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NAS Recommendations

GarrettL1979 said:
Wow-- thanks! I didn't realize I could connect a simple USB drive to my AirPort Extreme. I'm using a MacBook Pro, so this would be better than connecting the drive directly to the computer. I'll test it out.
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For iTunes media, especially to drive an AppleTV which requires iTunes running anyway, connecting to the MBP would be my personal preference. Connecting to the AirPort Extreme basically turns the APX into a low end NAS, almost identical to the TimeCapsule. This has some legitimate uses for general file sharing, and especially for TimeMachine backups, but it's not great for iTunes Media storage - for the same reasons I listed in my previous post.

I personally never had any performance issues streaming my media from a USB2 Drive connected to a TimeCapsule to iTunes. I will agree with the other poster who mentioned that this is not a high performance option - however, media streaming is not a high performance requirement, at least for a single stream. If you were trying to drive multiple devices with different streams at the same time you might have a problem. The thing that made me move away from this setup was actually trying to push large amounts of data at the shared drive - specifically, ripping DVDs from two machines directly to the drive at the same time. This would reliably overheat the TimeCapsule and cause it to drop the USB connection. Playback is much less intense. Also, when I was using this set up all of my devices were wired ethernet, which may have helped.
 
I'd recommend anything that lets you setup and store your iTunes content on an iSCSI target. I've never had long-term luck trying to use Apple's database-driven applications (ex. iTunes, iPhoto, Aperture) over AFP shares. It may work for awhile, but eventually something gets corrupted and you either lose something or have to spend a lot of time repairing it.

iSCSI presents the volume as local storage to the OS.
 
Panch0 said:
I personally never had any performance issues streaming my media from a USB2 Drive connected to a TimeCapsule to iTunes. I will agree with the other poster who mentioned that this is not a high performance option - however, media streaming is not a high performance requirement, at least for a single stream. If you were trying to drive multiple devices with different streams at the same time you might have a problem. The thing that made me move away from this setup was actually trying to push large amounts of data at the shared drive - specifically, ripping DVDs from two machines directly to the drive at the same time. This would reliably overheat the TimeCapsule and cause it to drop the USB connection. Playback is much less intense. Also, when I was using this set up all of my devices were wired ethernet, which may have helped.
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Thanks. I'll give it a try. I'm not looking to eliminate home sharing (which, of course, can't be done w/o jail breaking). I really just need to free up some space on our MBP by moving some of our media files off of it. If iTunes can access them, and then our ATV3 can play them using Home Sharing, that would be great.

On a side note, does the USB hard drive need to be powered by adapter?
 
GarrettL1979 said:
Thanks. I'll give it a try. I'm not looking to eliminate home sharing (which, of course, can't be done w/o jail breaking). I really just need to free up some space on our MBP by moving some of our media files off of it. If iTunes can access them, and then our ATV3 can play them using Home Sharing, that would be great.

On a side note, does the USB hard drive need to be powered by adapter?
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You'll probably want a 3.5" drive for capacity and I've never seen one of those that could be powered by the USB port. So, yes you'll probably need a wall plug...
 
GarrettL1979 said:
Thanks. I'll give it a try. I'm not looking to eliminate home sharing (which, of course, can't be done w/o jail breaking). I really just need to free up some space on our MBP by moving some of our media files off of it. If iTunes can access them, and then our ATV3 can play them using Home Sharing, that would be great.

On a side note, does the USB hard drive need to be powered by adapter?
Click to expand...

I tried this out this weekend, and it worked well. There is a bit longer of lag time with larger files (as you mentioned, linds), so I decided just to move TV shows and DVD rips over to the external HD. The smaller files load almost instantaneously. Anyways, thanks for the help.

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GarrettL1979 said:
I tried this out this weekend, and it worked well. There is a bit longer of lag time with larger files (as you mentioned, linds), so I decided just to move TV shows and DVD rips over to the external HD. The smaller files load almost instantaneously. Anyways, thanks for the help.
Click to expand...

Panch0 said:
You'll probably want a 3.5" drive for capacity and I've never seen one of those that could be powered by the USB port. So, yes you'll probably need a wall plug...
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Also, just in case anyone is curious, the ext drive can be powered by the Airport Extreme's USB port.
 
blevins321 said:
I have a Synology, which I love. Take a look at a software-oriented review that I wrote for one here.

It is basically a web-based Linux software package that has prebuilt applications available for use. Torrent downloader, entire web hosting suite, Time Machine backup that's updated quickly, the ability to back itself up, photo archive management, etc...
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I ordered a Synology, then cancelled it when I read something about its not supporting HFS, so I ordered a QNAP, which seems to me to be identical to Synology - they both seem like great devices, almost the same numbering of their models, and similar if not identical offerings, and both about the same price. I love my NAS. Used to use a big La Cie drive (which died) but this is so much better.
 
On the subject of recommended drives for NAS purposes, I would strongly recommend against buying any product from Western Digital if you intend to use it for Time Machine backups.

After being caught napping by Lion, which broke my WD Sharespace's ability to be a destination for Time Machine backups, they took 3 or 4 months to fix the issue (with a firmware update). From what I understand, that was on Apple who changed the way Time Machine interacts with NAS drives without telling anyone. Regardless, WD's slow response was irritating.

