Any ideas? I have a WD MyBook Live that I need to replace. I don’t have a clue. Anybody, please?
I have had good results with Synology units. I had never used a NAS before and I found the Synology operating system easy to learn and quite capable. I use Western Digital Red drives in my unit. Do stay away from the ‘j’ models, which are Synology’s lowest-powered units; you need a little more horsepower if you want to do things like transcode formats during playback.
BTW: I own an older Western Digital MyBook, which not a NAS, just an external hard drive. Maybe yours is different/newer.
Are you running it as a NAS or just as an external hard drive?
Elk said Are you running it as a NAS or just as an external hard drive?I not sure. I use it to back up my music & system info. I can point JRiver to it and it will play from it. Aren't there some that you can use by downloading Jplay or something? Sorry but I have not got a clue.
magister said I have had good results with Synology units. I had never used a NAS before and I found the Synology operating system easy to learn and quite capable. I use Western Digital Red drives in my unit. Do stay away from the 'j' models, which are Synology's lowest-powered units; you need a little more horsepower if you want to do things like transcode formats during playback.BTW: I own an older Western Digital MyBook, which not a NAS, just an external hard drive. Maybe yours is different/newer.
Which Synology unit did you get. What have been the advantages?
rossop said I not sure. I use it to back up my music & system info. I can point JRiver to it and it will play from it. Aren't there some that you can use by downloading Jplay or something? Sorry but I have not got a clue.Sounds like you are just using an external hard drive; some people call that a NAS, but it isn't, in the technical sense of the term.
A real NAS is a small, low-powered computer, usually running some version of Linux. Because it’s a computer, you can install software on it (e.g., MinimServer, which I use) and thereby avoid the need to run a notebook or desktop computer in order to play music. I don’t like having to fire up and manipulate a big computer in my listening room, so I have MinimServer on the Synology and control it from my iPad. The two-bay Synology sits comfortably in my audio rack.
NAS’s are optimized for storing files, even though you can install applications on them. My Synology runs 24/7 (powers down the diiscs automatically after a period of inactivity) so it’s always available for storing my music and also all my household data, which I can access from any of my computers. It’s very convenient to be able to work either upstairs or downstairs and not worry about which machine I stored the file on. All real NAS units that I am familiar with connect to a network via ethernet (or sometimes wifi, which may or may not be able handle hi-res audio; depends partly on your network); some have USB ports for backup.
rossop said Which Synology unit did you get. What have been the advantages?I have a DS213 (now replaced by a newer unit). DS refers to Synology's Disk Station operating system, 2 means it has two bays for drives, and 13 means it came out in (drumroll . . . ) 2013.
I chose this one because I wanted the ability to automatically back up my data onto a second disk. It appears that the unit contains one 2TB disk, but in fact there are two; every time I add a file, it is automatically coped to the second disk. This is the first line of defense against hard disk failure and it is called a RAID configuration. If either disk fails the other will continue (usually) to function and you just replace the one that failed. The Synology software made setting up the RAID easy (it can be tricky). (I do have another backup elsewhere in the house and another that I keep off-site.)
You don’t need a lot of computing power, even by NAS standards, to play music; but the low-end ‘j’ units from Synology don’t have quite enough power to do things like transcode formats during playback.
I really like the 2T WD My Passport USB 3.0 drives. Inexpensive, quiet, bullet-proof.
1 Like
I have had good results with these also – I use them for my off-site backups.
How big should the NAS be? Where will it be located? If your collection is within a couple of terabytes, you can probably go fanless + SSD. And if you can wait, Samsung will be releasing new 3D NAND SSD’s in the 1st quarter (AFAIK) of the next year, that should be bigger yet cheaper.
Will it be connected directly to a computer (e.g. via USB) or used remotely (LAN, WiFi) as a file server (voa NFS/Samba) or as a UPnP server (e.g. Minim Server)?
Personally, I moved from my old QNAP NAS TS-431 to QNAP TVS-671, then upgraded the CPU and memory (yes, I know that the warranty is void now). But I put a bit more load on that NAS. So it depends on the required size, load and tolerable noise.
@alekz, do you have info on how to do this, or on which Qnap NASes this can be done?
@tony22 What do you mean under “this”? Fanless design? There are some fanless boxes available on the market from varius vendors, for example, QNAP HS-251 ( https://www.qnap.com/i/useng/product/model.php?II=147 ).
I’m currently building two fanless PC’s (for my wife and myself) around Streacom and HD-Plex cases and Intel Skylake i7-6700K CPU. So this is also an option. You can check http://www.silentpcreview.com/ and http://www.fanlesstech.com. Or you can go for an already assembled fanless PC: http://www.quietpc.com/systems Or you can wait until Larry from HD-Plex releases his new fanless cube NAS case (http://www.hd-plex.com/forum/showthread.php?t=772 )
Or do you mean “NAS upgrade”?
For fanless PC’s at low prices and for some inspiration you can also try Fanless PC’s on Aliexpress and linear power supplies Not the latest technology, but more than adequate for an audio PC, audio player or even a video player.
Sorry! I meant the Qnap mod.
That’s difficult to say - QNAP has quite a lot of models. The best way is to ask in the forum here: http://forum.qnap.com/viewforum.php?f=182
The rule of thumb is to check the corresponding line. For example: TVS-x71
TVS-471: G3250 or i3-4150, 2GB x 2 (2 memory slots, max 8GB per slot)
TVS-671: G3250 or i3-4150 or i5-4590S, 2GB x2 or 4GB x 2
TVS-871T: i5-4590S or i7-4790S, 8GB x 2
Here you can see, that this line supports max 65W Haswell CPUs and max 16GB RAM. What I did is I bought the cheapest 6 disk TVS-671 (with Pentium G3250 and 4GB RAM), and installed i7-4790S and 2x 8GB RAM. You can’t buy this config unless you move upto the 8-disk model and it will cost you 1000$ extra.
The same exercise/analysis should be done for each product line you are interested in.
One caution - it’s NOT easy to disassemble and reasssemble QNAP NASses! It tookme several hours to do the upgrade. And I was making photos after each step.You can find some tutorials on the Internet, how to do it, but you need to come up with the model first.
Hmm, it might not be possible for me. My TS-459 Pro+ uses an Intel Atom 1.8-GHz CPU.
Looks like the only thing you can do is to upgrade the RAM to 2GB.