A New NAS

jack · Post by **jack** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 2:58 pm

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS with 2 x 2TB drives in RAID 1 (mirrored).

Very nice & reliable (and quiet). Do all our backups to it as well as serving all the music...

Ray P · Post by **Ray P** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 6:04 pm

simon · Post by **simon** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 7:31 pm

Some more interesting thoughts there thanks.

I hadn't considered building a dedicated PC but I can see the merit in it. Our old XP box is hardly used now as it's so slow, must be 7 or 8 years old, so I could reuse it perhaps. But it only has 1GB of memory and I read somewhere that even Ubuntu would be better with 4GB. The downside is its energy consumption - no powering down etc. I don't know but I think it would be pretty thirsty switched on 24/7.

I've reverted back to the Acer nettop for now as I had my music library on that also, it "runs" SqueezeCenter quicker than the pi too. Perhaps an option is to use the Acer as a "server" with storage in a 2 bay NAS. The Acer wouldn't actually be a server, though it would run SC and stay on 24/7. The NAS would ideally have two disks (in RAID1?), perhaps with a larger disk to mirror the smaller for all our music, photos, docs etc. and keep discrete backups that weren't mirrored. The Acer could perhaps be used to schedule regular backups, if there's some appropriate software out there.

I never managed to get the QNAP to power down when it wasn't being accessed. By keeping SC off the NAS hopefully that would be more achievable. Ideally though it would be great to run SC on the NAS, with self-scheduling backups and power down when not in use. Wake-up on LAN would be a real boon for me too.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle is Ubuntu though. Having lived in a Windows world for 20+ years using the GUI just doesn't come naturally to me. I guess that just needs a bit of studying.

There are plenty of NAS choices. Nick's Netgear ReadyNAS specification looks good, but there are quite a lot of underwhelming reviews on Amazon. I'm no nerd but I'm not a novice either and if they've struggled then so might I.

ed · Post by ed » Wed Sep 18, 2013 8:06 pm

As an addendum to what I wrote about costs

it seems there have been some alarming changes in the atom world in the last 6 or 7 months........when I was last looking the current flavour was a d525 board something like 1.8ghz dual core for about £50-60.

seems all atom boards are now £100 plus with new chip sets and new mobo manufacturers. It seems intel are pulling out of the mobo market and this seems to have had an effect...

oh waily waily

For diy it looks like Nick's ref to openmediavault is a good solution for those intimidated by a ubuntu server install.

The Stratmangler · Post by **The Stratmangler** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 8:45 pm

simon wrote:I never managed to get the QNAP to power down when it wasn't being accessed. By keeping SC off the NAS hopefully that would be more achievable. Ideally though it would be great to run SC on the NAS, with self-scheduling backups and power down when not in use. Wake-up on LAN would be a real boon for me too.

My Zyxel spins down when not in use, and it wakes on LAN quickly when accessed.
It does this even with LMS running.
The version of LMS that is supported by Zyxel is a stripped down version that doesn't do heavy processing (such as resampling on the fly).

BBC iPlayer is readily supported, and Spotify works well too.

simon · Post by **simon** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 9:20 pm

Interesting Chris. Out of interest have you played with remote access i.e. access to your files from outside the house via phone and/or laptop/web interface? That would be useful to me but I'd have to open up ports and that makes me nervous.

jack · Post by **jack** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 9:36 pm

There were problems with the ReadyNAS s/w years ago but its been as stable as a rock for ages now. Never had any problems at all with it.

simon · Post by **simon** » Mon Oct 14, 2013 11:46 pm

Just an update. The engineer in me thought a standalone box running Ubuntu server or Windows server or whatever was the way to go, but the Yorkshireman/eco warrior in me doesn't want to pay for the leccy. I even considered using a Raspberry pi as a low powered server, but this would have needed a lot of time investment and I might never have got it working.

So on balance I've gone for a ZyXEL NSA325 with two 2TB disks. I was going to get 1TB disks but the extra Tera was a fiver so it seemed rude not to. The NSA325 runs SqueezeCenter and I've given up on RAID as I'm not convinced I need it, but more importantly this allows me to run automatic backups from one disk to the other.

That's the theory anyway, let's see how I get on.

ed · Post by ed » Tue Oct 15, 2013 9:59 am

Hi Simon

that looks like a good solution..cheaper than the atom solution although not quite as powerful...but who needs that power in a file server with one app running.....only 27watts consumption plus the discs is in the right area, can't find any info on whether it has a fan or not though.

I might pester you with questions further down the line.

simon · Post by **simon** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 12:54 pm

Hi Ed,

27W when running but only 7 when the disks spin down, which is set to 15 mins by default. It's all a compromise and SC as installed doesn't support 24/96, but that's not a problem for me. If it was I could continue with the Acer Revo nettop. It might be a problem for some though.

It does have a fan though. Again not a problem for me, but very much one for you perhaps?

The Stratmangler · Post by **The Stratmangler** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 1:06 pm

simon wrote:SC as installed doesn't support 24/96, but that's not a problem for me

That's not strictly true - the limiting factor comes down to the players you're running.
If you were running a Touch then you'd have no problem feeding it with 24/96.

Because I've installed EDO on the Touch here it can be fed with 24/192 files without any problems.

The problem with using the Zyxel is specifically that it does not do resampling on the fly for players that cannot handle the type of file presented to it.
So if you're running SB3 you'll find that 24/48 can be played but 24/96 cannot.

Dave the bass · Post by **Dave the bass** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 1:14 pm

<puts hand up really high to get Teachers Attention!>

Sir... Sir!

Supposing you were streaming a 24/192 file and you've got 2 devices sync'd and they were a SB Radio and an EDO'd Touch. Would/does the Sever downsample to the lowest res device?

I dunno how this bit works, ejakate me please

DTB

The Stratmangler · Post by **The Stratmangler** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 1:25 pm

Dave the bass wrote:<puts hand up really high to get Teachers Attention!>

Sir... Sir!

Supposing you were streaming a 24/192 file and you've got 2 devices sync'd and they were a SB Radio and an EDO'd Touch. Would/does the Sever downsample to the lowest res device?

I dunno how this bit works, ejakate me please

DTB

The simple answer is yes, it will resample to the least capable device, and in your case I believe that to be true (your Vortexbox does have the grunt to downsample on the fly, n'est ce pas?)

With the Zyxel the answer is no, because it doesn't have the processing muscle to do the resampling on the fly.

Dave the bass · Post by **Dave the bass** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 1:59 pm

Aaaaah, I see, ta ChrisMingler. Yeah, I'll check to see how VortexBox handles the data.

So, to see if downsampling on playback is taking place am I right in thinking that on the file data for a song in current playback viewed on the LMS GUI that the message "Bitrate: 5307kbps VBR (Converted to 705kbps FLAC) " shows that a known 24/192 file being downsampled on the fly to summat more playable for the hardware attached?

Cos thats the info I'm seeing here at work when I'm playing a 24/192 track playing via SqueezePlay on the works PC.

DTB

The Stratmangler · Post by **The Stratmangler** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 2:03 pm

You learn quick, Grasshopper

audio-talk

A New NAS

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