For backups on my Mac, I use CCC. For backups on my PC, I use a Acronis true image and also Genie backup manager pro. All of these back up programs have an incremental feature which will only backup changes that have been made. I assume that the NAS has its own backup software since we are not talking about a specific type of operating system such as OS X or windows. Putting both of my external drives in a two bay case sounds like a great idea. Because each external drive is only 2TB, I would need to back up certain data on each drive as there will not be in enough room in the future and I hope there's a way to do this.
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Storage Advice for Media
- Thread starter dpriest
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That's correct. The Synology web interface has it's own backup set-up and software. I've haven't played with it that much, so I don't know exactly how flexible it is.
I'm sure OWC or someone manufacture a 2 bay USB caddy. Put the 2 drives in there and set them up to behave like 1 big 4TB drive, or a mirrored 2 TB drive, dependant on your needs.
Got it. One other thing. For now, I think I am going to use an old PC as a media server with iTunes open. It is running windows XP. If I have this computer on all the time and connected to the network for this purpose, am I vulnerable to viruses and therefore should have an antivirus program on it? Also, is it necessary to have it connected to the network with an ethernet cable, or will it be good if I set it up wirelessly with a wireless USB adapter?
I think I'd put an antivirus on it anyway just to be safe. Just one of the free ones, something light. If the machine is connected to your LAN, it will probably be accessible to the internet too I would imagine.
You can run it wirelessly if you want. Just need to make sure it's sleep preferences are set up correctly so it wakes up when you want it to! Try and see. If it's a problem try wired.
Cool. I guess the only thing that I am still on the fence about is whether I set up my NAS with two drives. If I do go with two drives, I have decided to go with a raid one configuration. I believe you said earlier that if I get an NAS with two bays, I can start off with only one drive and then always add another one later. I have also decided to get a smaller, more portable drive and back up everything on that and put that someplace offsite. I am just trying to figure out the easiest, most seamless way to back up things on the portable drive as well. As you said earlier, I do not want to be chasing my tail like a dog.
Attonine, I am sold on the Synology and was reading some reviews on Amazon. One person said that they can't use the iTunes server to serve media directly to the iPad, iPhone or Apple TV. After they did some further investigating, they said it has nothing to do with Synology but rather Apple who has a pretty tight lock on their software. Have you successfully been able to stream media from the sinology to the ATV?
Everyday, to several at the same time around the house. I mentioned above I don't use the iTunes server function - I don't like it and I don't find it very useful. I use the standard media server on the Synology and stream the traditional way with iTunes open on an iMac. This works fine for my needs.
iTunes server can be seen by the ATV. It shows up under computers. Not sure if it can stream video though.
For iPad etc you will need to use something like DS Audio. I've never used this so can't really comment on it. I don't need to stream to iPads or iPhones.
If you google around you will find many people who want to do the same as you. Try to discover the solutions that have implemented.
Synology say you can do it too:
https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/5.0/multimedia
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OK. One other thing. What hard drives are you using in your synology? I have decided to go with the Synology DS215j and get 2 4TB drives. I would either go with the WD red or black drives. I know the red is marketed for NAS environments, but not sure about the reliability though and the black has 5 year warranty vs. 3 year with the red.
Cool. Is the streaming and buffering speed a product of the network speed or is it a product of the NAS speed? The reason I am asking is because I think the DS215j would be fine for my needs but was also looking at the DS 214play. I don't need to do any trans coding, but if I have a couple of Apple TVs that are going to be streaming at the same time, I want to make sure that this NAS can handle it.
Are you planning to have the media on the NAS, mounted as a drive on your Windows XP computer running iTunes? Sorry, I'm getting a little lost in the discussion?
As has already been mentioned, you don't need a very fast network or disks just to stream video. But the faster the network and disks, the more enjoyable the experience will be. With a slow setup, you will watch the spinning pinwheel for awhile before the video starts to play. Same thing if you want to skip ahead a few chapters.
Wifi comes in all different flavors. Does your Airport support 802.11ac? If so, you could try to get a compatible wifi card. But that will still be noticeably slower than ethernet. I see speeds of about 65 MB/sec over 802.11ac wifi on my MacBook Air. My old MacBook pro struggles to do better than 15MB/sec. Gigabit ethernet is over 100MB/sec. If it's an old PC, the built-in ethernet might not support gigabit speed so you should check on that.
The PC needs to read from the NAS over the network, then send it over the network to the Apple TV, compounding the speed problem. Personally I wouldn't use wifi. For the best performance, use gigabit wired ethernet for everything and make sure your disk drives and NAS are capable of 100MB/sec.
As has already been mentioned, you don't need a very fast network or disks just to stream video. But the faster the network and disks, the more enjoyable the experience will be. With a slow setup, you will watch the spinning pinwheel for awhile before the video starts to play. Same thing if you want to skip ahead a few chapters.
Wifi comes in all different flavors. Does your Airport support 802.11ac? If so, you could try to get a compatible wifi card. But that will still be noticeably slower than ethernet. I see speeds of about 65 MB/sec over 802.11ac wifi on my MacBook Air. My old MacBook pro struggles to do better than 15MB/sec. Gigabit ethernet is over 100MB/sec. If it's an old PC, the built-in ethernet might not support gigabit speed so you should check on that.
The PC needs to read from the NAS over the network, then send it over the network to the Apple TV, compounding the speed problem. Personally I wouldn't use wifi. For the best performance, use gigabit wired ethernet for everything and make sure your disk drives and NAS are capable of 100MB/sec.
Yes, kind of.
There is an "iTunes Server" package - but it groups all audio into "Music" and all video into "Movies" - that makes things available over Home Sharing.
