NAS Drive Recommendation

You'll find many recommendations on the forum for various, mostly Synology and QNAP NAS's. There are also a few who use ReadyNAS, and my dealer swears by them, and uses them exclusively. So I'd say that you could continue with your existing NAS, although at 7 years old, maybe a replacement isn't such a bad idea. Either way, Western Digital Red drives have long been the recommendation here, so I would go with those in either a new NAS or your old one.

Personally, I prefer to use a single drive NAS, and keep a separate backup elsewhere.

agree with Chris either NAS

I have QNAP HS 210 with x2 WD 2tb Mirrored - also as Chris mentioned have seperate back up on Segate hardrive

either would be a good choice, I would also look at Asset i started with Twonky but moved to Asset prefer it to be honest

Thanks Gents. I was looking at Netgear compatibility page for ReadyNas Duo and it mention WD Caviar Green  - I've seen Red mentioned on the Forum before but WD appear to have Red, Black, Green  - confusing or what !

btw - it would only be one NAS to replace this one and use a usb backup device to back everything up

How does asset work - is this just software installed on the PC?

I use a ReadyNAS with its inbuilt UPnP DLNA player, which although doesn’t transcode, sounds really good with my Naim streamer... I also use Asset but run it on a RaspberryPi and mount the NAS across the network. The ReadyNAS 212 that I use is wonderfully quiet, and hassle free... it just works...

Don't get a Zyxel NSA325. I did when I first went streaming, simply choosing a cheap NAS, but regretting doing so because it was very noisy - intrusive in the listening room, and indeed anywhere except in a cupboard on the landing. If I were buying a straight NAS now I'd consider a silent one like QNap.

An alternative could be to use a headless Mac Mini if you have one knocking around or have other uses for what more it can do than a plain NAS (it  is as near silent as makes no difference, its fan only audible from about a foot away in a quiet room, and happy to stay on permanently.  That is actually exactly what I did, finding it worked excellently as a NAS for a while before subsequently converting it  to running a renderer on it and reaping the benefits of a combined store-renderer. However if going the store-renderer route there are others that are also worthy of consideration, but that is a slightly different subject.

Re drives, Red, or for truly silent SSD.

iburnell posted:

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo purchased 2010 with 2 Seagate Baracuda 1TB drive (x-raid). I store my PC data, software and music via Twonky (acceptable!). Getting message that one of the disks is failing so I'm researching replacement disks. I'm at 94% capacity so was thinking of going up to 2TB. The disks are quite pricey at least £100 plus

So my thought turned to whether it worth spending money on that or buying a new unit with 2x 2TB drives

Any recommendations please ?

Are you looking at Seagates specifically? I just looked and you can get WD Reds 2 TB for about 80 Euros. The 3 TB is about 100 Euros. I run Asset UPNP on a HP Microserver in Microsoft Server 2012 R2 nowadays. I have had it running on an DIY unraid box and Synology and Qnap NAS. All my servers are in a separate room so noise is not a problem.

I have a ReadyNAS Duo, it works well with my Naim Unitiqte. I also have a Xiva Musicm8, i changed it to 2Tb drive, but could not get the xiva software to reinstall, so i use Vortexbox with it. I also keep a backup on a USB drive. You need to keep an off site backup of your music library, say at USB drive somewhere else. The ReadyNAS has a 2Tb driver in it, i have over 1000 ripped albums, still have plenty of space

Replaced my 2008 ReadyNAS Duo with a Synology DS716 last year and added Minimserver in, which was a breeze, together with Minimwatch on a PC. Cat 6 wired through to my NC-N172XS and a MuSo. Minimserver gives me all those things that used to be easy with a record collection - like sorting by name, then chronologically - so difficult with many solutions!

I have 2 x 3GB WD Reds, 1 of which reported the odd bad sector, almost from day 1. I have just replaced it under warranty after the best part of a year (it has a 3 year warranty). Again it was so easy - the 716 supports hot swapping and the Synology SHR Raid managed the installation of the replacement disc with a minimum of intervention. WD's advance replacement allowed me to changeover quickly and return the old disc in the new packaging.

I also changed the ReadyNAS Duo before it failed which again made the process a lot more straightforward.

PhilipH posted:

Replaced my 2008 ReadyNAS Duo with a Synology DS716 last year and added Minimserver in, which was a breeze, together with Minimwatch on a PC. Cat 6 wired through to my NC-N172XS and a MuSo. Minimserver gives me all those things that used to be easy with a record collection - like sorting by name, then chronologically - so difficult with many solutions!

I have 2 x 3GB WD Reds, 1 of which reported the odd bad sector, almost from day 1. I have just replaced it under warranty after the best part of a year (it has a 3 year warranty). Again it was so easy - the 716 supports hot swapping and the Synology SHR Raid managed the installation of the replacement disc with a minimum of intervention. WD's advance replacement allowed me to changeover quickly and return the old disc in the new packaging.

I also changed the ReadyNAS Duo before it failed which again made the process a lot more straightforward.

 

 

 

Minimserver is also a good solution yes. Does it update automatically when new files are added to the library?

I also have 2 x 3 TB WD Reds in a Readynas Ultra, a few years old by now, no bad sectors so far. NAS and disks are pretty quiet, except when starting up after a shutdown.

