Cheap, small, low-power media server?

Marcos · 22 Apr 2008 at 11:08

I need a simple media server solution for housing several large capacity drives and serving media to XBMC and a laptop. Nothing complicated just straight network access, i dont need it to be aqccessible over the internet or anything.

Thing is, im put off by the idea of a full-size case, i want something small, like the size of VCR or something that can fit in the unit under my TV. And also quite important, the server itself has to be low-power, i dont like the idea of having a whole PC on just to serve media.

Does that exist? can it be done for cheap?

AbsenceJam · 22 Apr 2008 at 11:50

Your choice of case, intergrated ITX mobo (Epia etc), picoPSU, RAM, drives.

Marcos · 22 Apr 2008 at 17:48

Is there not a product that kinda has all of that except drives pre-configured and ready to use? just need to install the OS and drives?

Chris1712 · 22 Apr 2008 at 23:07

Any NAS should do the job, XBMC can see SMB shares quite happily along with a million other devices.

RimBlock · 23 Apr 2008 at 03:44

I would second the NAS suggestion but then that is because I have just done it.

I got a DLink 323 Nas (2 drives upto 1TB each). It has GBit network port which you can either attach to a wired network (ethernet or homeplug for example) or wireless with either a wireless router or a wireless bridge if you already have a central wireless router. Connect to the GBit network port to transfer files on to the NAS as with the size of most media files and a 2TB space possible, copying all that data can take some time.

The NAS-323 required drives to be formatted after inserting as it runs on Linux. It is customisable with some very simple changes (Foz funplug) and you can if you wish run a bit torrent client / web server etc on it. It comes 'out of the box' with media streaming but is not compatible with the XBox 360 (or PS3) but with the funplug and ustream (or Twonky Vision but this costs) on the NAS it gets round the problem. There is a Wiki detailing hacks / programs available for it and various forums to provide help.

The unit is about the size of two VHS video boxes on their side.

RB

Marcos · 23 Apr 2008 at 09:03

Chris1712 said:
Any NAS should do the job, XBMC can see SMB shares quite happily along with a million other devices.

Problem is i have 1.5TB of media, and i;ve heard that a lot of those NAS boxes have shaky performance, especially on streaming video.

And i really dont want to format the drives, ive tried to set up a linksys NSLU2 but have failed so far

AbsenceJam · 23 Apr 2008 at 15:14

Marcos said:
Is there not a product that kinda has all of that except drives pre-configured and ready to use? just need to install the OS and drives?

Well (aside from NAS devices) there are but mainly just small companies using the same stuff you'd buy yourself. Got to be a self build if you want full flexibility.

Chris1712 · 23 Apr 2008 at 23:37

Marcos said:
Problem is i have 1.5TB of media, and i;ve heard that a lot of those NAS boxes have shaky performance, especially on streaming video.

And i really dont want to format the drives, ive tried to set up a linksys NSLU2 but have failed so far

A decent NAS will serve it just fine, i share just shy of 1TB with SMB to XBMC/Other machines no problem. You'll probably want gigabit everywhere though, and to actually check NAS review first. Some are hideously slow even though they have gigabit interfaces (im looking at you western digital!!).

Marcos · 24 Apr 2008 at 11:31

Chris1712 said:
A decent NAS will serve it just fine, i share just shy of 1TB with SMB to XBMC/Other machines no problem. You'll probably want gigabit everywhere though, and to actually check NAS review first. Some are hideously slow even though they have gigabit interfaces (im looking at you western digital!!).

Damn, i was expecting ~£50 or something, some of those NAS boxes cost as much as a full desktop PC