New QNAP NAS

Am thinking about the Qnap 219 2tb solution for about £440. Have heard good reports of Qnap but they seem pricey - I thought £440 was a bit steep let alone £1000.

I know there are a number of NAS drive threads plus the Naim test tool. How much difference can the NAS drive make? Provided you have a back up does it matter much? Do we need to spend £400 -£1000 on a NAS drive, especially if it is just for streaming music domestically rather than serving an entire commercial network?

As garyi says, it's a cost / benefit analysis. My thinking process was as follows:

Loads of Googling to see which brands seemed to be getting the most positive feedback from real users. QNAP were well liked and respected, so I looked at their range of NAS units.

4 drives seemed the sweepspot for my needs - 5 would have been nice as I could have built a RAID 6 volume and gained a bit more resiliance without losing more space to store the extra parity info, but the extra cost to insure against 2 almost simultaneous failures seemed over the top.

My justification for the top of the range 4 drive NAS was:

Dual core processor - I intend to run a few additional services on the NAS such as Squeezebox Server, and potentially move my mail server over as well, so a bit more processing horse power seemed desirable.

Upgradable memory - again, if I start more services this removes a potential bottleneck.

SATA 6Gb/s support - don't need this yet, but potential future proofing for when I run out of space on my current 4 1Tb drives and look to upgrade. I suspect by then there will be more faster enterprise class drives available at affordable prices.

USB3 support - faster backups!

So, as a 4-5 year investment, £1k to allow top class performance today, and the ability for at least 1 upgrade, seemed worth it.

If you just want a simple NAS for streaming and nothing else then this is probably over the top, but whatever you decide keep a separate back up as RAID is not perfect. Ripping hundreds of CDs again, and losing thousands of my photos would seriously p*ss me off!

I recently visited a retailer who had specified the QNAP TS-212, and, frankly, I nearly bought one–quiet, solidly built, and relatively easy to set up.

Am thinking about the Qnap 219 2tb

I took delivery today of a QNap 219p and 2x2tb Seagate drives. Good build quality and looks good too.  I assembled everything easily and have followed the instructions but so far it has been five and a half hours "initialising" and it still hasn't finished.

My Qnap TS-412 arrived yesterday all assembled with two Seagate 1Tb Constellation drives in it.  I took the plunge after visiting the Heathrow show and talking to Technical support.  They had a Qnap TS-410 on display and recommended it.  Despite having had two serious doses of cancer I reckon that I am a reasonably lucky individual (I am reminded constantly by my wife....) and do not envisage a double failure so I am going to risk life and limb and rely on Raid 0 until such time as I feel the need to fill the remaining slots.  I have Mac and PC systems in the house.  The Qnap forum seems very helpful as well for those like myself who are not particularly technically minded.  Hoping to set my system up this weekend.

SteveT

Go raid five!

I have the TS410 so let me know if you need anything, I have pretty much set mine up to the max, with offsite login and the likes. A great device.

so far it has been five and a half hours "initialising" and it still hasn't finished.

Well for some reason it took for ever and still didn't work, so I was thinking "no marks" for ease of use and send it back. I then checked the Qnap forum and found a suggestion about removing disk one and trying a different disk.. I took out the new Seagate and used an older 1tb WD disk.

It worked and everything configured.I  have now managed to put the original Seagate disk in and managed to get the NAS to respond. I  am hopefully now configuring it as Raid 1.

I hope to be able to put some music on it eventually! Why is nothing as straightforward as it seems??

Cheers DaveBk 

I plan on setting up the system, creating accounts etc and generally familiarizing myself with how to use it as I am no technie by any stretch of the imagination.  When I am comfortable with all the protocols and it has settled down I will invest in two more drives and go RAID 5, thanks for that garyi.  I want everything to be as simple as possible to start with........  but thanks again for your advice.  Much appreciated.

SteveT

I hope to be able to put some music on it eventually! Why is nothing as straightforward as it seems??

 

it took ages to copy the music over from a USB hard drive but the NAS is now set up. I copied the music in to a sub folder within the "Multimedia" folder and assumed I would automatically be able to stream from the sub folder. But no, I had to go through the Admin page sharing route to enable sharing from the sub folder.

I put the music in a sub folder as I want to be able to compare the pc rips I have transferred with the new rips I will make when I get my Unitiserve ssd and NDX. That way I can more easily compare and decide whether I need to to re-rip anything.

As for the NAS,  I think I was a bit unlucky with the initial set up but it is well built, neat and quiet and I am hopeful it will do what I want.

I've been running my TS-409U for two years and I cannot fault it. Using 4 x 1.5TB seagates in RAID5, it is plenty powerful enough to stream music to several zones, as well as ripped DVD and Blu-ray movies.

Easy to configure, manage, and use. I've taken the precaution of putting it on an APC UPS for peace of mind.

Current up-time: 106 days (since I shut it down to go on holiday). Thinking about it, my SuperNait up-time is 106 days too! 

Was curious to how successful you are at watching ripped blu-ray movies.  Do you have to watch on a computer or do you have a Blu ray player which will play ripped video files.

I have an Oppo 93 which can connect and play network files but I believe it will not play video files.

Thanks

I have two Samsung LED tv's with their 'SmartHub'. The tv's are internet connected and DLNA enabled, so I can stream music, pictures, and movies directly to them with having any other boxes to worry about. They work brilliantly, but it took a bit of time getting the file formats right. The beauty of the SmartHub is that I can also connect directly to the BBC iPlayer and to LoveFilm and stream straight to the tv.

Ripping my blu-rays has been the biggest challenge though , whereas dvd's have always been very straight forward.

The only thing I haven't sussed yet it how to stream blu-ray to my son's PS3; only because I haven't found a compatible file format for both PS3 and Samsung, so that I only have one ripped copy to serve both devices. The search goes on...