Looking For A Good NAS Solution

richard11992288

richard11992288

richard11992288

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Joined
14 Jun 2012
Posts
24
Hi all,

For a long time now Ive had all my music, movies etc on a backup drive. Now I am running out of space on my backup drive and would like to find a solution that will allow me to share all my music etc with everyone else in the house.

I am looking at something like the Synology USB Station 2.

Something I can connect lets say a 2TB HDD too, that will allow me to share the drive with everyone on the network and let them stream music etc from that driver over the network to Windows and Mac computers and devices like the iPhone and iPad.

I myself have no idea what to look for or what's best.

Any idea on the best solution that will tick most if not all of the above requirements for the best price would be great.

Thanks,

Rich
 
What router do you have? You might already have a solution without realising it...
 
Are you looking for a single drive solution or a dual or 4 bay device? depends on budget and if you want LAN connectivity or just USB.

I have a (fairly old) D-Link DNS 323 dual bay NAS and it works great. Has USB port and LAN Connectivity.

Synology and Netgear all do similar if not better alternatives.
 
Synology's look great because of the flexibility they offer whilst remaining low power devices.
 
I would like to set up my first NAS too and I've been looking at something like the D-Link DNS-325, is pretty cheap and although not the fastest seems fairly capable, what do you guys think? Are there better starter alternatives, don't really want to spend over £100 and need two sata bays as was planning to set up in RAID 1 if possible as I'd like to store media and files on one disk and have it mirrored on the other as a backup.

I've had my Xbox360 stream from my main Windows 7 system for sometime and works great but are there any potential issues I should be aware of when using a NAS with a 360?
 
richard11992288 said:
Hi all,

For a long time now Ive had all my music, movies etc on a backup drive. Now I am running out of space on my backup drive and would like to find a solution that will allow me to share all my music etc with everyone else in the house.

I am looking at something like the Synology USB Station 2.

Something I can connect lets say a 2TB HDD too, that will allow me to share the drive with everyone on the network and let them stream music etc from that driver over the network to Windows and Mac computers and devices like the iPhone and iPad.

I myself have no idea what to look for or what's best.

Any idea on the best solution that will tick most if not all of the above requirements for the best price would be great.

Thanks,

Rich
Click to expand...

I wouldn't bother with a USB station. Very limited and underpowered and gets largely poor reviews.

I would think about either a single or dual bay enclosure. Something like a DS112j or DS212j for streaming. I have reviews of both HERE

Is it is the dearer option but offers a lot more features/options and expandability over utilising an external HD, not to mention better speeds.
 
welshdragon said:
I wouldn't bother with a USB station. Very limited and underpowered and gets largely poor reviews.

I would think about either a single or dual bay enclosure. Something like a DS112j or DS212j for streaming. I have reviews of both HERE

Is it is the dearer option but offers a lot more features/options and expandability over utilising an external HD, not to mention better speeds.
Click to expand...

You reviewed the non-j 212 version aimed more at SOHO.

Edit: found the other product reviews, thought you only had 2 on there :p

Edit 2: your reviews miss out the most important thing, performance figures.
 
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KraniX said:
I would like to set up my first NAS too and I've been looking at something like the D-Link DNS-325, is pretty cheap and although not the fastest seems fairly capable, what do you guys think? Are there better starter alternatives, don't really want to spend over £100 and need two sata bays as was planning to set up in RAID 1 if possible as I'd like to store media and files on one disk and have it mirrored on the other as a backup.

I've had my Xbox360 stream from my main Windows 7 system for sometime and works great but are there any potential issues I should be aware of when using a NAS with a 360?
Click to expand...

KraniX, The DNS-325 is identical to the DNS-323 I have, albeit a bit shinier and a new name. If you're wanting DLNA compatibility I would go with a Synology.
 
PiKe said:
You reviewed the non-j 212 version aimed more at SOHO.

Edit: found the other product reviews, thought you only had 2 on there :p

Edit 2: your reviews miss out the most important thing, performance figures.
Click to expand...

Some have performnace figures, some don't. Used the Intel NAS analyser tool which is very tempremental. The reason though why I predominantly don't do it is because the max achievable figures are available on the manufacturer website and should be mentioned int he review.

What I manage to achieve in my setup may be different from what you achieve. Which in turn may be different form what the next achieves. All depends on what kit people have and how it is setup.

Thank you for the feedback though.

edit: Figures are available in the review for the DS112;DS112j and DS212+
 
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welshdragon said:
Some have performnace figures, some don't. Used the Intel NAS analyser tool which is very tempremental. The reason though why I predominantly don't do it is because the max achievable figures are available on the manufacturer website and should be mentioned int he review.

What I manage to achieve in my setup may be different from what you achieve. Which in turn may be different form what the next achieves. All depends on what kit people have and how it is setup.

Thank you for the feedback though.

edit: Figures are available in the review for the DS112;DS112j and DS212+
Click to expand...

Yeah but there will be some correlation if you use the same set up each time.
 
Hostile-17 said:
KraniX, The DNS-325 is identical to the DNS-323 I have, albeit a bit shinier and a new name. If you're wanting DLNA compatibility I would go with a Synology.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, the Synology Diskstation DS212J seems to get good reviews and can be had for around £160 so that could be an option.
 
By the time you've added a couple of drives to it, you're knocking on the door of £300 :eek:
 
Only problem with HP server is, more power, more noise, more configuration and a larger footprint (Than a 1 or 2 bay NAS).
 
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