To NAS or not to NAS, that is the question

Posted by: hungryhalibut on 15 June 2013

Once my UnitiServe arrives, I will start ripping all my CDs and storing them in the Serve. Should it ever go wrong, I will have the CDs as backup, but I can imagine that re-ripping all 2,000 of the little blighters is something to avoid.....

 

So, should I get a NAS? If so, what should I get? I've looked at the FAQ, but everything tested is over two years old. It would need to be small, cheap, black, and very very quiet, as it will need to live in the sitting room with the stereo and TV. I'd want it to be easy to set up and be able to wake up when the Serve does its regular backup. I'd want it to have low power consumption too.

 

And then, what disks? Quietness and low power consumption are important. WD red? Seagate? 2 x 2tb or 1x 3tb and a spare bay for luck?

 

Any advice would be gratefully accepted. It will only be a backup to the Serve, so won't need to do clever stuff. Seamless integration is what I'm after. Do I want too much?

 

Many thanks!!

Posted on: 17 June 2013 by Marky Mark

Thanks for your reply Gary.

 

Currently it is possible to get a N54L for £100 (incl £100 cashback and Windows 2012 Foundation for £100 (incl £50 cashback). Using your 2 drives at £60 each basis that gives £320 in total. Only a bit more than the Linux setup.

 

For me what is most important is that the server software is reliable. Experience with various NAS units has shown they often have poor software in their marketing led drive for consumer 'features' rather than quality. These are companies that are not necessarily very good at writing software and that have suddenly found themselves in a drive to offer a NAS that is more like a computer than a file server. If getting what is really a computer, I would rather have decent operating software on it. In the old days Novell Netware would run for years uninterrrupted as a file server.

 

I am not against Linux at all (quite the opposite in fact) but am concerned that Open Media Vault will not get maintained / have bugs which I cannot fix. It is a full OS based on a tweaked Debian right?

 

Two questions on the Microserver if you will....1) is it noisy; and 2) does it not really hibernate / Wake on LAN properly?

 

BW, MM

 

 

Posted on: 17 June 2013 by trickydickie

Marky

 

I'm using Windows 2012 Foundation on a small Dell Zino Atom based computer with 2 gig of ram.

 

It makes a wonderful host for Asset and has been completely reliable.  It is a very lightweight operating system, I had it running comfortably in 1 gig of ram until I found a 2 gig stick in the garage. Very pleased.

 

I'm not sure that I would would want a Microserver or a NAS in my lounge though, even the quietest devices make a small amount of noise.  All our stuff is under the stairs.

 

Richard

Posted on: 17 June 2013 by garyi

Mark.

 

Its as noisy as hell. I have two and they live in the garage, just where a server should live

No idea on the wake on lan bit. Mine are on all the time.

 

Hear what you say about the updating thing but then I guess thats the risk for anything you use. In terms of day to day use I cannot say I have come across any bugs in particular. My needs are quite simple I guess, plex server, smb networking and rsync, all appear flawless, I installed in february after finally giving up on QNAP.

The other one is a time machine back up server and again is excellent

Posted on: 20 June 2013 by imperialline

I am not sure a NAS is ever needed to store music if you have a spare Mac or PC with enough storage, if not get a new big harddrive, plugged your Mac/PC and you are done. You can also set up backup between different hard drives on the same PC.

Posted on: 21 June 2013 by gert

I own a Synology DS213+. Currently with one 2TB WD red hard disc, so I have one spare slot for the future. I think that the Western Digital red discs are really good for this purpose. 2TB should be enough for 2000 CDs. I recommend not to use a second hard disc for a RAID configuration. It does not replace a backup, instead it is only for high availability that one usually does not need. So buy one or two separate external hard discs for backing up the ripped CD data.

 

The DS213+ is quite nice, but:

 

* the NAS station is not quiet. You can hear it running all the time. It's a mixture of hard disc sound and more heavily the running fan. It is not a very annoying, high noise, it seems to be the air that you can hear that is moving through the device, or maybe the continually spinning fan itself. But you can hear it.

 

* the DS213+ offers a very interesting way of hibernation. It's similar to suspend-to-RAM, but it automatically wakes up if another device tries to talk to it. The problem is, that this does not work reliable. In the beginning the NAS did not go to sleep, but this seems to work now. But sometimes it wakes up again while I do not know why. Also the naim uniti does not awake it if it is looking for upnp servers in the net. To be able to wake up the NAS without my smart phone (where it is enough to try opening the NAS in the web browser), I inserted the NAS as a web radio station. When chosing this it wakes up and I can switch over to the upnp channel of the uniti.

 

* The upnp server does not offer upnp search functionality. This e.g. is required for the Android BubbleUPnP app to add random tracks all over the music pool into the playlist.

 

Posted on: 22 June 2013 by Marky Mark

Some alternatives:

 

Intel NUC

Lenovo Q90

 

Next time round will look at the two above plus Asustor. The NUC using the Abel case from Tranquil PC does not need a fan which is a bonus.

