Cheapest decent NAS for music
Discussion
With a recent hifi purchase making it easier to stream my own ripped tunes I dusted off my old Buffalo Linkstation NAS. I've been using the PC up until now but felt the need for something that's accessible 24/7
This thing must be around 10 years old or so and not used for the last 5 or 6. Certainly not with my current PC as I has to set up Windows to work with SMB1 to get it to even map the drive. Anyway this thing was wheezing and creaking with every action. Newly copied stuff was on the drive but not visible to BubbleUPnP or my hifi. The PC was slowing down and the access to the NAS kept on dropping
Anyway. Long story short, after about 3 hours I put it back in the drawer I found it in and gave up.
So I need a new NAS - only needs a couple of TB to store a load of ripped FLAC files. Will only be used across my own network and I have a separate backup drive and all the music will probably be on the PC too anyway so don't need any redundancy plus it's all from CDs I own
I assume that won't be taxing and I don't need anything too flashy so what's the cheapest one that won't be a pain in the arse and won't let me down?
This thing must be around 10 years old or so and not used for the last 5 or 6. Certainly not with my current PC as I has to set up Windows to work with SMB1 to get it to even map the drive. Anyway this thing was wheezing and creaking with every action. Newly copied stuff was on the drive but not visible to BubbleUPnP or my hifi. The PC was slowing down and the access to the NAS kept on dropping
Anyway. Long story short, after about 3 hours I put it back in the drawer I found it in and gave up.
So I need a new NAS - only needs a couple of TB to store a load of ripped FLAC files. Will only be used across my own network and I have a separate backup drive and all the music will probably be on the PC too anyway so don't need any redundancy plus it's all from CDs I own
I assume that won't be taxing and I don't need anything too flashy so what's the cheapest one that won't be a pain in the arse and won't let me down?
With such simple requirements any NAS on the market will do what you need.
I'd have a think about any possible future scope creep before taking the plunge though.
Synology or QNAP or Terramaster will all have products that will work - I'd stay away from any of the Western Digital "My Cloud" products personally.
All of them have positives and negatives, but you aren't really likely to hit them if you just need an SMB share with some music on there.
I'd have a think about any possible future scope creep before taking the plunge though.
Synology or QNAP or Terramaster will all have products that will work - I'd stay away from any of the Western Digital "My Cloud" products personally.
All of them have positives and negatives, but you aren't really likely to hit them if you just need an SMB share with some music on there.
Gren said:
So I need a new NAS - only needs a couple of TB to store a load of ripped FLAC files. Will only be used across my own network and I have a separate backup drive and all the music will probably be on the PC too anyway so don't need any redundancy plus it's all from CDs I own
I'm actually thinking of upgrading to a 'proper' NAS, but for the last decade I've had the same use case as you and have been quiet happy with a WD Mycloud - the only annoyance I've found is it going out of support and no longer being able to access it remotely as a result, but for streaming FLACs and MP3 to my HiFi and other devices it's been pretty flawless! Captain_Morgan said:
What kind of redundancy are you looking for and how much data are you looking to store day one, how much do you expect it to expand by and do you expect the usage to expand to include data storage, backups, video streaming?
Sorry I’d scanned your OP and missed the original data.As your keeping a copy on your there little need to replicate & I’d say that the wd mynas or a raspberry pi based system or even connecting a hard drive to your router if it has a usb port.
I've just bought a Synology DS422+ and its a great bit of kit - Very quick and loads of apps including a really good piece of software to capture multiple security camera feeds (I think you need to buy an extra licence for more than two cameras).
I hadn't realised that 'iTunes Server' is no longer supported (had that on my old Buffalo Linkstation, but it streams stuff no problem
I hadn't realised that 'iTunes Server' is no longer supported (had that on my old Buffalo Linkstation, but it streams stuff no problem
Synology (take your pick but you can get a single bay if you don't need redundancy) - https://www.scan.co.uk/products/1-bay-synology-dis...
Plex server on the Synology then use Plexamp on your devices to access the music. I've been using this setup for a couple of years and it's great. If you pay for the Plex pass you can download files to your device locally in case you don't have online access.
