Ant

are they any good? are they fast when transferring files?.

I want to put my music collection around 50gig and dowloaded .avi's onto them will it take long to transfer?

also would my xbox pick it up?

this it what im looking at Buy IOMEGA 3.5'' 500GB NETWORK HARD DRIVE | 500gb network hard drive - Computer Peripherals | Comet

HankScorpio

Yes.
No. (Well, adequate if gigabit but slow otherwise)

That one is also an old model so may not have gigabit, the iomegas now have a flat perforated front.

Dedrater

When you first want to put files on it, plug it straight into your computer, it will only take minutes then.

That IOMEGA drive looks garbage though, what you want is something like this..

Icy Box Nas Hard Drive Enclosure For 3.5"IDE Hard Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

basically, you want a NAS drive with UPnP server, BitTorrent Client, print server, Apple iTunes 7 servers FTP, HTTP etc or you may find a dumb NAS box is very limiting.

Dedrater

QNAP Systems, Inc. ( TS-109 II ) - Quality Network Appliance Provider

Synology Inc. - NEW NAS Experience - Products :: Disk Station DS207+

Iain Young

I'd avoid Synology like the plague. I had one of their boxes and it was forever crashing, scrambling stored data, degrading the discs etc. I've switched to using a QNap box now, and it's superb.

Ant

the server side of things and bittorent i wouldnt use as i use newsgroups,also already have a wireless printer, it'll only be for sharing and using it to stream to the xbox..

Dont wanna really spend over £100cos it not be getting used much

Dedrater

It will need to have a UPnP server if you want to stream media files, at least make sure its DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) certified

Dedrater

On some boxes its called "UPnPAV”, universal plug-and-play audio/visual standard

Ant

ahh right i'll keep a eye out then for that, would i just be better off with the WD media player?

HankScorpio

If you've got an xbox to play, no need for the WD box but you will need to spend 100 if you want to access it without your pc being on.

Ant

plus i want to play HD mkv files so media player would be better actually my dad has a popcorn and its brilliant

HankScorpio

Get a popcorn then, best all round bet.

Can use it as a nas and a player.

Ant

i didnt know you could use it a NAS

G00ner

Avoid Buffalo, fecking thing promises lots, delivers very little and has virtually no manufacturer support.

Gordo

I'm also in the market for a NAS (having at last, and after hours of battling with sh1te Apple software, got all of my PCs connecting to an Airport Express via my wireless router).

Specifically I want:

- Decent transfer rates
- Reliable (and easy to set up) connectivity
- Ideally 1Tb of memory to provide a level of future - proofing (we have a lot of music and photos - the NAS would act as effectively another back-up to existing storage, in addition to acting as a central access point for music, photos and, increasingly, video)
- price up to £300 including memory
- I'd be happy with a carcass to put 3.5" drives in (I have a 250Gb IDE drive sitting doing nothing to kick off with).

I'm struggling, however, to find something that suits what I'm trying to achieve as home user. Everything I've looked at (including the reviews on the ICY 1000 mentioned above) seem to flag significant issues, e.g.

- slow transfer rates
- lack of FAT32 support etc
- strange file storage mechanisms (doomed if it ever fails to recover data - I'm not too bothered about this as I'd effectively be using the NAS as backup anyway, but…)
- difficult to set up
- connectivity issues (e.g. going missing off the network etc)

Has anyone got something that works well for them?

Gordo

HankScorpio

I have a qnap 209 pro and that meets all your criteria apart from the bizarre one for FAT32 support.

It's been powered down twice in a year, can be configured by a monkey, gigabit to main PC via gig switch, supports R0 and R1 so can recover, has never dropped off the network, can take two 1Tb disks so 1Tb usable in R1.
Does web, itunes, ftp, twonky, etc, etc, can dangle more usb drives off the back, can be used as a print server, supports samba and nfs the list just goes on.

Iain Young

I'd echo that Hank. I've got a qnap 409 pro, and it's a superb bit of kit. So far, 100% reliable, fast, and very well featured

boxst

I have a D-Link DNS-323 and it works quite well as a media server for the Xbox and iTunes server. It also has a built-in Bit Torrent client which is sometimes useful.

Steve

HankScorpio

Iain, does yours do R5 as well as 0 and 1?

I'm just running jbod but have been tempted to go R5 in a bigger chassis (but can never quite rationalise the capital expenditure of chassis plus four big disks!)

Iain Young

Yes. It does RAID 0, 1, 5 and 6 (plus a linear disc volume)

Gordo

ok, ok, so I don't really know what FAT32 support means

sheepishly heads off to look at qnaps.......

thanks!

Gordo

HankScorpio

It's not a big deal but there's a file size limit on Fat32 of 4Gb (I have files of 82Gb+ so no use to me) and a partition size limit of 2Tb (which if you have two or more 1.5Tb disks will also cause you problems).

You should be able to get a 209 and two 500 gig disks for £300
Or if you've got disks lying around you can use them but they will be formatted on initialisation. If you put in your 250, you can run it but your upgrade options are limited if you want to retain the data on the disk. I went from 2x320 to 2x500 but had to find space for the stuff that was on the 2x320 which was less than tidy to achieve.