NAS for touch

[JB]

Any recommendations? I can't use sb server on my work pc due to security on it, thought put it on a nas and rip everything on a nas, perhaps using girlfriends MAC. Thanks

[surayne]

Why use a NAS with an SB Touch? You can just plug in a USB drive with your music on it.

[BobC]

Am thinking of a NAS myself and to be honest it was mainly driven by the need to provide additional storage for 3 people in the house, each using different lap/desk top PCs. I will store video, photos and music on it. I need it to be wirelessly networked via the router and to be able to support RAID 0 and 1, probably more. i know this is not a replacement for a regular backup, but it will do for now. Am nearly busting my PCs internal memory and of course I dont want to leave the PC on all the time just to share it over a network.

Am looking for dual core 1.6 plus speed on the NAS. Some come with SB software loaded and i assume loading it up on those that don't won't be an issue. The precessor speed is quite important as activities like refreshing all the music can take an age without this. Oh and 4tb of drive would be good, so a four bay NAS with 4x 2Tb drives in RAID mirror mode would be a good start. In fact, as it will take some time to fill the memory up it would be handy if three of the drives could operate in RAID 0, and the other in mirror until the 2tb limit is reached. Any thoughts, advice much appreciated.

netgear and QNAP seem to be the market leaders in this buit happy for some advice from computer types out there.

[browellm]

Am thinking of a NAS myself and to be honest it was mainly driven by the need to provide additional storage for 3 people in the house, each using different lap/desk top PCs. I will store video, photos and music on it. I need it to be wirelessly networked via the router and to be able to support RAID 0 and 1, probably more. i know this is not a replacement for a regular backup, but it will do for now. Am nearly busting my PCs internal memory and of course I dont want to leave the PC on all the time just to share it over a network.

Am looking for dual core 1.6 plus speed on the NAS. Some come with SB software loaded and i assume loading it up on those that don't won't be an issue. The precessor speed is quite important as activities like refreshing all the music can take an age without this. Oh and 4tb of drive would be good, so a four bay NAS with 4x 2Tb drives in RAID mirror mode would be a good start. In fact, as it will take some time to fill the memory up it would be handy if three of the drives could operate in RAID 0, and the other in mirror until the 2tb limit is reached. Any thoughts, advice much appreciated.

netgear and QNAP seem to be the market leaders in this buit happy for some advice from computer types out there.

Sounds ripe for Windows Home Server (WHS), Bob. Look at the HP MediaSmarts, they come with some very nice additional software included, and it's a doddle to install SBS on them. I really don't like traditional NAS for running SBS, they are relatively slow, and very expensive for what you get. Logitech provide an official build of SBS for the Netgear ReadyNAS NV, for the others like QNAP, you'll be reliant on community support to get SBS on there.

There are some other good alternatives to look at if you are prepared to think a bit different. Sheevaplug looks interesting (google it). Also, if you have an old laptop or Macbook lying around, these make good low wattage servers - just hang some USB hard disks off them, and ethernet them to your router.

[surayne]

Or use Vortexbox on a PC of your choice - low-power, SFF, or an old PC and hide it away... it's incredibly stable and will run on a very basic system.

[browellm]

Or use Vortexbox on a PC of your choice - low-power, SFF, or an old PC and hide it away... it's incredibly stable and will run on a very basic system.

Good shout, I always forget about Vortexbox.

[JB]

It's all dutch to me but will look into these things. I only need it for ripping audio cd and to run sbs, does that change any recommendations?

[browellm]

It's all dutch to me but will look into these things. I only need it for ripping audio cd and to run sbs, does that change any recommendations?

http://vortexbox.org/about/

You can install it for free on an old PC. Or if you don't have one, they will sell it to you as a whole appliance (hardware and software) for a decent price.

[dudywoxer]

whs is pretty good, and acer have a few varients on the market at the mo. If you are reasonably computer savvy then amahi is worth a look for the software side, and you could build a very good 'box' to run it for £3- £400.

