help with what hardware to get!

[SGWills]

im looking at setting up a htpc instead of a gaming rig mainly due to the pc being used more as a media centre than fps games.


now i recently transferred all my dvds/hds/BR to my pc which in total works out at nearly 500 gig of films and music, i was thinking of getting a NAS so that i can put a 1tb drive in it and have all media on the nas and have a 1tb hdd in my htpc so that i can rip them to my htpc and transfer to my nas to allow the htpc to remain uncluttered, but when it comes to nas hardware i have no idea what to get?!

any input on what to look for or any products to look at would be great

thanks

 

[wij]

IMO a lot of the off the shelf ones don't perform that well, poor read/write speeds etc.

If you feel like taking on a little project you could get yourself a small case, some drives (say 3 1Tb drives for Raid5), etc. and set something up using FreeNAS. I have mine sitting in a corner under the stairs and its been happily working away for the last 6 months or so.

As for your network theres no real alternative for good old Cat5/6 and a Gigabit swtich.