What NAS are you using?

Majority are also using WD Red.

I haven't tried the Raspberry Pi running Asset, but the Apple crumble running custard is rather nice!

Sorry guys, well it is wine o'clock!

I too am using a fan less NAS. QNAP HS-210 with 2 x Samsung 850 1Tb SSD drives. I did this because I wanted it next to my UnitiServe SSD in the Naim Fraim. Clearly, I didn't want noisy drives, vibration or heat.

All this backed up by QNAP TS-220 with 2 x WD Red 1Tb drives In another room. All RAID 0 setup.

Very happy, works flawlessl. NAS to NAS backup using QNAP onboard utility is simplicity itself.

I sent my 1 TB uServe to AVOptions here in the States, and they upgraded it to the 2 TB spec.  This was just after the 2 TB version came out. There are a few parts upgrades besides the bigger HD and the software update to permit the Downloads folder.  A very worthwhile upgrade IMHO.

I have 2 different ReadyNas Duo devices (Original and new rn102). The hardware is nice.  I am using logitech media server since I also have 2 Squeezebox devices.  

QNAP TS-410 with WD Red 2TB HDDs running Minimserver into NDS. And yes I do recommend it but then I would, wouldn't I? 

I decided to treat myself to a QNAP TS-470 with it's 4GB RAM and Intel processor. Minimserver didn't run so well. It was a bit laggy and clunky at times. Not a big loss because I now use the 470 for video with a WDTV box - lovely. 

The 410 with it's 256MB RAM and rinky dinky Arm processor runs all my stuff (up to 24/192) just fine. It never plays up.

Synology DS212+ with 2x 4Tb WD reds in 3 Volumes (for off-site backups from other NAS). Minimserver as UPnP and Synology mediaserver (for movies). Off-site backups through OpenVPN to other NAS at different location. Yes, Synology is ok. Takes some time to set everything up.

Synology DS214play

DSM 5.1-5022 update 2

WD Red 2 x 4TB in RAID-1 hybrid

(Feeds UnitiServe SSD)

Also run MinimServerDSM in parallel for TV and separate AV system.

This is my second Synology NAS (previously used DS212 with 2 x Caviar Green (2TB) in RAID-1 hybrid) - upgraded as I ran out of disc space, and a colleague at work made me a good offer of very near the price I paid.

Everything backed up to multiple Samsung M3 USB3 2TB passport drives which are rotated regularly with off-site storage.  Seems to work well.

ATB.  George.

QNAP421 with 4 x 3TB WD Red running both Asset (Rock/Jazz etc) and Minimserver (Classical) for flexibility between browsing tree structures.

QNAP TS-459 Pro II

4 x 3TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 SATA3

Raid 5 Config

At the time (2011) the 3TB was the largest HD size, now they do 6TB.  If I was doing it again now, I would get a QNAP TS-670 Pro (6 bay) with 6TB HD's. Plenty of space for now and future of music, films, photos, software+ 

Within 5 years I foresee having to get new larger HD's or more likely new HDs and new NAS unit and my current NAS will be put to 'backup' duties. That currently falls to several external LaCie 2/3TB HD's.  They would be '3rd backup'

A few people have raised an important point - Backup

Backup is important as all NAS will fail - sometime; and also people make mistakes.  Please note that RAID is not a substitute for backup.

In my case

Tier 1

Additional hard drive in my PC (Seagate I think)

Tier 2

External USB hard drive (WD)

Tier 3 (Off-site)

Large USB flash drives (PNY and Sandisk),  these are kept in my car.

+1, three copies minimum with one off site

Unraid NAS

Another Snology user here 213j  > 2x WD 4TB Red  very happy with it, once set up very easy to use. 

+1 Yup, you don't know what you've got til its gone...  In twenty years of PC work, I've had one HD disk fail (laptop) and one power unit for an external HD.  You get what you pay for, but for travel SSD is certainly better against bumps and drops, if only the price was as good as spinning disk. 

My folks have an older backup 'off continent' and my inlaws have off site in the city.  I don't trust the cloud for this volume of data (other than pulling down from iTunes / UV ). 

But in all honestly, its pictures I'm more worried about backing up than music, which ultimately I could buy again, it would just take great cost (insurance hassle) and time. And as time goes on, it's more family pictures/video at higher res that takes up more space.

Some, just a few, have mentioned using single-bay nas's.  The default for most multi-bay nas boxes seems to be a RAID setup.

Query:  For the home hi fi enthusiast, is a RAID setup the best option?  Obviously 2 x 2tb WD Red drives only gives me 2 tb of storage, with the 'redundancy' of a RAID setup.  Just how useful is this to me?  Factor in that I am faithful to my backups and if my nas melted into a puddle I'd not lose any important data.  And factor in that, within the useful life of me and my nas, I will suffer a HD failure in the nas.  One has to plan for that.

Personally I have never bothered with raid.  I'd prefer to get the full amount of space available from my drives and to back up (several times) elsewhere.

RAID attempts to fix one thing only: HDD failure.  If the NAS drive controller fails it's quite likely to corrupt (or blow) all the HDDs in the array.  Even if it doesn't or the NAS enclosure fails in another way, it's often the case that moving a RAID formatted disk set to another RAID NAS enclosure won't work, unless the enclosure is identical (or almost so).

Personally for home use where you don't have multiple UPSs, redundant power supplies, redundant controllers and hot swap disks, I think 2 backups (minimum) are worth 10 times the value of RAID.  RAID isn't useless, just a very specific limited use.

This all makes sense... We use RAID at work (naturally) and there have been times where one of the drives has died and RAID has saved the day. However we also had a Cisco (Netgear) RAID box where the controller went and killed all the drives :-( For a home setup I rely upon a separate home backup and also then every night to work over VPN to my office PC and then that's also backed up to a standalone NAS in the office. Too many times I've been on the end of lost data and inadequate backups :-(

You are aware that this is how it should be displayed aren't you? When you are browsing by Folder view then files are listed (and played) alphabetically because in Folder view there is no such thing as an 'album' - only folders containing subfolders and files.

If you want your tracks to be shown / played in track order when browsing in Folder view then add the track number to the start of each file name - there are several tagging programs that will automate this for you.

Cheers

Phil

The inability to play in track order rather than alphabetically was one of the reasons why I gave up with a NAS running Twonky. Okay, by playing with the underlying files you could change this behaviour, but every time there was an update you had to dig out the instructions and start playing with it again using ssh - horrible! Why doesn't the server have the option to display either way? btw MM4 DOES have the option ;-)

I am looking at setting up a very basic NAS system for my system, what do I need and how do I set it up???

At its simplest you buy a half-decent NAS and use the UPnP server that is built into it but whether you'll be happy with the built in UPnP servers is another matter - some people are happy to use whatever the NAS manufacturer supplies and some aren't.

Myself - if I was going to use a NAS as a standalone UPnP server I'd buy a QNAP NAS and put Asset UPnP on it but MinimServer on a Synology isn't bad either.

Phil

The advantage of Synology is that the manufacturer's inbuilt UPnP server (Synology Media Server) causes fewer issues than Twonky.  It's very easy to set up the basic system first, and then install MinimServer later when your network is known to be reliable.

This allows any network issues to be diagnosed and removed before moving to a more complex system which can make it more difficult to determine the root of any problem.  It also means that if you have trouble with MinimServer you can just switch back to Synology Media Server and still have music while you sort the problem out (without the risk of Twonky refusing to play).

Ok thanks for your help, What should I be buying then??