Plex server on the Synology then use Plexamp on your devices to access the music. I've been using this setup for a couple of years and it's great. If you pay for the Plex pass you can download files to your device locally in case you don't have online access.
https://www.ebuyer.com/store/Enterprise-Storage/ca...
There's a cheap DS124 1 bay NAS here, will take a 2.5" drive or SSD (2TB SATA 2.5" SSD is about £70), that's about as cheap and plug and play as it gets. On an ethernet network with an SSD, it ought to cope with many simultaneous users.
There's a cheap DS124 1 bay NAS here, will take a 2.5" drive or SSD (2TB SATA 2.5" SSD is about £70), that's about as cheap and plug and play as it gets. On an ethernet network with an SSD, it ought to cope with many simultaneous users.
Almost anything will do for a media server NAS. They don't really need a lot of compute power unless you are planning on having them re-encode video on the fly (which for some reason seems to be an obsession with most anyone on a home server group who will typically insist that they NEED to reencode six streams at a time, or whatever). Music is trivial to serve.
I've used QNAP, Synology then rolled my own low-power Linux PC boxes which I used for a few years and currently I am finding that a Raspberry Pi 4B works just great. It also does NZB downloading and acts as a Squid proxy if I am on a public wifi network and want to stay private (I use SSH and then tunnel over it). Plus lets you access UK services with your UK IP address if you are abroad. All that from something I can power off a standard USB power supply.
I've used QNAP, Synology then rolled my own low-power Linux PC boxes which I used for a few years and currently I am finding that a Raspberry Pi 4B works just great. It also does NZB downloading and acts as a Squid proxy if I am on a public wifi network and want to stay private (I use SSH and then tunnel over it). Plus lets you access UK services with your UK IP address if you are abroad. All that from something I can power off a standard USB power supply.
Assuming your playback device supports upnp/dlna.
The simplest is to install minidlna:
https://github.com/azatoth/minidlna
Don't be put off by the age of the repo.
It's normally available on just about every common variant of linux.
Configure it to source files from wherever your audio files are and forget all about it.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MiniDLNA
The simplest is to install minidlna:
https://github.com/azatoth/minidlna
Don't be put off by the age of the repo.
It's normally available on just about every common variant of linux.
Configure it to source files from wherever your audio files are and forget all about it.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MiniDLNA
SteveKTMer said:
https://www.ebuyer.com/store/Enterprise-Storage/ca...
There's a cheap DS124 1 bay NAS here, will take a 2.5" drive or SSD (2TB SATA 2.5" SSD is about £70), that's about as cheap and plug and play as it gets. On an ethernet network with an SSD, it ought to cope with many simultaneous users.
That's the sort of thing I've been looking at along with the QNAP ts-133. £95 for a 4TB from Seagate and it does all I needThere's a cheap DS124 1 bay NAS here, will take a 2.5" drive or SSD (2TB SATA 2.5" SSD is about £70), that's about as cheap and plug and play as it gets. On an ethernet network with an SSD, it ought to cope with many simultaneous users.
superpp said:
a simple external USB hard drive plugged into a USB port on your router (most have one) should suffice?
Not on mine I'm afraidboxedin said:
Assuming your playback device supports upnp/dlna.
The simplest is to install minidlna:
https://github.com/azatoth/minidlna
Don't be put off by the age of the repo.
It's normally available on just about every common variant of linux.
Configure it to source files from wherever your audio files are and forget all about it.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MiniDLNA
Agreed - when I was looking around for a DLNA server for my Pi4 running Ubuntu Server, that was by far the best one I could find. It was surprisingly tricky to find a good server that worked reliably. The simplest is to install minidlna:
https://github.com/azatoth/minidlna
Don't be put off by the age of the repo.
It's normally available on just about every common variant of linux.
Configure it to source files from wherever your audio files are and forget all about it.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MiniDLNA
I had been using Serviio on my previous server build (under CentOS 7.x) and it could be pretty flaky, often simply disappearing from the network at random.
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