First, let me say I am no stranger to the WDLiveHub (1tb) , as I have 3 and got the first when it came out. (gen 1 before that) I have many external drives (using enclosures ((1 to 4 bay) and docks)) connected via the WD’s USB ports and using USB hubs. All is working well and good, but I have always considered NAS as another way to go. If I were to go that way, weather using a purchased unit or building a pc for that purpose, know that I would not use a raid configuration, as I believe in keeping my backup files on a separate drive, in a safe place, only running to update or restore files.
I (at this time) only use a pc to copy/delete/transfer(manage) files and my WD’s and their external drives work well on their own 24/7.
So I guess I’m looking to those of you that are running a NAS with the WD and your thoughts, ups and downs.
What’s the best off the shelf way to go?
What’s your preferred home brew setup?
I have been watching the sales and reading reviews for some time now and have no problem admitting that it is confusing to me. (one of my many faults, I always seem to find reasons not to take the plunge)LOL
Note: I like my current setup, mostly because of low power use (drives sleep and no pc running 24/7).
I use esata and USB 3.0 for large transfers, so having one or both of those ports is high priority for me.
I believe there is no totally wrong way to go, but would love to hear the views of others on this subject.
Sorry for the long yarn. Any help/ thoughts are welcome and appreciated.
The Netgear ReadyNas NV+, that I read about so far (on their site, will look more later), appears to have been born around 2007. (that’s longer than the life of the average hard drive!) They said you could load it with up to (4) 1tb drives. One part talked about upgrading to larger drives. So, what’s the largest drive you can use? I have a 3 Seagate 4tb drives for example, would they work with this unit. What size drives are you running in it?
It does sound like a high quality NAS.
I’ll be looking into this Netgear ReadyNas NV+ more over the next few days…
my dad has a synology 1511+ and loves it, but then he, doesn’t want to ever see the cmd line
I will have a look at that one two. Just been looking at the Synology DS212J. As I said before, I prefer not to run a raid setup. I would like to get full capacity of my drives. So far, it looks like most NAS want to only use a raid setup.
About the command line thing, I have done a little, but am not comfortable with it as I should be. (getting older every day, and find I use it so little, I have to look up the commands often, to get it right) LOL
I started with gnome, now kinda prefer kde. (not a deal breaker though. Anything Linux is a big plus…
I have been reading about OpenElec and XBMC, just about to release a newer edition.
PCLinuxOS64 FM has XBMC with it. I am playing with that now. Lots of stuff you don’t need there, but nice…
if you’re not wanting to use RAID then be very careful about a NAS choice, because nearly all store bought NAS systems are created with RAID as one of the primary functions
synology does have a non-raid option in most of their devices
they call it basic
do not confuse this with JBOD (just a bunch of drives)
I bet for $300 you can build a machine that would be able to house many more drives than a $1000 NAS device
and the $300 machine would have a lot more power, cpu, ram, etc …
then later if you need more room for drives
just get an external enclosure
+1 for a building a box that shares your media and can do a lot of other stuff as well. I use Windows on my end with an external drive bay and DriveBender. Like KAD79, i have more than enough power to transcode, run other server side apps that expand my home AV environment, and have the flexability to add storeage and more muscle if need be. I love NAS for what they do, but they are limited to the FW. A homemade fileserver on whatever OS you choose can be anything you want or need it to be at anytime. I have been buying used boxes for $200-$350 that serve media all around my house. One for file services, one for PlayOn, Plex and other streaming services. A server will give you a lot of options and you can reconfigure at any time when the next thing comes along that you need to use it for. A dedicated FS with some power behind it can serve data to multiple different TVs and Stereos around my house simultaneously with lots of resources to spare.
OK, lets think in that direction for a moment. I love building PC’s and totally agree with you about the more power and have it your way idea.
And yes, I have been looking in that direction too. I am not sure if I build, that I would not want to go a little more and make it a HTPC, as long as I am doing it. Problem, my original thoughts were to keep the power use low. Right now all my drives sleep and the WD’s use very little power and also sleep. I have not seen much in the fanless PC kits lately. Maybe an AMD dual core with a huge fanless sink…
Also been looking at PC cases made for HTPC. Most that I would put in my living room (that look good) require fans for cooling.
I have a full tower case with huge slow moving fans and an Intel quad already connected via hdmi to the 60 inch Samsung TV.
This is on the other side of the house. It runs quiet, but I am too cheap to run it 24/7. LOL
I also looked at those micro PC’s and can’t quite snuggle up to them as yet. Even considering a cheapy laptop…
I know, this guy has no idea what he wants, right? Well, you already know I’m cheap, but I am flexible and willing to learn.
So, thanks again, for the ongoing help and ideas. All will be considered and maybe this can help others too, in the market.
KAD79 has it right. All you are doing is adding drives together to build a larger logical volume. If you do that, you would want critical data backed up to another machine. I use a mix of that style with DriveBender. I build volumes of multiple disks, and then mark folders that I want replicated so there are duplicate copies on two of the physical disks in the volume. If one goes down, similar to a mirror, it reads that folder from the other drive.
Just thought I would post an update as to my HTPC/NAS.
I plan to steel 8gb ram from another pc and use a spare hdd for early testing of OS & this system. Considering SSD…
Might be adding some more fans, possibly to the front, by turning the removable 5.25 covers into a door with fans mounted to it. Have to wait and see. The $300 PC can be done, but once you get into the candy store, watch your wallet! (2) Drive Cages, (4) 4tb Drives (2) Controllers and (2) 2tb Drives. I have more drives I can use for now.
Tried to choose low power draw parts, but not give up versatility. (XBMC and such)
