ReadyNAS NVX - Thoughts? Comments?

[Durzel]

Anyone got one of these?

I'm rapidly running out of space on my media PC, down to about 130GB out of 2TB and was thinking of ditching the internal storage completely, replacing it with an SSD purely for the OS, and sticking the media in an external NAS.

As I understand it the ReadyNAS NVX (or any of the variants) can't be plugged directly into something to stream data over USB or whatever, you have to transfer stuff over the network?

How do you lot normally deal with this when you've got equipment in a lounge environment? I currently have my Virgin Media broadband connection upstairs in my study, with a Wireless-N connection providing internet to the media stuff downstairs (PC, PS3, etc). Presumably I would have to get a switch/router for the lounge just to plug the ReadyNAS in?

Also, they seem pretty damn expensive for what is ostensibly a RAID card and some caddies. Do they justify the £500+ price tag?

 

[ChileanLlama]

I use small HTPCs networked throughout the house, gone SSDs with them now and no storage drives.

I use a Windows Home Server to store all my data and stream that to whatever I want.

I started with a decent NAS (for the time), but I found it slow - getting 100Mb/s speeds over a gigabit network. I couldn't add tools, applications, automation to it easily and it was expensive as a bare machine and inflexible to upgrade once you've filled all the drive bays.

After about a year of being frustrated with it, went to using an old PC with W2K3 as a server, then got the WHS beta and have not looked back.

I was lucky that I moved house, and took a couple of weeks wiring it all for gigabit. But even so I can still stream most things with wireless, but my signal downstairs (router upstairs) can be a bit weak at times.

[edit] Out of interest for £500 I've just built my father a 3TB WHS including the OS...so at that price for a NAS, I'd prefer to go the server route.

 

[Durzel]

Thanks, you've given me some food for thought.