NAS / HD setup, what to buy?

I have a MacMini/SuperNait combo, and was using a Thecus N299 for a while, but it was so noisy I could probably have installed it in my neighbours shed and still be disturbed by it.
My Netgear ReadyNAS Duo with two 2Tb drives in situ on the other hand is extremely quiet, and although not in my listening room is certainly quieter than most PCs or Sky boxes.
Highly recommended . . . .

John

Right wing, not sure if you are a PC or Mac user, but if yu use PCs you might be interested in the Acer Easystore H340

I just picked one up for £200 with 1.2tb and its a full blown home server anlong with being about to sit there and hold music it activly backs up pcs on the network, I added a usb cd drive and it happily rips with dbpoweramp

It will happily run ssd and has a total of 4 slots for hds

Altogther a bargain in my eyes

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo (bought as it was on the Naim "approved" list) with 2 1TB Seagate drives(£260 in all) - has worked faultlessly with a UnitiServe and apart from some fan noise for a few secs on start up is virtually silent. It is a very neat enclosure and comes with good control software for managing the drives (auto on/off, back up etc).
Highly recommended!

Nick

If you use a NAS as it was surely intended then noise should not be an issue. Mine lives in the garage.

QNAP TS410, great device. The prices of solid state would make your NAS extremely expensive. 1.5tb drives are 50 quid now. 4 of them in a qnap gives you 4.5tb of storage. If a drive fails replace it. They are supposed to be good for 5 years, but even at half that replacing the occasional drive is far far cheaper than 4.5tb of solid state.

Netgear publish a list of compatible Hard Disks for their NAS:

http://www.readynas.com/?cat=37

It does not include any SSDs!

I only found this list after my first Samsung Spinpoint 1.5TB failed during the first month.

I have also got a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo with a pair of Western Digital 2tb Green Drives in Raid 1. I'm running Twonky on it as it seems to work better than ReadyDLNA. I have also replaced the standard fan with a Fractal Designs one which has made a small reduction in noise making it almost completely inaudible. SSD in a NAS would be way over your budget of £400.

Dave

I have been running the Acer Easystore H340 Ocean mentions for about 4 months now with nary a hiccup. Has 4 x 1TB HDDs, operates using built in Windows Home Server software which manages PC backups and a file duplication facilty. I also use RipNas with an attachable USB DVD Rom drive. Currently have about 25,000 tracks on mine.

As Gary says large capacity SSD's are very expensive and in this application of no benefit. Plan to site your NAS in another room from your HiFi. Though very quiet mine sits in the kitchen

Thanks guys for all of your input.

I am a mac user, I appreciate that the SSDs are more expensive but I was under the impression that they are better? [i am hitting on audio aspects].

Could I use a single SSD, along with a few other HDDs for non music stuff?

many thanks

You are looking at £160 ish for an 80gb drive with ssd. When you say you want a mixture of ssd and non ssd drives this won't work in raid very well, if indeed at all. Are you wanting a NAS or adding drives to your mac?

Dave

quote:

Originally posted by Right Wing:
Could I use a single SSD, along with a few other HDDs for non music stuff?

If you have a ReadyNAS Duo with two disk drives, you can either have raid where the disks are mirrored and the available space is determined by the smallest disk, or no raid in which case you have two disks and you can have different data on each one. That does what you ask.

However if you gave me an SSD I would put it in my computer to make it run faster. I would not put it in my NAS as I can see no reason why I might be able to hear any difference!

quote:

Originally posted by Nick Watson:
I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo (bought as it was on the Naim "approved" list)

Where can I find that list?
Tried searching Naim homepage as well as on Naimnet...nothing on "nas" "readynas" or "duo"

Try here, in the sticky topics in this section

NAIM tested NAS drives

I would go for a AssetNas (google to find it), about 400£
Up to 2TB of storage, dead quiet and really reliable.
Mine is running now for over two years and never had a problem. It's sitting on my Fraim and it's really quiet.

Kikatek are currently selling 2tb ready nas duos for £157....

quote:

Originally posted by DavidJL:
Try here, in the sticky topics in this section

NAIM tested NAS drives

Thanks David!