Would definitely go for 3 TB, only a few ££ more than 2 TB and you would be pretty futureproof with this extra capacity. 

Claus

iburnell posted:

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo purchased 2010 with 2 Seagate Baracuda 1TB drive (x-raid). I store my PC data, software and music via Twonky (acceptable!). Getting message that one of the disks is failing so I'm researching replacement disks. I'm at 94% capacity so was thinking of going up to 2TB. The disks are quite pricey at least £100 plus

So my thought turned to whether it worth spending money on that or buying a new unit with 2x 2TB drives

Any recommendations please ?

Hi,

If you are happy with your ReadyNAS Duo then you could always just swap in (one at a time allowing the unit to do a rebuild between each) a couple of 2TB drives - that would be your cheapest solution. There's nothing wrong with the Duo's and I still have a couple in use at home doing sterling service.

Of course they are getting a bit long in the tooth but NetGear no longer do a "cheap" ReadyNAS that you can replace it with - the last one was the 102 but that seems to have been discontinued and the cheapest one available now seems to be the 202 and that looks like £200+ without drives.

Alternatively you could go for a QNAP or Synology and again pop in a couple of 2TB drives.

Whichever way you go you're looking at a minimum "outlay" of 2 x 2TB drives and if you want to replace the NAS too then a reasonable 2 bay QNAP or Synology will be the thick end of £200 too.

Cheers

Phil

I'm not sure that it always does, but a Refresh from Minimwatch is all that is required if not.

Well I use a the WD single disk Mycloud 4 TB and generally it is pretty good.....twonky did go a bit wonky ... but I did an update and now all is good...... 

I just buy CDs.  They never need replacing (allegedly)

The Naim's Dave posted:

I just buy CDs.  They never need replacing (allegedly)

 

But if you have a decent collection, they do take up an awful amount of space in the living room!

The Naim's Dave posted:

I just buy CDs.  They never need replacing (allegedly)

 

Is your NAS a big CD autochanger then?

Phil Harris posted:

iburnell posted:

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo purchased 2010 with 2 Seagate Baracuda 1TB drive (x-raid). I store my PC data, software and music via Twonky (acceptable!). Getting message that one of the disks is failing so I'm researching replacement disks. I'm at 94% capacity so was thinking of going up to 2TB. The disks are quite pricey at least £100 plus

So my thought turned to whether it worth spending money on that or buying a new unit with 2x 2TB drives

Any recommendations please ?

Hi,

If you are happy with your ReadyNAS Duo then you could always just swap in (one at a time allowing the unit to do a rebuild between each) a couple of 2TB drives - that would be your cheapest solution. There's nothing wrong with the Duo's and I still have a couple in use at home doing sterling service.

Of course they are getting a bit long in the tooth but NetGear no longer do a "cheap" ReadyNAS that you can replace it with - the last one was the 102 but that seems to have been discontinued and the cheapest one available now seems to be the 202 and that looks like £200+ without drives.

 

Indeed the 102 seems to have been replaced by the 202, but what I would say - and I have just been listening to re affirm  - the media player on the ReadNAS, ReadyDLNA sounds better than Asset or MinimServer running on a Pi, Mac or PC. I have posted before the observable differences with the inter frame timing on the network and the better consistency with the ReadyNAS/ReadyDLNA - and this improvement still sounds apparent with the latest streamer firmware on the NDX. 

A few days ago I installed MinimServer on my ReadyNAS because the naim app could not show music tracks with Danish/German characters in the name when streaming from ReadyDLNA. Showed empty lines in the album’s track list and could not be selected to play. Funny enough when playing whole album these tracks were played perfectly and the titles were shown perfectly on the ND5 display as well. 

With MinimServer the letters are shown correctly both places. 

To hear that sound is better with ReadyDLNA was not what I was hoping for ....

claus 

Thanks for the replies which I have read with interest

I've been researching and at the moment favour buying a QNAP TS251-A. It comes in about £590 with 2x3TB WD Red which is quite pricey but it will cost about £200 to buy WD Red drives anyway

I am interested to read your reply Simon about the ReadyDLNA . I f I do go for the QNAP does it come with any proprietary DLNA or do you still have to install something else ? 

I use the TS 253A, which is excellent. You can get it for £537, including two 3TB drives, from Broadbandbuyer dot com. That’s where I got mine from, and they are very efficient. The upnp to go for is Asset, which is easy to install, flexible and good to use. 

I have a TS251-A. It does come with a DLNA server but as HH says, Asset can be run on the Qnap which is what I have done for the past year, but the built in player is perfectly acceptable. I am a recent convert to Roon and that pretty much supercedes Asset for me now, no big deal as it was only £20 or so.

The QNAP has been faultless and I really like the HD Station feature which enables connection to a TV via HDMI and runs web browsers, Kodi and many other apps. It has now completely replaced my purpose built media PC - quite an unexpected bonus. I got mine with two 3TB drives and have them set as Raid 1 - this was a dumb move as Raid is not a backup and I am using most of  the capacity now so I'm about to reconfigure. Best to configure as JBOD and use an externa usb drive for backup - there is a 1 touch button for this.

An excellent NAS!