 

Will never use Synology, QNAP or WD again that is for sure. With the products above what you are seeing is convergence between the NAS that wants to be a computer and the products of proper computer companies. The NAS companies should have kept the price down and concentrated on quality product for file serving IMO rather than trying to be something they cannot support or sustain.

Posted on: 22 June 2013 by Yippedidou

I'm all Mac and bought LaCie Space 2 at the Apple Store and use the built-in uPnP wired into my SU for 16 months now without any flaws. Never had a problem, is very quiet and cheap... $150 canadian dollars.

 

Thats my definition of good value

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by Madrid

I may be a minority here, but I have found the NAS approach to be quite frustrating:

 

1) Could not play both high res files and convert FLAC to WAV files on the fly (eventually partly solved by leaving FLAC files as they are).

 

2) Had several episodes of drop outs (eventually solved by adding Netgear switch, though it did not solve problem initially).

 

3) Currently, cannot play 90% of my music (after 1.5 months of back and forth with Synology support, they have offered no solution).

 

IMHO, UPnP is still neither universal nor plays when plugged in.

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by Stover

If you choose Naim server with internal discs, can you at a later point set it to work together with a NAS or is it only the SSD version that work with the NAS?

Simple soul, I know 

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by gert
Originally Posted by Madrid:

I may be a minority here, but I have found the NAS approach to be quite frustrating:

 

1) Could not play both high res files and convert FLAC to WAV files on the fly (eventually partly solved by leaving FLAC files as they are).

Yes, I have found this yesterday, too, when I experimented with HD-flac material for the first time. If you let flac to be decoded to wav by the Synology DS213+ NAS the uniti device only reports an error in file format. So I think the NAS cannot handle HD flac correctly. If you turn off the conversion, the uniti is able to play the flac. (At least some of them. The surround sound flacs could not be played.) This is a bit frustrating as just a few days before I had found that the same flac tracks delivered as wav indeed sound a bit better than pure flac.
 

2) Had several episodes of drop outs (eventually solved by adding Netgear switch, though it did not solve problem initially).

I have at least one drop out some seconds (maybe 15 seconds or something like this) after starting to play the first track. I do not know where the problem is. Maybe it is the problematic WLAN. But this one drop out is so regularly that I cannot believe it is the WLAN. The drop out is just about 1/4 second. After this the tracks are played fine. (if not the WLAN network totally breaks meanwhile)

3) Currently, cannot play 90% of my music (after 1.5 months of back and forth with Synology support, they have offered no solution).

Which kind of track formats do you have problems with? If I turn off the NAS format conversion, every file format I own and the uniti should be capable to play, is played fine here: mp3, flac, ogg, wav, etc.

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by gert

If you have problems with some file formats you could try the following settings on the media server "DMA compatibility" tab (I am not sure about the correct wording as I translate it from the german GUI).

 

* Turn off the audio transcoding checkbox

* Turn off the user defined mime types checkbox

* Via the button "device list" you should find the naim device and configure its profile. I am using the "standard profile". You might try out another profile. Depending on this profile the NAS delivers another mime type to the upnp client. E.g. a Sony Bravia TV does not play mkv files, even if they simply contain mpeg4 streams. As the TV is able to play mpeg4 the NAS just tells the TV that the mkv is mpeg4 instead of mkv so the TV is playing the identical stream.

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by Madrid
Originally Posted by gert:
 
 

2) Had several episodes of drop outs (eventually solved by adding Netgear switch, though it did not solve problem initially).

I have at least one drop out some seconds (maybe 15 seconds or something like this) after starting to play the first track. I do not know where the problem is. Maybe it is the problematic WLAN. But this one drop out is so regularly that I cannot believe it is the WLAN. The drop out is just about 1/4 second. After this the tracks are played fine. (if not the WLAN network totally breaks meanwhile)

3) Currently, cannot play 90% of my music (after 1.5 months of back and forth with Synology support, they have offered no solution).

Which kind of track formats do you have problems with? If I turn off the NAS format conversion, every file format I own and the uniti should be capable to play, is played fine here: mp3, flac, ogg, wav, etc.

I believe one must thoroughly research NAS before going this route: I did hard wire the NAS, which limited but did not eliminate the dropouts.

 

I have problems with all file formats.  The Synology csoftware generates a "Can´t Play skipped track" for all formats and they have yet to find a solution (except to tell me that perhaps their NAS won´t work with UPnP!).

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by ameden
Originally Posted by Stover:

If you choose Naim server with internal discs, can you at a later point set it to work together with a NAS or is it only the SSD version that work with the NAS?

Simple soul, I know 

Hi

 

Yes

 

you can use a NAS with the internal HD version of the UServe, either for direct storage of the Rips, or as a back-up of what you have stored on the internal HD.

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by Stover
Thanks Ameden, thats good news.
 
