Data storage solution

[Oliver]

This information basically present the following choice: either a NAS with a powerful enough CPU and media functionality to directly stream from the NAS to my TV. The latter which I would have to connect to my home LAN either via Ethernet or Wifi. Or a simple NAS that's really only a data storage box (but with sufficient RAID options) and a seperate media player/HTPC which connects to the NAS via my home LAN.

Choices, choices, choices.. And then there's the cost of it all too.

I'll continue my Googling from here. You've definitely helped me in the right direction as I didn't know what a NAS could do and what a HTPC was a week ago.

[Oliver]

Eddie, I'm most likely going to end up buying the same setup you have. A QNAP NAS with 4x 3TB WD Red. You would do me a huge favor by measuring sequential read/write of the RAID5 setup, preferably by means of average size 1080p MKVs as that is what I will be transferring over.

I am assuming you are running a single cable 1GbE network from PC to router to NAS?

Also, what type of usenet connection do you have? Some people over at a local hardware forum said I will not be able to run SABnzbd on such a NAS and expect 35MB/s incoming divided over 20 SSL lines. Also PARing and unRARing is something the NAS will not do as fast as my sim box, according to them. Hence I'm thinking of downloading on my sim box and moving files over to the NAS afterwards

[Eddie]

I get a stable 100MB/sec transfer rate to/from the NAS. Sab certainly works perfectly well on the NAS. My download maxes out at around 10MB/s on the NAS (200 Mbps connection) so yes it's slower than it could be but it doesn't matter as it's always on and working anyway.

I don't see any reason at all not to run everything on the NAS, after all it's the whole point.


I use a news demon unlimited account as my main server and an Astraweb block account as a backup/fill in server.

[Oliver]

Thanks a lot!

When I'm not in a hurry I can indeed have the NAS do the downloading. But when I decide I want to watch a movie in 10 minutes from now I'd like all the speed I can get.

Btw, do you have a lot of trouble with HBO stuff and Netflix Original stuff (the ones that get DMCA'd almost right away) on that News Demon + Astra block?

[Eddie]

No no problems, but that's because the NAS is on 24/7 downloading files as soon as they appear on the servers. If you don't have that setup then you will.

The point of Sickrage/Sonarr and/or couch potato is that you set them up with shows or movies you want to see, often long before they are available (ie before tv shows are aired and before movies have been released) and let them grab the downloads as soon as they are available. If you're going to be downloading things manually and/or at random on demand it won't work as well.

I can download a tv episode in 10 mins and it'll be ready to play in plex in 11mins, frankly when I was testing everything on the pc it wasn't much faster.

[Oliver]

Alright. I know for sure now the 451+ does 100/100MB/s which is very important to me. Awaiting some forums on how the 431+/451 performs in relation to the 451+ for budget reasons. As soon as I get back results I'll hit the order button.

I won't be using Plex/Kodi on the NAS. I'll have that run on an HTPC which streams it over SAMBA.

[Eddie]

If you're not running plex on the NAS you can get a much cheaper NAS, and if you don't want to run sab etc on the NAS either then you can get a basic cheap NAS. The only reason I have the spec I do is because by NAS is doing the transcoding workforce plex. If you don't need it to do that you can happily have a dual core arm chip based box. It sounds more like you just want network storage more than anything.

If you've already got an htpc why not just run everything on that with additional network storage?

[Oliver]

My HTPC is an old laptop for now, and when that thing won't cut it anymore I'll go for an Intel NUC or similar. I indeed need a central place to dump my data on. My problem with NASes and decoding is that they don't decode DTS audio, and only some offer the option to bitstream it to a decoder. Currently I'm stuck with a TV w/o a decoder so I need the media platform to decode and downmix DTS into a PCM stream that my TV can handle via HDMI.

However, when I'd buy the cheapest NAS with RAID5 support I'm not sure it can handle Gigabit file transfer speed.

[Tex]

Just wanted to say I find this thread fascinating. I don't know half the shit you two are discussing as I am an old dinosaur that still rents DVDs and if I'm feeling adventurous, will order a movie on demand through my cable box. And my TV has on/off and volume as far as know. I look forward to coming back to this thread in 5 years when I catch up with this stuff.

P.S. - wondering if Gunny is still using Betamax and Laserdisc...

[Gunny]

Hey, I got me a new Hi-tech gizmo today, what is this Laserthingamajig your talking about?