Advice on a good NAS to stream media from

[99benns]

Hi

Does anybody here use a NAS with the Boxee Box? I understand any NAS "SHOULD" work fine but it would be good to know if somebody has tested one which works reliably.

Thinking about the 2TB Seagate one ($200/£130 budget). Anybody used this?

Any advise greatly appreciated..or a link to a discussion on this (haven't found anything specific in my searches) Thanks

[aiiee]

Sorry, only have experience with my Netgear ReadyNas. It works great, though out of your price range.

[wrxesteefly]

i have the WD 8TB Sharespace. i have no issues whatsoever with it. it was just hella expensive.

[triffle]

I use FreeNas that is loaded on a really old PII. I stream all my media using the SMB protocol with no issues. With that said, now your question. Any NAS or computer should be able to serve up media to boxee or the boxee box, as long as the box supports windows filesharing (aka SMB ). When purchasing a NAS, just make sure that it supports SMB. and you should be good to go.

[99benns]

Thanks for your quick replies. Having second thoughts about the Seagate one, mixed reviews and its unclear if it supports SMB.

Would love an 8TB WD or Netgear but they ain't cheap. Probably going to buy the ZyXEL NSA-210 bay for now and add a drive I have spare.

I'm going to wait a few days in case anybody else has any better suggestions or advice..thanks again

[lazz3k]

I recently bought the Dlink DNS-323 and so far so good. It's made of metal, and feels really sturdy. popped in 2 hitachi 2T drives (7500 rpm) in it. Set it up as Raid0 so it shows as 1 4t. I feel it's a decent starter setup for the cost. The enclosure itself was $200 (CAD), and the drives were on sale for $140 (CAD) each. you can start with just 1 drive, or smaller drives if the budget is tight. but in my case, it was a 4 terrabyte nas drive for under $500.

zero problems seting it up, and the boxee box picked up on it right away.

Anyways, so far, no complaints, i like. performance wise, i was able to stream a 1080p movie (15 mbps bitrate) on the boxee box, while watching a high def show on my comp, while still copying file to the drive at 10 MBPS. I'll test it further with more streams once i get my 2 netbooks in the mail.

lots of choices, in the end it's all based on your budget. i'm sure you'll hear good and bad from pretty much anything out there, final choice is yours.

[javajoekc]

I, too, can recommend the Dlink DNS-323. I've had one for a few years now and it has worked flawlessly. Has a lot of nice features too. Do a quick Google search for the WIKI and you can find all kinds a usefull hacks for it as well.

[MrVectrex]

I have the Synology DS209+ 2 bay NAS with 2x1tb drives which are raided to give 1tb of backed up storage.

It is a SUPERB NAS with features that put many others to shame. One specifically good feature is the web interface and the amount of access and control you get from it. I have even installed SABNZBD on there and enjoy receiving automatic emails from it when new shows have been downloaded.

I stream across regular 10/100 wired network to the Boxee Box and Popcorn Hour, anything up to 1080p rips (8gb+ file size etc) and never see any issues at all.

I also have the NAS acting as a TimeMachine for my Mac's, so it really does perform a multitude of tasks.

Recommended.

[jtown]

I've been playing with unRAID for a few months and it works well for a media library. Especially if you're beyond the scope of a 4-6 drive consumer NAS and want fault tolerance but can't afford to spend $$$$.

Okay, I'm beyond "playing" with it. I'm about halfway through filling up my 6th 2tb data drive.

[Normski]

Sorry, only have experience with my Netgear ReadyNas. It works great, though out of your price range.

+1 here. My Duo has been brilliant the past 2 years! Unfortunately as aiiee said it is quite a bit more expensive