S
 
Originally Posted by ameden:
Originally Posted by Stover:

If you choose Naim server with internal discs, can you at a later point set it to work together with a NAS or is it only the SSD version that work with the NAS?

Simple soul, I know 

Hi

 

Yes

 

you can use a NAS with the internal HD version of the UServe, either for direct storage of the Rips, or as a back-up of what you have stored on the internal HD.

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by Jan-Erik Nordoen
Originally Posted by Stover:

If you choose Naim server with internal discs, can you at a later point set it to work together with a NAS or is it only the SSD version that work with the NAS?

Simple soul, I know 

Hi Steinar,

 

Yes, the HDD version will work with a NAS. Music files stored on network connected hardware ( a NAS or a shared folder on a computer) will be automatically recognized the the U/S.

 

Jan

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by Madrid
Originally Posted by gert:

If you have problems with some file formats you could try the following settings on the media server "DMA compatibility" tab (I am not sure about the correct wording as I translate it from the german GUI).

 

* Turn off the audio transcoding checkbox

* Turn off the user defined mime types checkbox

* Via the button "device list" you should find the naim device and configure its profile. I am using the "standard profile". You might try out another profile. Depending on this profile the NAS delivers another mime type to the upnp client. E.g. a Sony Bravia TV does not play mkv files, even if they simply contain mpeg4 streams. As the TV is able to play mpeg4 the NAS just tells the TV that the mkv is mpeg4 instead of mkv so the TV is playing the identical stream.

Thank you, Gert. I will try this.

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by Jo Sharp

Vortexbox...then you wouldn't need either the Unitiserve or an NAS.  Rips to FLAC, mirrors and downloads album art automatically.  Can playback from it direct to a USB DAC or via an Ethernet network to a streamer.  Job done.

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by Stover
So which one to choose comes down to speed or respons from the disc then?
I have a NAS, but HHD cost less and I see the advantage in having the music in the same box as UPNP, not web dependable. Am I into it?
 
I hope this is helpful for HH as well.
 
Thanks, S
 
Originally Posted by Jan-Erik Nordoen:
Originally Posted by Stover:

If you choose Naim server with internal discs, can you at a later point set it to work together with a NAS or is it only the SSD version that work with the NAS?

Simple soul, I know 

Hi Steinar,

 

Yes, the HDD version will work with a NAS. Music files stored on network connected hardware ( a NAS or a shared folder on a computer) will be automatically recognized the the U/S.

 

Jan

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by Madrid
Originally Posted by gert:

If you have problems with some file formats you could try the following settings on the media server "DMA compatibility" tab (I am not sure about the correct wording as I translate it from the german GUI).

 

* Turn off the audio transcoding checkbox

* Turn off the user defined mime types checkbox

* Via the button "device list" you should find the naim device and configure its profile. I am using the "standard profile". You might try out another profile. Depending on this profile the NAS delivers another mime type to the upnp client. E.g. a Sony Bravia TV does not play mkv files, even if they simply contain mpeg4 streams. As the TV is able to play mpeg4 the NAS just tells the TV that the mkv is mpeg4 instead of mkv so the TV is playing the identical stream.

Yes, audio transcoding off.

Yes, user defined mime off.

Yes, Naim device currently set to "default" profile.

Any suggestions as to which other profile to use? Generic or non-generic DLNA? Synology Audio Station? 

I notice that several other devices are also checked/included on the devices list (including Naim Uniti and Qute, though I do not own either).  Would it make any sense to uncheck these and other devices I  do not have?

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by Jan-Erik Nordoen
Originally Posted by Stover:
So which one to choose comes down to speed or respons from the disc then?
I have a NAS, but HHD cost less and I see the advantage in having the music in the same box as UPNP, not web dependable. Am I into it?

It sounds like it . One advantage of the HDD version is portability of your music collection, with freedom from a network. Very useful for second homes, or for visiting music buddies with nice DACs that you can plug the U/S into. Add screen and mouse and you're done.

Posted on: 25 June 2013 by Stover
I found out, but thanks. Exactly, same as I was thinking. With HDD it becomes very flexible.
It was a relief taking the decision to purchase, it will arrive my place thursday
I will receive a model with current software so it has to be updated by a cd when 1.7 arrives.
 
Originally Posted by Jan-Erik Nordoen:
Originally Posted by Stover:
So which one to choose comes down to speed or respons from the disc then?
I have a NAS, but HHD cost less and I see the advantage in having the music in the same box as UPNP, not web dependable. Am I into it?

It sounds like it . One advantage of the HDD version is portability of your music collection, with freedom from a network. Very useful for second homes, or for visiting music buddies with nice DACs that you can plug the U/S into. Add screen and mouse and you're done.

Posted on: 26 June 2013 by gert
Originally Posted by Madrid:

I notice that several other devices are also checked/included on the devices list (including Naim Uniti and Qute, though I do not own either).  Would it make any sense to uncheck these and other devices I  do not have?

You can remove all entries without any problems. They will be created again automatically on connecting the upnp server the next time.