NAS Placement?

It doesn't matter where the NAS resides on the network so long as the probable HDX can see it through a cable. I have a wireless bridge in the lounge with HDX and NAS plugged into it. This effectively wires them together although they still function within a home network set up. WiFi is only employed when ripping to look up albums. I also stream across WiFi from NAS to office PC and I've never had transmission problems. But I wouldn't hang the HDX on wireless.

Connect NAS to same network switch you connected to your streamer. 

Connect switch to router/modem.

It really doesn't matter where you put the NAS but my preference would be indoors.

If you are rather sensibly using a server rather than a NAS - Vortexbox or WhS/Asset then you can trust them to manage the ripping process - or use your Mac ( or PC if desperate) . If using a NAS I would rip on computer first and then transfer the files.

Tog

Option 2 or 3 for me assuming you have good wireless capabilities, I wouldn't have the NAS near the Hi-Fi unless you are comfortable with the noise (albeit low these days). Locate it somewhere safe, you shouldn't need to physically mess with the NAS once installed.

You really should try and get a wired connection to the streamer

thanks guys, I have to buy a NAS, been advised Synology,  I just don't understand the new connections and how to get the music in the box if it doesn't have a drawer?  I have a friend did IT for large company and used RAIDS.  He wanted me to get a much cheaper RAID because it's just 1 & 0s  I thought I'd better stick with something made to be a music server.

Any advice welcomed

My Advice...

1) Only use Ethernet over Powerline if you are prepared to get up one day and possibly not have that branch of your network connected - Ethernet over Powerline *CANNOT* be guaranteed to work continuously or consistently. The manufacturers will provide best case throughputs and bandwidths but they will make no guarantees as to performance and if they don't work in your property then it's simple enough for them to refund your purchase costs and wash their hands of you. No installer worth his salt would ever use these units as part of an install without making sure that he is not responsible for them maintaining any level of performance or connection.

2) You can get exterior grade (UV resistant) CAT5e - this can be routed through walls and around the exterior of a property in the same way that TV aerial or Satellite cable can be. You wouldn't connect up your HiFi with straightened out coat-hanger wire and paper-clips so don't cut corners on your network just because it seems like a good idea with no downsides - there are in fact many!

3) My recommendation is to go with a QNAP or NetGear NAS ... the Synology's are fine but they do have quite an "odd" way of defining shares and how they fit within the folder structure of the NAS and you can (if you don't understand exactly what you're doing) end up with nested shares which isn't good.

Cheers

Phil

Mudwolf, i have a Synology NAS. It comes with an app already built in called "media server". You just install it like any app and it creates three shared folders for you to use. One called "music". If you web browse to the NAS using windows explorer, other browsers are available , then open the folders icon, you can just drag and drop your music folders into it. It really is that simple. As for the raid side of things follow the quick start guide when you first boot up the NAS and accept the defaults and it kinda does it all for you.

+1 for Synology. Qnap was a major pain to use, and the synology build quality is better.

Love my Synology DS212 with its DSM Ver. 4 software.  No issues to date.

Please remember that running RAID is *NOT* a substitute for backup - it only covers you for the failure of a single drive in a RAID array (unless you are using RAID6 which covers you for two failed drives). When a RAID array is running in a degraded state (i.e. with a failed drive) then your datas vulnerability is much increased as a failure of *ANY* of the remaining drives will result in the loss of all data across all drives.

For this reason I tend to prefer to use multiple smaller NAS that run twin (mirrored) drives and have multiple music stores (across multiple NAS). As our servers do aggregate music across many sources then the end user still only sees one music source (i.e. doesn't have to remember where the music is actually held physically) but the data is less vulnerable.

Remember - £300 on a NAS and a couple of large drives might feel a lot of money to use just as backup if you're all nice and snuggly in the feeling that your RAIDed server will protect you from all ills, but if I could bottle up the smell of toasted power supplies and the gut-wrenching sick-to-the-pit-of-your-stomach feeling that goes along with it when you have a NAS die on you then £300 will feel like a bargain.

