Good NAS to use with XBMC?

[Hitcher]

Now that I've got XBMC running on 2 PC's and a laptop it seems pointless having all my HD videos on one PC (it has to be on to share with the other PC and laptop) I was thinking about getting a NAS but know next to nothing about them.

So I'm just after some advice on what's good for streaming HD videos to XBMC.

Thanks.

[freezy]

I have 2 Infrant ReadyNAS (now owned by Netgear) and I'm pretty happy about them. Two years without trouble, and they are quite powerful. Not extremely cheap though.

[Gamester17]

Please do a search for "NAS" in all open forums (search 'for titles only')
http://xbmc.org/forum/search.php

So many people have asked the very same question before you

Also, register and help us keep our wiki compatibility list up-to-date:
http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=NAS

:;):

[Hitcher]

Sorry, I didn't realise this forum allowed searching for 3 letter words - most of the ones I use don't you see.

[harry3001]

not sure about best, but i've got a Tagan Icy Box NAS4220 NAS Enclosure with two Maxtor 1tb drives in. runs quite quiet and cool, think the enclosue was around 90 notes, the hd's around 80 each.

decent review of it here:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=tagan_nas&num=1

[Geeba]

Old PC running Windows Home Server for in my loft for me.... Pools all my old HDD's into one staorage area... and I can access/stream from it anywhere in the world.... and it backs up all my important stuff over multipal drives for protection... cheap and saves binning your old hardware... worth a look IMO.

[CrazyIvan]

I use unRaid (http://lime-technology.com/).

[baron22]

What about something like freenas ??
http://www.freenas.org/

If you've got an old PC hanging about it could be the answer

[Trebz]

I use Freenas and im happy as larry !!

Very stable, great if you stream your media via FTP.

Very simple to install and setup.

Just grab any old machine you have lying around and fill it full of hard drives.

Mine is built on some old of Intel motherboard, P4 2ghz CPU, 1GIG RAM and it never even breaks a sweat. My first build was on an even lower spec Dell 500SC server unit and it behaved the same. Dropped a PCI SATA card in it and hooked up three hard drives:

80 GIG 7200rpm for Freenas OS and 'Data'.
200 GIG 7200rpm for Music.
500 GIG 7200rpm for DVD's and video's.

If you need a hand send me a personal message.

I built mine about four weeks or so ago so i can help with Freenas a little.

All the best.

[sparkie]

I use Unraid. For home media storage it's hard to beat.

[FluffyAE]

I don't know the best, but I've got the HP Mediasmart server and I'm perfectly happy with it. It looks cool too!

[bartdesign]

I usually install an Infrant Readynas or an Synology NAS at clients. The synology's are the ones I like the most, becuase of the speed and the superb interface and extra features. Usually we'd go for an DS207+ or an CS407e.

But if you don't mind doing dirty work, unRaid, openFiler and Freenas should be faster and more featured than any of the appliances i've mentioned before.

Btw. Avoid the Western Digital MyBookWorld series, they are slow as hell.

[tyche]

I went with a Readynas NV+ 4 bay unit. It's rather underpowered for the cost but easy to manage, has notifications, and very flexible. I also use it for my squeezebox and it really shows how under powered the cpu is. But for file storage, it's been excellent. Also, the ability to increase your array is great. You could go from 750gb to 1tb to 1.5tb drives without trying to backup tb's of data first.