Hello people Ive been confused with this for a while, I have maybe about 500 movies (blu ray & dvd) some stored on my HDD along with thousand of family pictures and about 3000 songs. Now the problem is every time i want to watch a movie or listen to songs or show people family pics i have to switch on the PC (which is a beast i7 950, gtx 470 etc) I want something that can stay on all the time and does not consume a cities worth of electricity when watching a movie and doesnt sound like a 747 jumbo jet (antec 1200, 7x fans). I have media players (xbox 360 and a ps3) i just need something that will store all the stuff and let me access it instantly. So after the rambling should i go for a off the shelf NAS box or should i make my own? Budget is very very tight so the cheaper the better thanks in advance!
A NAS would be perfect for what you want. You can go for either a dedicated box from the likes of Synology, or the HP ProLiant (http://www.ebuyer.com/253305-hp-proliant-athlon-ii-neo-n36l-microserver-100-cashback-633724-421).
better to build your own file server, especially if you have a few parts laying around. Im going to build one around the wonderful: 35W i3 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/inte...-s-gpu-650mhz-3mb-cache-core-r-25x-35w-retail but then i want RAID 5 too
thanks for the quick replies! the HP and Synology are quiet expensive. im looking at around the £150 seeing as the marketpolace on here has some really good deals. what about making one out of an the old i3
the hp is £230 - but you get £100 cashback. it takes about 3-4 weeks to come through apparently, makes it a right deal.
Build a cheap pc, get a couple or more terabyte hard drive and put Debian on it .. then you can SSH and FTP into it
what about free nas i have been looking into this my self, i am in the same situation. i am going to build a low spec pc running free nas and have a couple of 2 TB hard drives in there
Free nas would probs be fine, Im not familiar with it, I just though debian would be more feature rich overall maybe one of those small nettops with an external hard drive would be good .. they only draw a small amount of power and nas drives don't need much processing power
+1 to freenas, check out this, this, and this. You really don't need much power to run it, an i3 is prob overkill but the cash in to hdds
I have a 2 bay Synology NAS with 2x2TB raid 0 with over 200 movies, photo's and music stored on it and use WD TV Live and PS3 to view. l'd recommend going for a four bay NAS like Synology DS411j . I wish I had picked 4 bay rather than 2. But if money is tight you could try the Synology DS211j. But you will have to use handbrake to shrink your 500+ DVD's and Blu rays on it.
Hi I'd build your own - Big case something like a Antex 1200 - Lowish spec base system with a on-baord GPU - using unRAID for the OS
If you're wanting it cheap, try and get a second hand motherboard and processor, it wouldn't have to be powerful
With all that stuff.. I hope you have a decent back up solution before you start thinking about home servers/NAS.
+1 for FreeNAS, it's what I use. Any older PC or a cheap efficient integrated board works great and is probably cheaper than buying one of those prebuilt NAS boxes, not to mention alot more flexible and upgradable. Like Pookeyhead said though, all that is useless without a proper backup.
I picked up a iomega storcenter 2tb for cheap should i use in RAID 0 or RAID 1 or as 2 seperate drives??
I guess it depends on how much you want to re rip everything if a disk dies. Out of interest how did you rip your blu rays, I've not had much success trying to do it.
I havent started ripping the blu rays yet ive just got it setup and i bought a netgear 10/100/1000 gigabit switch which helps transferring files
Me looks at my own order list - Intel DH61CR check, Intel Pentium G620 check, 4GB USB key for FreeNAS check, 4xWD20EARX check, 4GB RAM, Seasonic X-660, Define R3 and SASUC8I from box where i store unused parts check. Close enough . Board + CPU is 110e, the rest depends on budget, but in most cases, you can get a nice FreeNAS build for a price of 2-bay NAS devices. And a superb one for a price of 4-bay NAS device.
I use Make MKV Beta to rip my Blu rays. Works great. Gives you free 30 day trial after that I just turn back the clock on PC while I rip them. But they regularly update beta so 30 days starts again. I have been using this for over 12 months. By the way, if you rip DVD's only there is no time limit. Once you have have ripped to MKV file I use Handbrake to shrink file and convert to MP4 so plays on PS3. Or you can just use to shrink MKV file if you prefer that format.
