How do I make a NAS?

Mallers

Mallers

Mallers

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16 Apr 2015
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Hello, possibly wrong question in thread title, but:
I have a 9 yr old sony lcd screen, with hdmi inputs and an onkyo amp with a spare hdmi input (optical input being used for feed from dvd player)
I currently also have too many dvds and blurays and no shelf space! So i'm trying to get them all (at least the dvds anyway) onto some sort of hard drive that i can plug into either the amp or telly and watch off that.
I don't really know about storage or doing this, so my uneducated vision is that I feed a disc into my desktop pc, rip it (any ideas on software - understand this may be legally iffy so feel free to be circumspect!) and save onto a separate NAS or media pc that will be small in physical dimensions but big as possible in storage terms and can sit next to my tv. Current tv doesn't have any wireless capacity so i can't stream direct from my existing desktop, and tbh would rather have films on separate drive anyway as pc a little creaky and dont want to lose the lot! Also, some sort of interface (and remote control?) so i can scroll through film covers and descriptions until i find one i like and watch, and as if that wasn't enough, still have things like all the extras that come on discs, eg documentaries, commentaries etc.
Any ideas, or is this a bit much?
 
You want an HTPC with KODI and a NAS of some description, yep! :)

I have something similar although I didn't rip my films...someone else did :p ;)

I have a NetGear ReadyNas 104 with 4 x 3TB drives in a RAID5. This gives me 9TB of usable space with redundancy for one drive to fail.

NAS boxes like this (or Synology etc) are ideal. They are dumb terminals with their own small OS's on them. They require very little management and are for most part, plug and play. You can buy them with hard drives already fitted and good to go as well to make them even easier.

I'd recommend these over a Micro server. I had a Microserver and whilst it was a fantastic bit of kit I did get fed up of having another machine to manage. I just wanted something to hold my movies etc and stream from! So a NAS is a good shout for sure.

Next up to play the movies you need a HTPC. This is usually just a very small power efficient quiet PC which will have an HDMI output going to your amp. This will usually run windows and KODI. KODI is an opensource bit of software, previously known as XBMC. It does what you're asking and gives you a nice menu to scroll through your movies etc. It takes some configuring to get it working "just right" for you but there is tons of online support around for it.

Can get a USB remote control to go into the HTPC to browse through KODI. Or use an app on your phone.
 
My old set up was like this no wifi on the TV i bought a hp Microserver about 150 quid after cash back now plus 60 for a 2tb hard drive to get you started. wired it up to the router using Ethernet then used a WDTV live box to stream off it onto the Dumb tv via HDMI.

this will give you a remote a android tv box may be better now as you can have plex on it or kodi this works great for streaming i think the wdtv live has been discontinued now.

MAKEMKV can do lossless copies of discs you own if you want it too but saving the menus not sure about that.

edit : forgot to mention you would need a OS on the micro server i'm using WHS 2011, freenas is a another option.
 
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Many thanks all! It looks like there is no single box solution (at least not physically small - eg my desktop pc is huge, i wouldnt want something like that next to the telly!)
I love the look of the mede8er, although it looks a little expensive for me. However christmas coming up, tis the season to be jolly and all that! so a definite possibility to buy myself
Looking at the answers all together, a netgear readynas 104 (has its own OS already without me adding anything) connected to an android tv box (ads i saw for this says it has its own remote plus runs KODI) via cable, in turn connected to my amp via hdmi should work? In case it all goes a bit wrong, the android thingy isnt too expensive, if i get right software should it run off a smaller external hard drive? Eg buy the Android box first, i can borrow a friends external drive and if i get that working right i can then expand and buy the full on readynas 104?
 
The amazon fire TV box is handy for running kodi, although you have to side-load kodi as amazon won't support it. Its small and completely silent. I have a couple of these and then a micro server running openmediavault for the NAS stuff.
 
Mallers said:
Many thanks all! It looks like there is no single box solution (at least not physically small - eg my desktop pc is huge, i wouldnt want something like that next to the telly!)
I love the look of the mede8er, although it looks a little expensive for me. However christmas coming up, tis the season to be jolly and all that! so a definite possibility to buy myself
Looking at the answers all together, a netgear readynas 104 (has its own OS already without me adding anything) connected to an android tv box (ads i saw for this says it has its own remote plus runs KODI) via cable, in turn connected to my amp via hdmi should work? In case it all goes a bit wrong, the android thingy isnt too expensive, if i get right software should it run off a smaller external hard drive? Eg buy the Android box first, i can borrow a friends external drive and if i get that working right i can then expand and buy the full on readynas 104?
Click to expand...

Sure all the android boxes have USB inputs fire up kodi video / files then browse the files I tried with a USB pen drive works perfectly just to test it out when I first got mine. I had mine going through a av amp to the TV no problems. You wouldn't need any software on the external HDD it's
just like browsing one with your PC
 
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