NAS/HTPC

So I am currently looking at the option of setting up a NAs in my place. I found BlackArmor NAS 220 but got mixed reviews. I would like to get something where I can put my media on to a NAS and be able to watch movies/tv shows on my tv [through my ps3] or any pc connected to the router. And to be able to have Itunes linked up to it so I can stream my itunes account to my devices as well. I got a linksys Gigabyte router.

Any suggestions to using Seagates BlackArmor? or something that may be better?

I would give anything for a Gigabyte router!

This is the same setup I'm running now. I'm using a D-Link 8-Port Gig Switch and a Synology DS710+, these are on a mixed network--homeplug, wired, and wireless.

I was thinking about putting all the multimedia stuff on their own VLAN and enabling jumbo frames to help speed things up a bit, but everything works reasonably well without it (plus i would have to buy a managed switch, possibly a smart switch).

artimasz said:

This is the same setup I'm running now. I'm using a D-Link 8-Port Gig Switch and a Synology DS710+, these are on a mixed network--homeplug, wired, and wireless.

I was thinking about putting all the multimedia stuff on their own VLAN and enabling jumbo frames to help speed things up a bit, but everything works reasonably well without it (plus i would have to buy a managed switch, possibly a smart switch).

Click to expand...

I just looked up your Synolgy DS710+. I think it looks pretty attractive until I seen the price. I seen some comments about the Blackarmor being laggish at times. If I am wanting to stream movies (possibly high def movies) to my PS3 would the Blackarmour be good enough. Or would I need to go with something more high end?

If i can stream standard def movies to my ps3 fine, woujld I be able to just to copy moveis to my ps3 and watch them that way aswell?

If you want to read about a lot of NAS boxes and see how they fare, try this site for some info. I've been looking at setting up a 2 or 4 drive NAS box and a small HTPC for a while now (lack of a job has it on back burner but I still keep looking for info).

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas

Synology makes some good ones based on reviews, can be on the higher end for cost but you seem to get what you pay for in a premade NAS box.

Well I tried the site out and based on what I found. I see that the Synology DS710+ ranks near the top. While the Seagate Black Armor 220 was pretty low. With the only complaint being slow.


While the Synology DS710+ comes across as having good performance. But as I was reading the comparisons. I noticed that some have a "download" feature. Where you can use bittorrent with it? Correct me if I am wrong. But doees the download feature that some NAS's come with mean if I hook up my Itunes to it, that my itunes wiill download directly to my NAS? Or is it just a feature where I connect my Bit-Torrent account to it and all my downloads go there?

I used an older pc for this. Right now it has 18TB of storage. Uses windows home group for accessing across my home network. So I can stream movies to 3 pc's. Also, if I open up iTunes, then all my stuff streams to I devices. I have about 300 ripped and compressed movies and 80gb of music. My google tv can see that stuff too. But I mostly let the htpc's used the network to get to the ripped BDs in iso format, so I can stream blu rays across the network. It all works great. Since none of this is critical stuff, I dont see any need to go all formal with a pre-built NAS device or any kind of raid setup. Plus, my experience with raid always lead to headaches down the road, not to say that it doesn't serve a purpose, just not in my house. The extra one pays for a Nas can go into buying extra hard drives or Sata cards, etc.

All Synology DiskStation products are on the same firmware (except for older products). The DS710+ is the same as DS411+ is the same as DS211 as far as firmware features go; the only difference between them is the performance and hardware.

That said, The DiskStation 3.1 firmware and higher do have built in support for iTunes, although I've never used it. I believe the features just lets you see the NAS in itunes, but you may want to double-check that. Personally I just use samba on the DS710+ for sharing, however, I realize can lead to slow poke performance at times. The iSCSI is soooo much faster--at least for me. I use this for running VMs.

The bittorrent feature is available as a software download + NAS option. If this is important to you, there are quite a few NAS products out there that posses this feature. QNAP is one; I believe Netgear (forget the NAS name) is another, or at least so i've read. I haven't personally used these products.

artimasz said:

The bittorrent feature is available as a software download + NAS option. If this is important to you, there are quite a few NAS products out there that posses this feature. QNAP is one; I believe Netgear (forget the NAS name) is another, or at least so i've read. I haven't personally used these products.

Click to expand...

I don't use bit torrent (may have used it once in the past) but thats just a feature where I can hook my bittorrent to it and have whatever download it to my nas without my pc needing to be on?