Low power Network storage

Why is low power so important, are you living off grid or something?

Nah - just prefer not to waste power if i can avoid it. 

Surely everyone should be trying to conserve energy, whether because of belief in climate change linked to emissions, or conservation of fossil fuels, or simply to minimise costs, even if each device might seem trivial?

Before my current use of my Mac Mini as a renderer, I used it as a NAS when I had an ND5XS. Just needs UPnP software (I used the free Serviio). Works well running headless (no screen or keyboard etc), can turn on and off with its mains switch just like a hifi component, virtually silent, but doesn't come with RAID ability - I don't know if could be added. IIRC power consumption is about 10w idle and 1w asleep - I've no idea how that compares to a typical NAS. SSDs will help minimise power, rather than HDDs.

Your mention of the MM just gave me an idea IB. I could plug one of my back up USB drives into my Airport Extreme router USB port which should then allow me to share the drive over the network. I can then point the Sonos to it and all (!) should work...

Ta 

How about a Raspberry Pi and a 4TB or so USB connected drive.  If you're feeling DIYish you could even open the case and take a power feed for 5v to power the Raspberry Pi.

Innocent Bystander posted:

Surely everyone should be trying to conserve energy, whether because of belief in climate change linked to emissions, or conservation of fossil fuels, or simply to minimise costs, even if each device might seem trivial?

 

Then why choose Naim? Would be better off going with digital amps if that was the case. I do agree though, just playing devil's advocate here. We have enough led lights now that I feel okay about leaving the incandescent Naim on all the time. 

James

The Netgear Readynas RN102 might fit the bill.  It is a two bay model but you can just fit one drive.

A review I have seen says that when fitted with s 3tb WD Reds the power consumption is only 16w.  I think Netgear quote 31w with 2 disks installed.

I use one of these and a RN104 for backups with a powerful 4 bay Qnap as the always on NAS.

I've found the Netgear units to be very reliable and well made.  They are also nice and quiet, especially the smaller 2 bay model.  They can switch on and off to a schedule and can spin down the drives when idle.

The UPNP server is basic though, as are other features but with Sonos you only need a Samba share which it does very well.

Richard

Why do you want it to be "single drive"? Don't you need it to have any resiliency? Or do you always have your music backed up somewhere else where a single drive NAS is not an issue? Most low end NAS that support Minim Server or Asset will do as long as you can choose your own drives. WD Red get used a lot here because they spin down automatically when not being accessed even if the OS power saving profile is not set to do that, yet have a very favorable MTBF considering they do this. It saves a lot of heat and energy. If 2TB or so is enough then a micro NAS that uses 2.5" mobile drives will generate less heat and use less power but are significantly slower but still well above the read throughput needed for multimedia streaming. Most NAS have at least 2 bays so you will be looking at leaving one empty. Just make sure to backup regularly.

charlesphoto posted:

Innocent Bystander posted:

Surely everyone should be trying to conserve energy, whether because of belief in climate change linked to emissions, or conservation of fossil fuels, or simply to minimise costs, even if each device might seem trivial?

 

Then why choose Naim? Would be better off going with digital amps if that was the case. I do agree though, just playing devil's advocate here. We have enough led lights now that I feel okay about leaving the incandescent Naim on all the time. 

People (hopefully) buy their amps for the sound, subject to available budget. Substitution of something that sounds inferior to the individual may be an unacceptable lifestyle choice (that is not saying anything about digital amps vs Naim: different people may have opposite views). Arguably, though, if your lifestyle choices involve high energy usage, surely it becomes all the more compelling to save energy in other areas if either no negative effect on self, or acceptable compromise (whether LED lights or low power NAS)

FWIW, Naim amps are far from the most power hungry: I recall lusting after the MF SA470, until I discovered its >1Kw constant consumption (it's class A): if only it had water cooling it could have replaced a central heating boiler...   Meanwhile my present power amp has ~85W quiescent consumption, and so I  turn it off between sessions, just try to remember to put on half an hour before.

Folks - thankyou all for your inputs on this. Very helpful and much appreciated 

James

The NAS is rarely the most power-hungry component of a system, but it's obviously sensible to minimise consumption for financial and environmental reasons. Generally, with any computer, anything kinetic (fan, HDD) or that runs hot (some CPUs) will use more power. There are chip comparison charts available in various places; you'll find more powerful chips like i7 generally take more power than slower ones like i3 or A8, so it makes sense to buy only what you need. Chips designed for phones and tablets generally use less power than those designed for a PC.

Lower end Synology or QNAP with SDDs and fanless use relatively little power - and they're quiet too, so that's an added bonus.

Some years ago I have bought the Synology DS213+ NAS. One important feature for me was, that it supports a deep system stand by. Nearly only the network interface is still awake. So it is more than only a disc sleep. Maybe it is comparable with suspend to RAM? The advantage is that you do not need a Wake-on-LAN ping to wake up the system. Just try to access it and it comes up, much faster than a complete boot process.

Current Synology NASes do not list this behaviour as feature anymore. Now I wonder if they do not offer it anymore or if they simply offer it all, so it does not need to be listed explicitly? Does anybody know?

The basic Synology hibernation is disc spin down & some of the higher spec models have the more advanced ability for deep sleep.

My DS214 has disc spin down hibernation,  it wakes from that in about 5-10 seconds on iPad Naim app access ........  To answer the OP question re low power - my DS214 pulls 22W on access (running/reading) & 9W in hibernation.  The latest DS eq model the 216 pulls 15W access & 7W in hibernation.

I'm using a Windows PC to store my music. Easy to setup and maintain. Not just a PC though, but a FitPC2. Extreme low consumption with only 8W. The internal disk is a SSD, and I added an external SSD powered by the USB port as backup. 

Consumes less than any NAS, but way more powerful and versatile. I recently bought a LattePanda, same idea and even smaller. What I need now is an empty Stageline of NAPSC case.....so if anyone....