Do I need a NAS Drive instead of my FireWire affair?

Posted by: The Author on 06 November 2013

 Hi All

 

I need a recommendation for a NAS Drive. Currently I’m using a Western Digital My Book Studio Two FireWire external hard drive connected to my iMac - ouch.

 

A few months back, I accidentally selected this drive to do a ‘SuperDuper’ back up to (SuperDuper is a cloning tool for Mac), and erased all my music  fills, replacing them with a clown of my main hard drive - ouch.

 

Now, I’m going to have to sit by my computer and re-import three large boxes of CDs (so glad I didn’t sell them). 

 

Now, as I want this to be the last time I do this, I figured the computer hard drive I’m currently using is probably not the best route as I need to have my computer on to play music.

 

I’ve heard Qnap are pretty good and was thinking of a TS-220 with a couple of 2TB Western Digital RED drives in. I’ve heard the WD RED drives are for server purposes and can run all day and they don’t get hot and they run quiet. Also, I doubt I will need more than 2TB space. Also, if I have 2 x 2TB drives mirrored I will also have the safety of a back up.

 

Finally, I am sure this won’t make any difference, but although all my amps are Naim (Olive series 250, 72 and hi-cap) my streamer is a Linn Magic. 

 

Is the Qnap the way to go?

  

Oh yes, one more thing. On an Apple Mac, what software would you recommend for A. Ripping and B. Sorting. I have been using iTunes with Apple's AAC Lossless codec, but I've heard that FLAC is the way to to, which iTunes does not support. So, any recommendations for ripping software and software alternative to iTunes that can play back FLAC files on my Mac? I'm using Linn Kinsky for my Majik DS.

 

Any suggestions or feedback before I spend £495 with Ripcaster.co.uk would be greatly received.

 

Thanks all.

Posted on: 06 November 2013 by hafler3o

Sorry to hear of your disaster!

 

If you are going to shop at ripcaster the only recommendation I'd make is Naim's own, that if you have to use something that isn't theirs, get AssetNAS ! Looks like a bin but works well...

Posted on: 08 November 2013 by SeanC

Hi, The Author.  Just thought I'd point out that even if you have a RAID 1 array on the NAS you don't strictly speaking "have the safety of a back up".  Agreed, you have made the NAS resilient against a single disk failure.  However, I work in IT and I've seen many a NAS "bricked" where the RAID controller has failed causing both disks to become unreadable.  Do yourself a favour and get all your music backed up in one way or another - there are loads of cloud backup alternatives these days.  Or buy a large external hard disk and back up from the NAS to that via the USB connection - update the back up every 3 or 6 months and you'll have something to fall back on if the worst happens.  If you have a Synology NAS it has a built in Amazon S3 connector, so you can backup your music in the cloud for around 9.5p/GB.