NAS for torrents
- Thread starter Friday
- Start date
Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
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Frenzied Wombat
Potato del Grande
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I have one of the Lenovo NAS's for about six months and it's been perfectly reliable. Whatever you do, make sure to get one that has built in RAID. I have this model:
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/servers...oemc/ix4-300d/
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/servers...oemc/ix4-300d/
Void
Experiencer
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I have this one:Amazon.com: Synology DiskStation 8-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage - Black (DS1812+): Computers Accessories
It might be a bit overkill, but I like the fact that I can buy up to two 5-bay expansions for it as well, so if one day I'm worrying about my 4K rips taking up too much space, I can easily expand without issues. Synology also has a great "operating system" which has all kinds of neat shit that I wasn't aware of until recently.
For example, I have a lot of free time at work, but I can't do really fun stuff like jerk off, watch tv, play video games, read books, etc. I can fuck around on my computer though. So I transferred my entire jumbled mess of music downloads from torrents and newsgroups onto an external drive and plugged it into my work computer. With the Synology Cloud Station, I assigned a particular directory on my work computer to synchronize with the Music directory on my NAS at home. Now any time I organize another album (you know, renaming it properly, getting album art, etc.) and put it into the directory on my computer at work, it automatically uploads and synchronizes it at home.
I could do the same thing with any directories if I really wanted to. It is like having an unlimited sized Dropbox for no monthly fee.
On top of that, with the music app on the NAS, I am able to connect to it with the Synology app on my android phone, and anywhere I have a connection I can stream my entire collection to my phone.
It also has a PLEX app, but the processor in mine isn't enough to transcode HD movies. I let my HTPC (an Intel NUC that runs 24/7) do that, but if you bought a higher powered version you could even have it run PLEX all the time just from the NAS, and who cares if your computer is on?
It is expensive, but my Synology NAS is probably one of the best things I have ever bought, without question.
It might be a bit overkill, but I like the fact that I can buy up to two 5-bay expansions for it as well, so if one day I'm worrying about my 4K rips taking up too much space, I can easily expand without issues. Synology also has a great "operating system" which has all kinds of neat shit that I wasn't aware of until recently.
For example, I have a lot of free time at work, but I can't do really fun stuff like jerk off, watch tv, play video games, read books, etc. I can fuck around on my computer though. So I transferred my entire jumbled mess of music downloads from torrents and newsgroups onto an external drive and plugged it into my work computer. With the Synology Cloud Station, I assigned a particular directory on my work computer to synchronize with the Music directory on my NAS at home. Now any time I organize another album (you know, renaming it properly, getting album art, etc.) and put it into the directory on my computer at work, it automatically uploads and synchronizes it at home.
I could do the same thing with any directories if I really wanted to. It is like having an unlimited sized Dropbox for no monthly fee.
On top of that, with the music app on the NAS, I am able to connect to it with the Synology app on my android phone, and anywhere I have a connection I can stream my entire collection to my phone.
It also has a PLEX app, but the processor in mine isn't enough to transcode HD movies. I let my HTPC (an Intel NUC that runs 24/7) do that, but if you bought a higher powered version you could even have it run PLEX all the time just from the NAS, and who cares if your computer is on?
It is expensive, but my Synology NAS is probably one of the best things I have ever bought, without question.
Frenzied Wombat
Potato del Grande
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Yeah, the Synology models are definitely top notch. Personally, at the low end it's hard to go wrong in the NAS area. Most vendors have very similar apps, and most of your reliability comes down to the quality of the PSU they use.
Not sure what your budget is, but if I had to do it over entirely I'd spend the extra coin and get a NAS with Windows 2012 Storage Server as the OS. DFS, data dedupe, and iSCSI support built in is freaking sweet.
Not sure what your budget is, but if I had to do it over entirely I'd spend the extra coin and get a NAS with Windows 2012 Storage Server as the OS. DFS, data dedupe, and iSCSI support built in is freaking sweet.
Eomer
Trakanon Raider
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I've found my Qnap to be great over the years as well. It's getting a bit long in the tooth, but there's no real need to replace it. It would be nice to run a Plex server on it, but it doesn't have the juice, so I've just been leaving my HTPC on as the Plex server. 40 watts vs. 80-100 watts isn't going to kill me.
Void
Experiencer
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Nah, but I justified it by cutting cable. That's $150/month savings right there. Makes buying a NAS a lot easier when you look at it like that.
