Infrant RAID Network Attached Storage

mark66 · 16 Aug 2006 at 13:22

My brother is looking into a new home audio solution built around a centralised NAS system, accessed by something like Slim Devices Squeezebox.

http://www.infrant.com/

He wants to use the NAS as the store for his digital photo's, movies as well as his music and to be available to all the pc's in his house.

He asked me to put a post on here to see if anyone has bought one or had any experience with Infrants NAS and has any advice on buying strategies (e.g. buy empty and buy disks elsewhere), etc.

Thanks

mark66 · 22 Aug 2006 at 14:14

Anyone?

utherpendragon · 22 Aug 2006 at 15:26

How much storage would he need? If you're talking under 250GB then netgear do a wireless router with a built in usb port for mass storage devices (WGT634U), couple that with an HDD enclosure and a standard 3.5" drive gives unlimited access 24/7 to any network attatched devices.

mark66 · 22 Aug 2006 at 17:26

He would be storing his music in a lossless format, so would need lots of storage, probably about 2TB, so I don't think any of the cheaper NAS solutions will provide this. (Going on estimates of one album being approx 500mb).

I don't know a huge amount about these boxes or setups, but I believe the Infrant has its own Linux based OS, which can be accessed via a web page or similar to set it up, therefore is quite a bit more than a standalone disk on a network. He also wants the security of the RAID options that the Infrant NAS offers.

However all this comes at a heavy price - a quick google search returned £1200 + VAT for a 2TB NAS :eek:

VeNT · 22 Aug 2006 at 17:36

maybe he'd be better getting something like a VIA C3 system cheap and adding a raid card to it, either one or two PCI cards with 4-5 ports on it and a 320 gig Seagate Barracuda (£59.95 each) would be cheaper.

utherpendragon · 23 Aug 2006 at 11:47

If it's just being used as a simple file server any old PC will work well, coupled with a PCI SATA or IDE controller card and a few large hard-drives. Has the advantage then of also being able to perform other tasks like a print server.