Cheap alternative to NAS

Rob Turbo

Rob Turbo

Rob Turbo

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28 Aug 2012
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Location
Durham
I'm setting up a media centre PC, currently it's accessing a shared folder on my main PC, where I've ripped all my DVDs. This isn't really a problem at the minute because my PC is on most of the time, but it would be better if the PC didn't have to be on so I started looking into NAS, but £120+ before adding any HDDs is quite steep just to watch films.

So, is there a cheap alternative to NAS, or is the only other option to turn on my PC?
 
Depends what you consider a cheap alternative and what you want the NAS or equivalent to do. What amount of storage do you want/need and do you want to be able to expand it? Do you want some level of RAID or Parity protection?
A NAS is great for some people. For others, they have limitations, particularly with performance/throughput.
 
All I want is somewhere to put all my video files so I can access them from the media centre (Acer Revo R3610 running XBMC), 1TB would probably be the most I'd ever need, my current collection is only around 150GB, although there's no HD on there, I'm planning on getting a blu ray drive for my PC so I can rip HD films into my collection, but still, it would take a while for me to fill up 1TB with films!

I don't need RAID or anything.
 
Just go for a cheap one. Obviously you're not going to get the same level of performance or functionality from a cheap one as you would a Synology or Qnap, but if it's simply just a box to store media anything can do that really. I've got a 1TB WD MyBook World which runs a torrent client and media server, it's a bit slow to transfer files to and from it but for video and music it's fine.

There are other NAS boxes for around £50-70 from Zyxel etc which would do the job too, you just add your own HDDs.
 
I'm letting go of my proliant MS, I have with with 3 drives and a few mods in it. However, cost of electricity has doubled and it now costs £100 a year to run, So im letting it go as I never really use it much.
 
Second hand nas boxes with a populated disc(s) can be a great way of getting started, if a drive fails you can then pick and chose what goes in at a later date which eases the initial cost.
I could mention that I have a spare Buffalo Linkstation LS 500GB (fully reset and good to go) sat beside me. :D
 
Golf1.6 said:
I'm letting go of my proliant MS, I have with with 3 drives and a few mods in it. However, cost of electricity has doubled and it now costs £100 a year to run, So im letting it go as I never really use it much.
Click to expand...

Seems quite high - from some rough maths my QNAP 412 with 3 drives at the current prices is under £36 a year to run.
 
Well I was thinking about buying a NAS aswell to share my media stuff around the house, but then I thought no, cos that means it would need to be on 24/7 and with the cost of power atm.

So I scrapped that idea, and now I have my desktop pc set to sleep after 45mins, and alll my media devices can turn my desktop pc on when needed to access the media hdd, then desktop pc goes back to sleep once media hdd isnt being accessed.
 
Phil2008 said:
Well I was thinking about buying a NAS aswell to share my media stuff around the house, but then I thought no, cos that means it would need to be on 24/7 and with the cost of power atm.

So I scrapped that idea, and now I have my desktop pc set to sleep after 45mins, and alll my media devices can turn my desktop pc on when needed to access the media hdd, then desktop pc goes back to sleep once media hdd isnt being accessed.
Click to expand...

My Synology is set to go to sleep after 10 minutes of HDD inactivity, exactly the same way as your PC would do. If anything tries to use it, it wakes up as expected. It's still using some power in this but it's low.

You can also set-up the Synology to shut itself off at certain times and start itself back up at others.
 
Eulogy said:
My Synology is set to go to sleep after 10 minutes of HDD inactivity, exactly the same way as your PC would do. If anything tries to use it, it wakes up as expected. It's still using some power in this but it's low.

You can also set-up the Synology to shut itself off at certain times and start itself back up at others.
Click to expand...

But is that just the hdds spinning down? Because my power monitor says sleep and shutdown uses the same amount of power, about 2-4watts
 
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Phil2008 said:
But is that just the hdds spinning down? Because my power monitor says sleep and shutdown uses the same amount of power, about 2-4watts
Click to expand...

Yes, it goes into deep sleep mode, it uses a little power but not much.

I intend to stream from my NAS using a lightweight media device like a Raspberry Pi in the front room in my new place, so in reality I would not need my main PC on to stream video.

If you need the PC on anyway then yes of course you aren't going to save money!
 
I've had a Seagate GoFlex 2Tb for over a year and it has been superb.
I have also given family members access to it (who live in different houses) and can access it from anywhere in the world.
I also stream to several different devices.
 
One thing that comes to mind with the NAS devices is that they are pretty good utility devices too, Synology can run Mysql, share files to anywhere you want, Sickbeard, Sabnzdb, Couchpotato, VPN Server etc!
 
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