[JB]

Thanks the vortexbox looks interesting

[HectorHughMunro]

Why use a NAS with an SB Touch? You can just plug in a USB drive with your music on it.

It's not as easy as that. If you have a large collection, the Touch becomes sluggish and can be prone to stuttering. Some say that the sound quality is poorer.

[BobC]

Hmmmm, the more i look the more I realise that all is not as connected a one might hope. It looks like using LSB and MM is a no no as you in effect have to run two music database managers, MM can't be used via LSB, shame about that. I would be happy to use LSB to stream music around th house but i love the mm interface and would be keen to use this is the hifi room. If i could find a decent NAS with a coax out to connect to the DAC I would be well away I think. Looks like the only way to do this is to utilise a PC and set it up as a NAS, ethernet to home router and coax to dac via a decent sound card. can then load media monkey onto a small netbook to use as a remote control in the hifi room and use LSB for anywhere else.

Not going to rush this, may take a bit of time to work out the best way through this mire. In the meantime have bought a 1tb external hard drive to connect to the pc so i have a decent back up for all my data for the now. Am also running the PC direct to the dac via a coax output on the dmx6fire soundcard. Will keep me happy for a while.

[Bertiebee]

I'm no computer techy but I have a Netgear NAS that I use with my Squeezebox Touch. This means the NAS can be left on all the time and provides storage for the Touch so this can be played without the PC being switched on.

Detailed instructions on how to set this up (they must have been clear because I managed it) are on the Logitech website.

I have to say I've been impressed with the ease of it all. The Netgear has 2 x 1TB drives (£75 from Amazon) configured as Raid X storage (I believe this means they are mirror impage and hot-swappable).

All in the total cost was £175 which gives me the peace of mind that my collection will not suddenly disappear if an HDD fails.

Worth every penny IMHO.

[BobC]

can i ask does that Netgear NAS manage the SB update of new tracks in a timely manner, have seen a few reports on the net that it slows down the SB interface and takes a lot longer than if you were running SB on a PC. Most PCs operate at 2.f GHz whereas the Non ultra plus Netgear stuff runs at 800Mhz.

Also, if you use MM, do you find it much of an issue managing playlists in SB and mm etc or do you just manage all your music library with SB?

Cheers

BobC

[browellm]

Bob, I'm not a huge playlist expert as I don't really use them, but if you want to create playlists with MM, and play them on the SB just save them in the default SB playlist directory, or do it the other way around and tell SBS the directory your MM playlists are in. They both use the standard playlist format of .m3u

[JB]

I have been chatting to the guys at Vortexbox.co.uk, think I will go with one of their solutions for now - reasonably priced, does it all, and for a PC numptey like me great!!!

[browellm]

I have been chatting to the guys at Vortexbox.co.uk, think I will go with one of their solutions for now - reasonably priced, does it all, and for a PC numptey like me great!!!

Their support seems excellent. The main guy, Agillis, posts on the squeezebox forums regularly. If anyone asks a question he's there in 5 minutes.

[JB]

Yes communications so far have been excellent. Will give it a whirl!

[Bertiebee]

The Vortexbox looks like a good solution, just insert CD and you are away.

Using a NAS with the SB (and installing SB on the NAS) does make the updating of tracks a little more slowly. I don't have any experience of playlists though.

I prefer to sacrifice a little speed for the security of a mirror image back up (I dread to think what I'd do if I lost all my music due to a HDD failure).

There is one other downside of the Netgear and that is the fan (you can control the speed of this by software) but when the unit is searching there is a little noise (although I just isolate it like any other component).

[Marvt74]

I bought a readynas duo and put all my music on it but when using ipeng it was painfully slow. To the point it took a fee minutes to open up an artists list of albums and then same again for the tracks.

I sent it back and built a vortexbox and it's fantastic.