Well, Mountain Lion did it again. I don't know why it's broken again, but I'm going with the "fool me once" principle to put this one on WD. It's been over 4 months since ML was released, and many more months since developer versions had been available. WD walked straight into the same bear trap again, and I have not been able to backup, nor access my existing backups, since upgrading to ML.

The icing on this crap cake is responses like this from their tech support:

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, we will be more than glad to assist you with this issue. Unfortunately we do not have information on what will be changed or a release date for an upgraded firmware. You may wish to join, and add to our Community Forums' Ideas Lab at the link below. Our development team reviews these posts on a regular basis, to see the most commonly requested features by our customers.
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This was 4 days ago. They still have no idea if/when/how this will get fixed.
 
I ran a thecus n7700 14tb NAS for 3 years, was overkill but great for streaming my 1080 movies via the wdtv to my 46" sharp quadtron monitor.

I then sold it, and built a hackintosh with an older quad core q6600, 8 port Areca raid card and threw in 8 x 2tb drives into the tower. cheaper than a dedicated out of the box setup and much much faster (processing wise). top it off, nothing hardware is proprietary.. so if something breaks, easy to fix! just the thecus power supply was 350$ alone to change if ever it failed.

thus long story short, NAS is a fancy word for a file server computer that can be made from any old pc hardware and sharing the drives on the network!
 
jezzy said:
I ran a thecus n7700 14tb NAS for 3 years, was overkill but great for streaming my 1080 movies via the wdtv to my 46" sharp quadtron monitor.

I then sold it, and built a hackintosh with an older quad core q6600, 8 port Areca raid card and threw in 8 x 2tb drives into the tower. cheaper than a dedicated out of the box setup and much much faster (processing wise). top it off, nothing hardware is proprietary.. so if something breaks, easy to fix! just the thecus power supply was 350$ alone to change if ever it failed.

thus long story short, NAS is a fancy word for a file server computer that can be made from any old pc hardware and sharing the drives on the network!
Click to expand...
just not an easy solution for someone who wants to buy the box, have the hard drive in it, plug and play.
 
I just brought a Synology DS212j along with two 2TB 7200 RPM drives. From reading around it seems like the best all in one NAS out there.
 
GarrettL1979 said:
For those of you who use a NAS drive for your iTunes/ATV collection, do you have any recommendations? I am hoping to eventually purchase a 2 or 3 TB version and connect it to our Airport Extreme. (budget = $200)
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I have two Synology DS1511 NAS drives, both with five two terabyte drives using Synology Hybrid Raid, for a total of 7.2 terabyte of storage in each. One is used as a dedicated Media Server in conjunction with a a 2011 MacMini running iTunes, and the other is used for documents, automated backups and everything else. Both work great and are easily accessible across my home network.

Before switching over to Synology, I was using a Netgear Duo NAS which was ok but a pita to update and manage. The Synology NAS drives however were simple to setup and they practically manage themselves. The DSM GUI interface is super easy to use, loaded with features and functionality including an iTunes server app (you still need to run iTunes from a MAC or PC) and is accessible from both Mac and Windows PC. The Hybrid RAID technology allows you to use different size hard drives so you can easily add and/or upgrade to larger drive(s) at a later date. This feature alone is worth every penny.

While the DS1511 is a much larger unit than you are looking for, Synology offers a number of less expensive lower capacity NAS drives with the same easy to use features and functionality. If you decide to get a NAS, you cannot go wrong with purchasing either of the Synology NAS units.

GarrettL1979 said:
Also, is there any downside to moving your iTunes collection to a NAS? Noticeable lag, etc?
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I have not noticed any lag whatsoever and it also works nicely with AppleTV. Within iTunes you do need to make sure that iTunes points to your NAS drive as it's iTunes database. Sometimes when I apply an iTunes update I have to reset it within iTunes to my NAS drive. Other than that, it works seamlessly.

stridemat said:
I just brought a Synology DS212j along with two 2TB 7200 RPM drives. From reading around it seems like the best all in one NAS out there.
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Very Nice! Synology makes one heck of a great NAS drive.

Cheers,

Scott Halliday
 
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I bought a NetGear ReadyNAS Duo to serve up my media library, mostly because it's one of the cheapest network attached storage devices out there. It offers a few RAID configurations and works fairly well as far as these things go but it is pretty loud when warming up. I purchased mine empty and dropped in a couple fast drives I had laying around.
 
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@Synology users, what is the file type of your HDD? Does DS212J supports HFS+?

Anyways, I have my eyes on QNAP TS-212 and was wondering if it works well with aTV.

I guess both of the NAS I mentioned has an iTunes server, does this mean you don't need to open iTunes app in your Mac in order for home sharing to be available?
 
technowar said:
@Synology users, what is the file type of your HDD? Does DS212J supports HFS+?

Anyways, I have my eyes on QNAP TS-212 and was wondering if it works well with aTV.

I guess both of the NAS I mentioned has an iTunes server, does this mean you don't need to open iTunes app in your Mac in order for home sharing to be available?
Click to expand...

No NAS supports home sharing unfortunately. They all use the same old Airport Express audio protocol. So unfortunately for any video iTunes is sill required unless you're jailbroken.
 
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