easier to configure/maintain than reusing an old laptop.

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DrStrangelove

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#643397 19-Jun-2012 19:39

I have a QNAP TS-112 which is just a single disk unit (3TB max {But not Green drives

} and not on a slide) and a 1.2GHz processor.
There are newer QNAP NAS with 2.0GHz and single disk. TS-119P II

The QNAP TS-112 has a 1Gbit Ethernet for reasonable throughput. It's not going to win any prizes for highest throughput, but in a small environment with only a few clients accessing it, it's more than enough.

A nice feature is the three USB 2.0 and the eSATA interface at this budget end of the NAS food chain.

With an external 1 - 3TB SATA3 drive in a eSATA dock, you have a pretty robust backup system.

QNAP mirrors Synology in most ways.

I use my TS-112 as a development system as well as storage, with virtual hosts, PHP and MySQL. Like Synology, it's easier to list what is can't do, than what it can do.

I believe with the new QNAP version 3.7 there is better integration with Windows ACL configuration via Windows Explorer too.
I have all my files mapped as local libraries/folders on my Windows systems and ES File Explorer and etc does the job on Android.

It has all the UPnP stuff too.

It streams movies via my Android box (100Mb Ethernet) onto the TV with no effort.

I get approx 60 - 80Mbps read throughput from my NAS at 15metres on 40MHz 2.4GHz WiFi.
I get approx 620Mbps read throughput from my NAS over 1Gb Ethernet on a Windows 7 OS using 1Gb PCI card(Old system).

But like freitasm said, a NAS is not operating at it's best in a pure WiFi environment, but it'll still provide all your services, but just really slow. I'd say the minimum is 1Gb Ethernet backbone.

Remember that most SATA3 drives access data way faster than 12MBytes, which is all you'll get over 100Mbit Ethernet.
The exception to the rule is if you're using 802.11ac WiFi, in which case you're just showing off.

I'm not sure if I'd recommend a TS-112 as they're a bit old now and the CPU and resources are a bit low for anything other that a couple of home users. That said, I have nothing but praise for my baby NAS.

freitasm

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#643405 19-Jun-2012 19:46

I'm also using my Synology as an iSCSI device for my Windows 7 desktop - this way I can get some non-stop image backups going on with Acronis, which wouldn't work well on a UNC share. iSCSI is seen as a local HDD so all it's a lot easier - and faster.

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DrStrangelove

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#643422 19-Jun-2012 20:32

Hang on..... maybe I take it back about the QNAP TS-112 being under resourced.

I just looked at the Synology DS212J and it too only has a 1.2GHz processor and 256RAM.

I say 'only', cause I'm so used of seeing 2.0GHz and more...

So maybe my QNAP TS-112 has a few more miles left on the clock yet.

I've not used iSCSI on my TS-112 even though it has it.

mikerussellnz

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#643426 19-Jun-2012 20:45

I have a Qnap TS-212, similar but supports 2 internal drives and 3 USB ports (no eSATA). Its very similar to the DS212 with a 1.2ghz processor, I think they are based around similar Marvell chipsets until you get to the more expensive Atom based ones.

Write speeds are about 30 mbytes/s, read is a bit faster (over gigabit). It supports USB print serving, network cameras and there is a addon package that will allow a USB UVC web cam to work with it.

No complaints with it so far.

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