2-Bay NAS for Media Streaming Use

[marcom]

First off, I just wanted to say this site is great. I referred to reviews and posts before to decide on my router purchase and it worked out great.

Now I am expanding my horizons to a 2-Bay NAS for my growing collection of media. I have a vastly growing collection of 720p movies (around 3gb each) and I want to centralize them onto the network so access around the home is easier. I'm going to toss two 1.5TB HDD's in the NAS under Raid 1 configuration, because this collection has taken to much time and effort to create that I don't want to loose it to a crappy HDD. The streaming itself, if possible, will be done in a few different ways. One location will be simply streaming to my HTPC net-top, the other I would like if could run directly with a Xbox-360 to save getting a second HTPC.

So I drafted up the required list of features as well as a rough price limit (being that I am a broke student).

1) BYOD, 2-Bay
2) Does RAID 1
3) Media Server (for Xbox 360 connectivity)
4) Good access controls would be nice
5) Speed good enough to stream 720p movies.
6) $250 price cap, especially as I still need to buy the two 1.5TB drives.

Don't Need/ or care about
1) Print Server or USB Expansion Ports
2) Backup
3) Direct Torrent or Web access

I have been reading review after review and all of the NAS's that seem alright and are available in Canada seem to have some apparent flaw, or at least that's how it seems to me. (hopefully I am wrong)

NAS's

1) D-Link DNS-321 or D-Link DNS-323 --- Seem like the best choice, but the mandatory EXT2 format seems like a uselessly bad decision, but I guess when would the NAS itself fail that I would need to access the HDD's any other way? ($160)

2) Linksys NAS200 --- Reviews say it is really slow... but for only $100 is this slow speed still fast enough to stream HD movies without slowdowns?

3) Patriot CORZA --- Looked good in every department but speed, and I am a bit nervous about a Patriot network device, I didn't even know they did this stuff. ($160)

4) Synology Disk Station DS209j --- Seems to be throw around on these forums a lot, and with good regard, but is it really worth the $240 price tag

Thanks for any advice in advance... I am looking forward to buying this for myself as an early Christmas Present.

 

[thiggins]

Why is backup a don't need / don't care?

D-Link DNS-321/323: An old design, not updated much, but inexpensive.
All NASes (except those based on Windows Home Server) use Linux drive formats and aren't directly readable on Windows or Mac OS systems

Linksys NAS200: Old design, only 10/100. You don't want this given the size of the files you'll be moving to/from it.

Synology / QNAP make fine products. But way more features than you need/want, which is why they are relatively expensive.

The key feature you need to do homework on is Xbox 360 streaming. UPnP / DLNA servers have been troublesome and are notorious for not working.

Check the forums for manufacturers of products you're looking at and see if people are having success or trouble with xbox 360. Or search for your the NAS name and Xbox 360 and see what you get.

Me, I'd get a couple of single-drive 2TB NASes and have one back up to the other.

 

[marcom]

Well I didn't think a backup option was important, because if I have a RAID 1 setup, then it's already doing my required "backing up" for me.

I see what your saying about the 2 single NAS's, but looking at the choice of options locally, well there just really isn't a wide choice for a good price.

That's interesting about the format extension... I figured it was a unique thing because the reviews of the D-Links brought it up as such a pain combined with the fact that other reviews of other products didn't mention it at all.

So I guess the D-Link's are probably the best bet. Would the 323 or 321 be better for my application, since they are at the exact same price here in Canada right now.

 

[thiggins]

RAID is not backup. See Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID

321 is just a 323 without the USB port.

 

[claykin]

No one mentioned this to you, but whatever you do purchase disks that are on the manufacturers approved list. Don't think for a minute that you can throw any old disk at a NAS and have it work flawlessly. That goes for any NAS.

My vote would be the Synology 209 or the Netgear Readynas Duo. The Synology will perform better, but I like the Readynas product, support, warranty and durability.

My 2 cents.

 

[sansom]

RAID is not backup. See Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID

Gees, RAID 1 is data mirroring, and DOES protect you against a 'disk failure'. Even with a controller failure, the only thing that could be lost is cached disk writes. The only thing I would add to a RAID1 NAS to give it extra protection is a small UPS.

Buying TWO seperate NAS's would be just as susceptible to "burglarized? Or had a fire or unexpected flood? All of those wonderful RAID parity bits would have been useless because they were all part of the same box"

Your definition of 'true backup' seems to be 'disaster recovery' which would include OFFSITE backup to satisfy protection against burglary, flood, fire, etc..

 

[thiggins]

Gees, RAID 1 is data mirroring, and DOES protect you against a 'disk failure'. Even with a controller failure, the only thing that could be lost is cached disk writes.

Really? You might want to check with the hundreds, if not thousands of folks who have had their RAID arrays go belly up for one reason or other.

Never trust your data to a single device, RAID or not.

And yes, any NAS should be on a UPS.

 

[Lnin0]

YouTube it. I have seen some people using QNAP devices to steam movies to the 360.
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Pissing Teen