NAS drive / enclosure for home cinema / media streaming

[Mike1983]

Hi

** Not sure if this should go in Networks, HDD or Home cinema forum, please feel free to move **

As per title I was hoping someone who knows more about this area than me could recommend me a suitable NAS drive. It will be acting as a central store for music and video files that will be accessed by a 4 Zone Sonos system and a Popcorn Hour C-200.

I currently have my eyes on a Thecus N3200 Pro which I can get at a local store for £235.74 and intend to load up with 2x Samsung F3 500GB and 1x Samsung F3 1TB configured in RAID 5, so a total of 1TB with parity. The link to the manufacturers site is pasted below
http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=12&pid=89

The network itself is is controlled by a Gigabit switch (HP Procurve 1800-24G) so I'm not restricted to 10/100 bottleneck.

So I was wondering, is the above drive suitable for my needs or is there another drive that does the same thing for less or has faster read / write performance? What drive would you use yourself within a budget of up to £300 (excluding HDD's)

Thank you

Mike

 

[FrankJH]

Personally I went with QNAP 209 Pro II with 2* 1.5TB drives in straight raid 1 when I bought my popcorn hour much earlier this year.

I think a lot of people over at AVforums seem to be going in your direction so its by no means a bad choice at all

 

[Biffa]

I currently have my eyes on a Thecus N3200 Pro which I can get at a local store for £235.74 and intend to load up with 2x Samsung F3 500GB and 1x Samsung F3 1TB configured in RAID 5, so a total of 1TB with parity.

When doing RAID all drives need to be the same size otherwise depending on the way the device does RAID it will either just not work or you will lose half the Samsung 1TB's capacity.

I'm using a Synology Disk Station DS409 (not plus) that I have been pretty happy with. Running 4 x 1TB WD greens in RAID5

 

[FrankJH]

When doing RAID all drives need to be the same size otherwise depending on the way the device does RAID it will either just not work or you will lose half the Samsung 1TB's capacity.

I'm using a Synology Disk Station DS409 (not plus) that I have been pretty happy with. Running 4 x 1TB WD greens in RAID5

Cant he use two 500GB as raid 0 and then that "driVe" in raid 1 with the 1TB drive- to give 1TB capacity?

I could have sworn this kind of thing worked with most RAID choices now (although like you I would still choose identical drives where possible)

 

[div0]

I've been looking into the following options, expecting to pay roughly these prices:

Thecus N2200 - £120
Netgear RND2000 - £135
Thecus N3200 Pro - £235
QNAP 219 - £290

My conclusion was that the N3200 Pro is the best way to go in terms of performance and value for money.

 

[Azza]

My God that is one ugly box.

 

[Ev0]

I've been using the NetGear for a while and whilst not the fastest it does the job nicely.

Only 2 drives, but with 2 1.5tb samsung drives in XRAID (netgears own raid type system) it's plenty.