[lotus]

hi

sort of new to xbmc, been using for a while on pc and a xbox upstairs in my house. but i will admit 90% of the stuff on the forum confuses me to death LMAO

anyway, im looking into a NAS drive, i have a 200gb and 300gb external drives at present ans there rammed, im thinking of a 1TB nas drive. i notice a few post with ppl having issue with certain types so my question is:-

1. which drive would anyone recommend (around the £80-£130 range)
2. are there any that can support a external usb into the back for extra storage (i was going to stuff the 300gb to up it to 1.3TB)

slightly off topic question aswell, looking into a asrock and i have never done linux, is ubuntu or xp better?

thanx in advice ppl

[darkscout]

Linux. Hands down. One word: VDPAU.

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As far as the NAS box.... USD that's 160 to 260. I'm not sure how computer prices are over there but I'd build one. Get a free after rebate (if you have those) case. Add a decent power supply, a cheap mobo. You could get away with 1gHz and 1GB of RAM. Make sure it has plenty of SATA/IDE ports and install FreeNAS.

[lotus]

keep reading on here about freenas, might look into it and try and blag a old pc from work.

but it seems more expensive to do it that way as a drive itself is around £70 then getting a old pc and upgrading it to 1gb ram etc etc? wouldnt it end up alot more money than say a nas for £100 all in one unit done for ya?

[Jemster]

As a NAS is gonna be on 24/7, you may want to look into power requirements using a PC mobo etc, it's (probably) not going to be as efficient as a dedicated NAS unit and you've got to factor in this extra cost.

I got myself a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, they had a promotion on with a free 500GB HDD for £140 that I *think* expired last month but there may be something like this kicking around somewhere. I've been plenty happy with it, 6.5MB/s over a 100Mb wired ethernet to my ATV and no glitches. Supports RAID and external USB hard drives as well both for backup and as a host for access over the LAN. It also has built in bittorrent and (I think) NZB client for downloading when your main machine is off.

I tried a cheaper USB / Ethernet adapter off eBay and it was absolute rubbish, 1.5MB/s and incapable of streaming without glitches (especially higher bitrate content). I'm not sayin' they are ALL bad, but sometimes you get what you pay for.

[lotus]

thanx alot

i was looking at the western digital one, but it doesnt have a usb for extra bolt on storage, my pc is on permantly anyway, as it runs tv downloads through utorrent while im at work. its also in my garage so hard to turn on/off all the time.

these torrent downloaders that are built in, can they work with app's like TED and specify where the file goes.

as im currently (this weekend) looking into going back to TED (had issues before not grabbing shows that were obviously there) i tried rssfeeds from EZTV all was working then it just stopped and im not savvy enough to get it working again. also going to install therenamer so im going to be nearly fully auto on tv shows

[Bram77]

There are a lot of quallity differences between the available NAS solutions. Response times and transfer rates vary. Firmware can be a bitch to. I'd advice, based on my experiences, to nor buy a WD since the firmware is horrible and I've had two defect drives (as new) they were not willing to replace. This is a bit better with Lacie drives, but these still didn't offer the hard/software quality I was looking for.

So I bought myself a CH3SNAS which is well worth the money! It bit more expensive, but a lot more quality! Making a computer act as NAS (with FreeNAS i.a.) will give you all the quality and flexebility you'll want and need. You can use a old computer which can be cheaper then a NAS. But it always costs a lot more to keep it running because a computer consumes a lot more energy.

http://www.conceptronic.net/site/desktop...id=CH3SNAS
http://knowledge.forestblue.nl/ch3snas_english.htm

[muzzascott]

i currently have a netgear ready nas duo and it is fantastic, i can stream movies/music/videos via SMB to my 3 media centers running XBMC without a problem, the only thing i would reccomend is getting a gigabit switch to go with it, but it works fine without.

fantastic product, doesnt chew too much power, easy to setup, i would do for one of them

[gkornato]

Here's a useful link if you want a comparison.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component...Itemid,190

[lotus]

thanx guys

i was going with the WD my book 2 but seems the write speed is a joke according to the reviews.

going to look at that compare site

[frumpy_uk]

I know jack sh*t about NAS but plumped for a QNAP (TS109 Pro II) for £155 incl delivery & VAT from CCL. The drive would be extra (£60?)so I blew your budget.

I had read plenty good reviews on this box, incl from people on here.

I'd recommend this box and a dedicated NAS in general to a noob like you/me.

If you're asking whether XP is better than ubuntu I don't reckon you're the kind of person who wants to spend days and nights with your head in google working how to roll a FreeNAS setup. Just my 2 pence, spoken with no experience of FreeNAS in particular but some experience of getting bogged down in projects that are harder than they at first appear.

The QNAP has a built in torrent client and it's very easy (i.e. point and click) to install a newsgroup downloader as well. I found the torrent client to be slightly less feature rich than the windows utorrent client but strangely much faster. Same goes for news client.

Uses way little power and requires zero feeding and watering.


Good luck!