NAS questions

Nickolp1974

Nickolp1974

Nickolp1974

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i'm after a dual bay NAS and this will be used for storing MKV's to serve my popcorn hour as its internal drive is full what will i need??? in other words which NAS will do??
i'll also want to transfer files between drives as quick as possible, my mother will have a popcorn hour shortly so i will need to transfer films in the shortest possible time.

which one would you choose and why?



YOUR BASKET
1 x ASUSTOR AS-202T 2 Bay Network Attached Storage Enclosure £179.99
1 x Synology Diskstation DS213J 2-Bay Gigabit Ethernet Network Attached Storage Enclosure £169.99
1 x QNAP Turbo NAS TS-212P 2 Bay Network Attached Storage Enclosure £159.95
Total : £519.53 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 
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I'm after the AS-202TE (same as the one you listed, but with 1GB ram instead of 512MB).

Thats probably overkill for what you want to do. The Atom CPUs in the Asustors are meant for installing and running lots of apps (torrenting, VPN, web hosting, SQL etc), as well of course as NAS functions.

Something like the Synology DS214se would be better, or even the Netgear readyNAS 102, which can be found for around £100.

Does the Popcorn Hour not have any USB ports that you can use to expand the space?
 
thanks for your reply

yes it has usb but its in the lounge, all my pc etc is in my office and as i only run ssd in my pc i'd also like to be able to store some files from that.

so am i right in thinking the transfer from pc to nas is where i want the speed and not from nas to popcorn as its only reading??? no knowledge in this field
 
Speed will be affected by, network speed, CPU of the NAS and the hard drives used in the NAS. The first two being the main ones to look out for.

All those listed, apart from the Asustor, use Marvell CPUs which are slower than the Atoms. Again this isn't the main factor as the Marvell CPUs are fine for the job and will likely not hamper the transfer rate providing it's around 1.2GHz or more.

The speed between the nas and the popcorn hour is important too, because if you have very high bitrate files, it could stutter. Again this is cpu bound on the NAS, but shouldn't be massively important unless it's something like 4k material or 3D blu rays.
 
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Pc, router and switch are all gigabit, and got 65mb/s network speed

Even though popcorn is rated as gigabit i only get transfer speed from pc to PCH of around 6mb/s, not up on network speeds but a transfer can be slow.
Its mainly between pc>nas where i want it fast for organising/switching files about.

Watch mainly 1080p/dts mkv's and the occasional 3D 1080p dtsHD
 
The Asustor, though I would go with the TE version which in itself is a fairly capable media player. Has an Intel CPU and good amount of ram and is v aggressively price imho.
 
Looks like the asustor is getting a few votes.
Don't need it as a media player, my home cinema system is very capable and will play anything with great quality, i just need the NAS to supply files.
 
I still think something like the Netgear ReadyNAS 102 would suit your needs. Can be had for £125 from Amazon, and probably cheaper elsewhere.

Should be able to serve all the media fairly well.
 
Ended up getting the asustor 512mb one and 2 x 2 TB reds,

What will be the quickest way of transfering 2TB of files from one drive to another?? As the drive i have in my popcorn will be going in my mothers PCH, will the nas be as quick as my pc at doing this or should i just put em in for now to do the transfering??

Wanting to tranfer all my music and about 200 out of the 350 films i have on said drive.
 
First time watched a film from nas (mkv 720p) and it was hanging every 15mins or so, never had a problem with popcorn H using internal drive, any ideas?!
 
What's the layout of your network?

The NAS and Popcorn Hour should be connected directly to the router or over a gigabit switch together.
 
Layout goes

Bt fibre optic thing>router>(20m ethernet cable) switch(downstairs) >PCH/HC receiver/TV

Pc and nas connected to router.

Iplayer plays fine on tv, the film also played fine, it just paused every 15 mins or so but the timer was still counting for about a minute then the film would fast forward to the elapsed time.

Also tried a higher bitrate film (nearly x2 higher) this also played fine just didn't leave it long enough to see if it did the same.

Presuming as the file is being read, this means the nas is active and thus power saving features wont be activated???
 
The power saving functions shouldn't be active as its being used, as you've said.

Check to see if their is a gigabit connection between both the NAS and the Popcorn Hour. 15mins seems like a long time if it was something like a buffering issue, where it couldn't push the video to main memory and then out.

Try other similar or larger bitrate videos and see if it happens at the same point in time.
 
One thing I'm not ruling out is the 20m Ethernet cable as it runs on the outside of the house and part of the outer has split(not protected)
Will homeplugs supply enough bandwidth???

Would it also be worth plugging the 20m ext direct to the pch, bypassing the switch???
 
Nickolp1974 said:
One thing I'm not ruling out is the 20m Ethernet cable as it runs on the outside of the house and part of the outer has split(not protected)
Will homeplugs supply enough bandwidth???

Would it also be worth plugging the 20m ext direct to the pch, bypassing the switch???
Click to expand...

The switch shouldn't really make any difference, the cable would be the first thing to look at if its been split. Check the link lights (if its green+orange, then its 100Mb, if its green+green then its gigabit, if they are both orange, then I think its below 100Mb).

Homeplugs will probably be fine depending on the bitrate of the video. Very high bitrate videos will stutter or drop frames, but the majority of normal 720p downloads should be fine.

Transfer rates will be lower though. Again, all these depend on the wiring of your house.
 
Lights are all green, so gigabit??
I have streamed from PC before and no problems, never had pch stutter with anything, even with a 25gb 1080p dtsHD 3D sbs file. Still think my problem is somewhere at the nas end.
If I can replicate from my pc(play film) from nas that would help?? If it dosen't then it most probably be the pch???
I'll see if there's a new firmware for the pch also, not updated it for about 2 years.

Thanks for your help ;)
 
You could certainly give it a go. The NAS should be able to cope with the stream, providing its not transcoding or anything on the fly (which I doubt).

It could be the movie itself, I would try another high bitrate (or similar bitrate) movie and see if it happens again.
 
Nope not transcoding anything,

Not had long with the nas, about an hour! And it's my first!!
All I have done is to enable NFS?? For the pch and permissions to allow/read only, anything else I should do???
 
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