Hi,
last Saturday I bought a UnitiQute and attached via Ethernet a LaCie Wireless Space. That way I can use the optimal connection between Qute and NAS while the NAS is accessible for all other devices via WiFi. Qute and the LaCie UPnP server (whatever it may be) seamlessly work together.
Gottfried

Surely you loose a fair amount of functionality doing it all arse to face like that?

All this is fine as long as you remember RAID is not backup - I have had too many RAID drives go bad to realise that often the problem is electrical and can damage the whole unit. Don't bother with RAID anymore but do bother with paranoid backup plan.

Tog

quote:

Originally posted by gsh:
Hi,
last Saturday I bought a UnitiQute and attached via Ethernet a LaCie Wireless Space. That way I can use the optimal connection between Qute and NAS while the NAS is accessible for all other devices via WiFi. Qute and the LaCie UPnP server (whatever it may be) seamlessly work together.
Gottfried

Hi Gottfried, using this setup, no problems playing hi-res music? I'm also very tempted to get the Lacie Wireless Space.Plus it looks good

quote:

Originally posted by Tog:
All this is fine as long as you remember RAID is not backup - I have had too many RAID drives go bad to realise that often the problem is electrical and can damage the whole unit. Don't bother with RAID anymore but do bother with paranoid backup plan.

Tog

Absolutely Tog - Glad to see that someone understands that RAID doesn't mean they can just sit back and relax!

I have my main 26Tb Windows Home server (called "Moe") which contains all my data running with all folders duplicated.

My media collections (BluRays, DVDs and CDs) are incrementally backed up weekly (as my media collection doesn't change that much) to a separate (unduplicated) 12Tb Windows Home Server (called "Apu") that wakes up once a week to do a backup of the main server and then goes to sleep again - it runs on a collection of the older 1Tb drives that have been rotated out of the main server as the main one has been expanded with 2Tb drives.

My personal documents and photos from the main server are backed up nightly to a small NAS (called "Martha") running two (mirrored) 1.5Tb drives.

The next stage is to have my documents and photos folders on "Martha" remotely synchronised to a folder on a friends Windows Home Server some 75 miles away in Guildford (I will also have a copy of his documents and photos on my NAS in a reciprocal arrangement with him) - the daily updates to these folders are generally quite small in real terms and will generally take only a few minutes to transfer each day.

Might sound a bit OTT but when you have faced the "stomach in knots" feeling of coming home after a weekend away to find your home smelling of fried electronics, your server with a blown PSU and the fear that it *MAY* have taken out motherboards, controllers, drives and 20+Tb of data with it as it died then suddenly it becomes much less frivolous ... the last time I rebuilt my server I was copying data back to it for almost two weeks and that's running gigabit LAN everywhere!

Phil

quote:

Originally posted by Right Wing:
Thanks guys for all of your input.

I am a mac user, I appreciate that the SSDs are more expensive but I was under the impression that they are better? [i am hitting on audio aspects].

Could I use a single SSD, along with a few other HDDs for non music stuff?

many thanks

Without wanting to make any claims of suitability and appropriateness there's an awful lot of "kit" in between the storage device in a NAS drive and the player - there's generally at least 4 network interfaces and one network switch not to mention the hardware in the NAS itself so from a purely practical standpoint I would suggest that putting an SSD into a NAS might be a little unnecessary...

Phil

Phil

I finally feel like I am not the only one in the world with very comprehensive back up procedures! My backups are pretty much exactly as yours even the *arrangement* albeit with a few less TB and some additional cloud storage.

I feel normal again!

Phew Phil I thought I was paranoid!

Tog

quote:

Originally posted by Tog:
Phew Phil I thought I was paranoid!

Tog

I know what you mean but you know as well as I do it's not paranoia.

Hard discs *DO* fail, power supplies *DO* fail, break-ins *DO* happen and computers (and servers) *DO* get stolen.

My "backup" WHS box is basically built of the bits that have been upgraded in the main WHS box so is essentially "free" (or I can tell myself it is) and it's a horrible feeling having a big repositry of data vanish on you even if you can re-rip it all again...

Phil

@ Phil

How do you find WHS - in terms of it working with Naim kit?

Tog