NAS drives

[CBrighton]

I'm currently looking for a NAS drive for use a sa media server, but since I have a few requirements I thought I'd make a post here to see if anyone knows of one which suits me rather than me flicking through pages and pages of technical specs and forums to check the compatibility of each one which I find.

My requirements are as follows:

1. At least 1 accessible drive bay (2+ would be much better). I don't care if it's hot-swap or needs to be turned off but the drive needs to be removable with minimum hassle rather than being a self-contained device which is basically an external hard drive via ethernet instead of USB. I want the ability to remove the hard drive it contains when larger capacity hard drives come down in price rather than having to replace the whole unit.

2. Stream to iPad without a PC / Mac. I realise this may mean converting all my video files to Apple's format as the hardware in most NAS boxes isn't good enough to convert on the fly the way a PC media server can.

3. Stream to xbox 360 without PC / Mac, keeping in mind the files may be a selection of video formats (I currently use TV ersity on my PC as at the time it allowed me to run more file types than without it) or they may all be Apple's format (m4v?) due to the above requirement of being iPad compatible.

4. Steam to Android without PC / Mac - this is less important but if possible I'd like to be able to stream to an Android device over the internet (the xbox & iPad would be over LAN) so I had access to my media on my phone when I'm away from my network.


Anyone know of a series of NAS products which would suit my needs (I am willing to buy 3rd party apps for the ipad / andriod as required, it's the NAS itself which I am trying to choose)?


Or am I overthinking it and all I need to worry about is requirement 1 as 2-4 are all possible with all NAS's (although some features of certain NAS's make it easier / more user friendly)?

 

[CBrighton]

I'm actually considering dropping the first requirement given how much cheaper the ones with built in hard drives are compared to the ones with accessible drive bays.

Which leaves me looking for NAS drives which are usable with xbox 360, ipad & android without a PC converting files / running media server software.

 

[Minkey]

You haven't specified budget but have a look at QNAP products clicky they have a full range of products ranging from £120 right up to enterprise prices and they support everything you need (depending on the model of course). You can even get them with a wireless option available in case you don't have a wireless router (again depending on model).

.........and their prices are very reasonable I've got a TS-659 Pro (12TB) at work for about £1200 iirc.

Which leaves me looking for NAS drives which are usable with xbox 360, ipad & android without a PC converting files / running media server software

Now this is a little trickier, the QNAP does have an encoding/ streaming engine to certain formats and I suspect they will be enough for your needs but I would double check.

Oh and yes you don't need a PC files can be transfer directly from a USB port, certainly for the model we have but in general NAS drive are usually 'in addition' to a PC as part of a network.

 

[CBrighton]

To confirm, I have a PC but the point is that I don't want it to be turned on 24/7 to stream media when I could have a less power-intensive NAS drive doing the same thing.

I'm prefectly happy to interact with it using my PC and I expect it to stream to my PC (which I didn't mention as any NAs should be able to do that), I just want to to be a stand-alone media server.

The big issue, as far as I can see, is streaming to iOS hardware as the apps which allow streaming of various file types do so by converting the file on the media server as it goes. And that's fine when the media server is a PC with a gamers CPU & RAM installed. But for the NAS drive to do it I would need expensive high-end hardware which kind of negates the point in saving money currently on electricity to keep my media PC turned on.

This leaves me planning to convert all my media files to Apple's approved format, but only assuming I know that these file types can stream to my xbox 360 without issue. Similarly I would like to be able to stream the media to my Android phone but again only if there are media players for Android which read Apple file types.


And ideally I'm looking to spend hundreds rather than thousands. I'm UK based and am ideally looking for somewhere up to £300 at the absolute most (which can easily get me 2 bay NAS boxes with up to 4Tb included or up to 3-5Tb self-contained ones). Any more than that and it'll end up being more expensive than my current setup instead of less expensive.

:edit:

I spotted the mention of your NAS drive @ £1200 but missed your mention of QNAP starting much lower.

I have briefly looked at the QNAP site before, I'll have to have another look while on a retailer website as while their product detail is great I don't see an RRP on there so it's hard to know if it's a product which I could consider.

 

[CBrighton]

Picking one of the lower spec ones at random (TS-219P II) the audio streaming is advertised as working with iOS devices, but the video streaming isn't.

Perhaps I should look into the hardware required to convert files, I have heard that some NAS boxes are powerful enough to provide live conversion for SD (but not HD) video.

 

[CBrighton]

I'm tempted to get this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003XFUXQK

It's not drive bays, but the hard drive is just a USB hard drive placed in the dock which makes it accessable via ethernet so if I bought a newer one to upgrade the old one could be a second NAS or an external hard drive. So it will still have a use.

On top of that the product detail on the Seagate site says it streams media to it's app for both Apple & Android and it streams to all the current gen of consoles.

And finally at £120 it's roughly the price of an internal SATA III 2Tb hard drive (I swear they have almost doubled in price in the last few months).

:edit:

And it has a USB socket which can be used to expand the space available on the NAS so if I upgrade I can use the old drive to expand the new one! Almost no upgradability lost for not having drive bays.