NAS for Naim streamers

I have used a Readynas Duo with my Unitiserve for over a year and it has performed faultlessly. There are other options which will no doubt be advised in other posts.

Gerry

Hi Pz -

QNAP and Synology have also gotten very good reviews here on the forum.

Just one suggestion:  depending upon your availability needs, you may want to consider a dual drive NAS.  If you mirror the two drives, then one can fail and your NAS will just keep running.  Once you replace the failed drive (very easy to do -- typically you don't even have to turn your NAS off), the new drive is automatically brought up to date, and becomes your new mirror. 

Note that having two drives does not protect against a failure of the NAS box itself (i.e., the controller board for the drive(s)), so it is not a substitute for a backup strategy. 

I must say that, having had a drive in my previous NAS fail, it was pretty nice being able to listen to music for the two days it took for my replacement drive to arrive.

Good luck.

Hook

Are you planning on running your upnp server from the nas, this would have an impact on your choice. The readynas Duo is probably among the cheapest and if you do not want to have 2 disks installed is runs fine with a single disk.

Claus

The Netgear ReadyNas Duo is a dual bay item and was being offerred with free 2nd disc while stocks last a couple of months back - not sure if that offer is still going. I have one and it's good.

Naim have usually used the Netgear as their preferred choice. However, in February I noticed they were using a QNAP so it's one to consider.

Synology make something called the DS212 and DS212j. I read somewhere that the DS212j was not as good though I forget the reasons why. A friend of mine bought a 212 recently and he's over the moon at how well and easily it went into his network. He's using it with an NDX.

Most people are opting for mirrored 2-bay solutions as a 1st line backup. Given the amount of data you can hold on a disc, the relatively low extra cost of the 2-bay solution seems quite reasonable. Any reason for wanting a single bay solution?

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

I use a Synology DS212j, with two 2 tb drives mirrored in their Raid setup.

For my hi fi this is used to establish a network share as a source of digital files for my UnitiServe.  It was very easy to set up and three months or so into it it has been trouble-free.

I use a QNAP TS-459 Pro II. It's a small office NAS so could be considered overkill for home use, but it's been rock solid and performs well. I'm currently running a Logitech Media Server QPKG directly on it, but will move to Asset on a separate Wintel server when I move to the NDS.

Loving my Synology DS212.  Works a treat with my NDX.  Flawless operation!

VortexBox ... google it and you'll get loads of info. 

I have a QNAP TS109II single bay unit, which has been replaced by the TS119. It is fanless due to clever design and  therefore quiet and efficient.  It stores my audio video and photo files as well as acting as the family shared drive and laptop/desktop backup. Even though it is now 5 years old, I have never had to open it up  it typically runs with only 5-10% of cpu and ram utilisation so is hardly sweating and this is with an old processor. According to the usage stats it has been running for 34,000 hours and this has all been trouble/hassle free.

I would happily buy another. Things to look for are good software utilities and specify the best disk quality that you can if you have a single bay unit.  I do monthly backup to an external drive but this can be fully automated and run daily if you are obsessive about backup.

It is worth canvassing views on the Upnp software that you need to stream with. QNAP comes with Twonky but there are strong preferences in this area and you may want to avoid a linux-based NAS and go for a Windows Home Server one which can run Asset.

I presume you are backing your single bay nas up?

I can fully recommend Synology DS212+ (and and I suppose its siblings..). Mine works a treat and it is very quite (with 2x2TB WD, some “AV version” of disks which is supposed to be quite...). It has an UPnP app that will transcode to WAV from e.g. flac and aiff. I do not own a streamer (yet) and have only tested it with NDX which I had on loan mostly with aiff files and it works very well. However, I also tested a UnityServe on loan at that time and there is a slight difference between wav and aiff. In general I think wav was preferable but not always, and difference is not huge. Wav on the NAS is with the limited test I did equal to US, but meta data is a problem. Naim stremers seem to be optimized for wav-files and meta data could be a problem with any NAS, I am not sure?! If you decide to use the wav format a pc-based micro server could be a better option running asset, ripping with DBpoweramp which is a combination that is supposed to manage well with wav meta data.

Absolutely.

Dual bay NAS secures you against disk failure and external backup secures you against both disk failure and NAS failure.  If you are in a time critical situation such as an office then a dual bay NAS is a great solution for minimum downtime but I don't have those pressures at home and am happy with a single bay (with regular backup). 

Top spec Enterprise Disk Drives come with guaranteed life running 24/7 and support good predictive smart tools to spot gradual degradation signs that are an early indicator of failing.  Cheaper consumer grade drives typically used for laptops/desktops are available as well, but I wouldn't fancy them on a NAS.  I do worry that bundled NASs tend to come with lower grade drives to compete on price and I wonder if this is a false economy.  If price is an issue then I would feel happier with a high quality single drive rather than two cheap ones.

Freedom of choice over dual/single bay and enterprise/consumer drives is a good thing, but the OP should also factor in the cost of an external backup strategy.