Got an old clunker of a computer lying around?
http://www.freenas.org/
The only draw back is that the first disk you install will be used for the OS and will not be allocated towards storage. Other than that, it's a great alternative to buying a nas box.
http://www.freenas.org/
The only draw back is that the first disk you install will be used for the OS and will not be allocated towards storage. Other than that, it's a great alternative to buying a nas box.
alavaz
Trakanon Raider
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If you know Unix, or are willing to do a lot of googling to figure it out, try to score a recycled Sun/Oracle SPARC server (T5xxx models preferably the sunfire shit is pretty old). I have a T5220 I got from work that was surplused out during a hardware refresh. It came with 6x 300GB SAS disks and I put in 2x SSDs for a mirrored boot disk. I installed Solaris 11 which is not technically free but it's not like Windows where it shuts down if you don't activate it within 30 days. I did not hardware raid anything, I just used ZFS to raid the disks (RAIDZ) and it has all the fancy features like dedupe, snapshots, compression, etc. I didn't set up SAMBA (Windows file sharing) since Windows 7 and 8 have an NFS client so I elected to just use NFS instead. It does require some configuration to make it work, but it looked less daunting than the Samba set up on Solaris 11. Shit is rock solid though and I set up port forwarding so that I can SSH to it from anywhere with internet.
Jysin
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I've got a 2010 model 5 Bay Synology NAS. It is absolutely badass. Not a cheap solution, but they are amazing.
I am about 80% full on a 5x2TB RAID5 array. Waiting on the 4TB drives to drop in price a bit more so I can start swapping out. I love me some 1080p DTS-HD movies!
I am about 80% full on a 5x2TB RAID5 array. Waiting on the 4TB drives to drop in price a bit more so I can start swapping out. I love me some 1080p DTS-HD movies!
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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If you aren't looking to spend a lot of money I'm very happy with my Readynas 102 for $200. It only has 2 bays, but you can put 4GB drives in each one.
It's low power and the the ReadyCloud software is pretty good. The NAS has a built in DLNA media server it can run Transmission for torrents along with PLEX for more advanced media server stuff. However, it is ARM and therefore too weak to transcode so you can't use all of the crazy PLEX features.
I am pretty sure power users would find it lacking but it works great for my simple needs.
It's low power and the the ReadyCloud software is pretty good. The NAS has a built in DLNA media server it can run Transmission for torrents along with PLEX for more advanced media server stuff. However, it is ARM and therefore too weak to transcode so you can't use all of the crazy PLEX features.
I am pretty sure power users would find it lacking but it works great for my simple needs.
Friday
Lord Nagafen Raider
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Thanks for the info guys.
I ended up getting my hands on aNetgear ReadyNAS RNDP2210for now. Anyone had any experience with these? I'll be checking into the software and features sometime later this week or next week when I get a chance (as well as reading over the information in this thread).
I ended up getting my hands on aNetgear ReadyNAS RNDP2210for now. Anyone had any experience with these? I'll be checking into the software and features sometime later this week or next week when I get a chance (as well as reading over the information in this thread).
Eomer
Trakanon Raider
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My QNAP 439 w/ 4 drives uses 40W when the drives are spun up and accessing data. 25W when it's dormant. According to my UPS anyways. Compared to older PCs it's pretty good, but my HTPC (i5-750, Geforce 670, a Corsair 256gb SSD, and a few small fans) uses around 40W when it's idle as well, although it has no mechanical drives in it. The HTPC has the Plex server on it, so both running at idle is somewhere around 70-80W (they're on the same UPS). When you start up a stream it'll spike up to 150-180W, and then alternate back and forth between high and low power states once the transcoding has buffered.
Void
Experiencer
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40W is pretty typical for 5 drives when actually accessing data. When the drives hibernate, it drops to around 15W I want to say.
I have the 8-bay Synology, and according to this info pageSynology Network Attached Storage - DS1812+ Productsit only consumes 50.6 W. I'll pull out the appropriate section so you don't have to go searching, but if you want you can verify it says that.
I have the 8-bay Synology, and according to this info pageSynology Network Attached Storage - DS1812+ Productsit only consumes 50.6 W. I'll pull out the appropriate section so you don't have to go searching, but if you want you can verify it says that.
In much less technical terms, it doesn't heat up the room like my computer does. That alone makes a big difference to me in 100+ degree summers.
Eomer
Trakanon Raider
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Like I said, the latest Intel CPU's are pretty phenomenal power consumption wise. My Q9550 based computer burns 100-120 watts at idle. My I5-750 less than 50W. I'm sure it's continued to improve in the generations since. So I guess I agree that there's less of an argument for NAS boxes now, power consumption wise.