Alternatively, you can use the iOS apps that Synology makes. DS Video allows you to start a video using your iOS device as a "go-between", but once the stream is established, it can then stream straight to the ATV without the iOS device.
Personally, I just have a Mini running iTunes pointed to the NAS and then use Home Sharing from that. I'd like to drop that middle-man, but right now I don't think it's feasible (and I'm not fond of the DS Video app).
Don't know what an n network is. The PC is hardwired into the airport extreme which the Synology will also be hardwired into. I spoke to somebody at Synology and he said if two users are going to be streaming content at the same time, people will experience slow performance when fast forwarding through movies as well as playing and the 214play will handle. That doesn't make sense to me because I have a friend that has a Buffalo cloudstor NAS with 3 or 4 people simultaneously accessing data from the NAS and he has 3 ATVs in his house.
You only need the play (more expensive!) version if you are going to transcode. From what I understand you are not going to do this.
How often do you ffw film? I never do it. I watch from start to finish. I have 2 ATV, a music streamer and 2 macs. I can use all of them at the same time perfectly well.
There are many factors that can effect performance. I can stream several HD movies at the same time to my ATVs and Macs, but I cannot stream 24bit HD audio to my dedicated, high end, audio streamer, go figure.
The 215j will be fine.
To fins out if you have an n network you need to check your Airport extreme.
I checked my airport extreme through airport utility and under radio mode it is saying 802.11.a/n - 802.11.b/g/n automatic. I think this is means it is operating at the 802.11.n speeds, right? My extreme is the older model which is the square and not the tower. I believe I got it in 2010 or 2011.
Thanks. I am done with my 10,000 questions. Sorry if I was annoying but I this thread turned out being 3 pages and touched on many topics which I am sure will be valuable for many others. When I have my new setup running, I will check in and report back unless everybody is sick of me. 🙂
Everyone has their own preferences. I fast forward and skip through chapters all the time. I have tried both wifi and ethernet and notice a big difference.
To each his own. 🙂
My Panasonic Plasma is not in a location where it or the ATV can be wired. This is the way it has been since I got the ATV a year ago. When I FF past the first FF speed, I get the spinning cog and a bit of a delay. I am not going to start drilling holes and running wires through the house to wire it. It is the nature of the beast and it is a far cry from FF on a DVD, however Blu-Ray does not FF like a DVD either. As long as the new setup with the NAS is not any slower than this, I will be happy. But the way I look at it is that I have over 1TB of movies at my finger tips that I can access with a little silver remote.😛
I lied. I do have another question... I have a small TV that will be the future spot of another ATV. This one is close enough proximity that I can wire it, but all of the LAN Ethernet ports are taken. What can I do to expand the port capabilities of the extreme without losing speed?
You've got a switch right?
Connect everything to the switch and the switch to the AE. I'm pretty sure this is the preferred way to set things up.
Interesting thread!
OP - A couple of things I thought whilst reading it:
Are you tied to the Apple TV as the streaming player attached to your TV? You seem to want to (ideally) stream from the NAS without a computer switched on to run iTunes at the same time. As already mentioned by others, it's only possible to do this in a limited way with Apple TV. But with a Smart TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox, or Playstation as your streaming player you can just directly connect to a shared media folder on the NAS. You can alternatively install clients (such as Plex or DS Video) on some of these devices for media servers running on the Synology NAS.
You seem to have a bit of concern about wifi performance. At my home I had problems with streaming HD content over wifi to a weaker signal area of my home. I now use powerline networking to connect my router to my TVs and their attached devices. Powerline networking is cheap and I'm very happy with the result.
My setup is Airport Extreme connected via its four ethernet ports to cable modem, Synology NAS, Powerline adapter, and Sonos bridge. Next to my main living room TV is a powerline adapter connected to a network switch. This network switch branches out to the Smart TV, Apple TV, and XBox. In another room, I have another powerline adapter connected to a Smart TV. I usually access video content stored on the Synology NAS via the DS Video application on my Smart TVs.
OP - A couple of things I thought whilst reading it:
Are you tied to the Apple TV as the streaming player attached to your TV? You seem to want to (ideally) stream from the NAS without a computer switched on to run iTunes at the same time. As already mentioned by others, it's only possible to do this in a limited way with Apple TV. But with a Smart TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox, or Playstation as your streaming player you can just directly connect to a shared media folder on the NAS. You can alternatively install clients (such as Plex or DS Video) on some of these devices for media servers running on the Synology NAS.
You seem to have a bit of concern about wifi performance. At my home I had problems with streaming HD content over wifi to a weaker signal area of my home. I now use powerline networking to connect my router to my TVs and their attached devices. Powerline networking is cheap and I'm very happy with the result.
My setup is Airport Extreme connected via its four ethernet ports to cable modem, Synology NAS, Powerline adapter, and Sonos bridge. Next to my main living room TV is a powerline adapter connected to a network switch. This network switch branches out to the Smart TV, Apple TV, and XBox. In another room, I have another powerline adapter connected to a Smart TV. I usually access video content stored on the Synology NAS via the DS Video application on my Smart TVs.
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I've just tried this out of curiosity. Neither my Apple TV nor the music app on my iPad are seeing the NAS. iTunes running on my computer is seeing the NAS.
Is there a trick to get it working?
The Synology iTunes server app only has a couple of settings. I have kept the default share name (Diskstation) and have not set it to require a password.
Re: network speeds (wifi vs ethernet), Apple TV 3 supports wireless N and 100mbps ethernet (= max 12.5 MB/s), so doubtful that there's much difference between wireless N, AC, and ethernet for your uses. Mine is hooked up via ethernet, mainly for the stability/reliability of the connection.