Phil

Hi all, wow you've given me a lot to think about, thank you.  I've been thinking about putting my pop,rock, country  and jazz on one raid, and classical on another raid because I have 15 operas. I have a friend up the street who was IT and worked with Raids to help me set it up.

Is there a website for how to set these things up? Important info and terms defined?

my one ethernet is taken up by Netgear router for iRadio, I had mom's iMac in one of the 3 left optional inputs with a HiFace but the hiface was stollen with computer, they left a very expensive cable tho into the system.  I'll try to put a pic up here. Successful

TT Clearaudio

ND5xs

LFD pre/amp

DVD player

Superline and new Hicap

555PS

the right cubby hole is Cable box with DVR it can be moved to another one 5' on right.

If the Raid is tall it can go in corner behind Harbeth speaker, most of that cable is useless and going to come out. or behind TV to right. hope the pic helps, I just went thru a major upgrade in apartment and great paint job, still getting things back in place.

spent half the day researching NAS and reading reviews of hard drives. My head hurt at one point with reviews.  Finally on Synology site I read the 411slim is meant for music server, very quiet and low power use, and they gave a number of 2.5"  harddrives that work well on their machine, I'll go for 1T ones.  Now to order it, but I'd rather go to a shop and have them set it up.  There's a whole Synology forum, oh my oh my!

I've got the Synology 212+. it's not quite, but that's ok, since I have it up in the laundry room.

They're quiet enough not to bother me - I have a Vigin Media V+ HD box in my living room and it is louder than the Duo v2 that I had at home recently.

Remember that very few NAS are built to be silent, they are built to be reliable and that generally means that they will produce some fan noise at times if they need to cool themselves more for whatever reason so if that's going to bother you then put it somewhere where its noise won't be an issue ... they can always be tucked out of the way behind a sofa or in a TV stand or so on.

Phil

First thing that I noticed about the 411 Slim is that the cooling fan is underneath blowing up into the unit - I'd be a bit concerned about dust getting pulled up into it but otherwise it seems like a reasonable unit.

Remember that 2.5" drives are more expensive than 3.5" drives and ideally you'll fit it out with 4 identical capacity drives from the start so that you can set up your RAID5/6 array from the outset and also I'll repeat the old mantra - RAID is no substitute for backup.

Phil

I put all my music on a separate drive in my PC, i make a copy of this drive regularly and store it in the garage. I then copy the music from my PC to mirrored drives in the NAS for access from the ND5, You can't have enough back ups .

There is no way im ever going through this ripping process again

I also have multiple backups, which begs the question: what's the point of Raid (of any sort) for our purposes as music streamers? I can't think of any.

True Pev, but my music collection is hundreds of megs, so if i can avoid having to resend this to the NAS again all the better.

The purpose of RAID is twofold...

Firstly to maintain (as far as possible) data availability within a system by reducing the likelyhood of the data becoming unavailable due to the failure of one of the devices that are inherently more likely to fail - hence "RAID" - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Discs.

Secondly to allow the user a way to conveniently maintain a physically larger "bucket" of data than would be available by using single drives.

Cheers

Phil

Also its totally geek awesomeness. Which is the most important thing.

Fair points - especially  Garyi  but I did carefully say "for our purposes". A single 2tb external hard drive can be bought for well under £100 and would hold a complete music backup for most people. Of course RAID has its uses but it's far from necessary in a music context for most people. I have  taught computing at a university for over 20 years and am getting a bit concerned that this forum is liable to scare some people off the wonderful world of digitised music. 

I enjoy the discussion on arcane topics such as managed versus unmanaged switches and cat5 versus cat6 and very much appreciate the expertise that is so freely shared  but I am concerned that people will get the impression that it is all impenetrably technical and unreliable. I don't have an easy solution to this - certainly not a dumbing down - but one of the posts above appears to conflate RAID and NAS so there is clear evidence of confusion. I can sympathise with the many forum members who are sticking with CD largely through technofear when it really can be very easy and very reliable. Poor dealer support for networked products is another hurdle - some are excellent but the 2 nearest me talk complete b*ll*cks when questioned about such issues so I use a dealer 100 miles away.