There's sadly no quick/dumb questions thread so i'

They already have bitorrent clients built in, dont they?

Im thinking of buying a Qnap myself.

>>57443432
I'm asking because it happened to me once that a sony bravio wouldn't play a downloaded MKV file that i had on a usb stick connected to the router and when i searched, i found something about piracy so i wonder if it's the same with NAS.

>>57443407
What? Arent most of them basically a HD array and a network card?

>>57443407
lolno

>>57443432

yep they usually do. no idea why anyone would do such a stupid thing instead of building your own.

>>57443477

That was probably because your tv wasn't able to decode particular vc and/or ac or lack support of a specific carrier

>>57443509
> no idea why anyone would do such a stupid thing instead of building your own.

Huh, what's so bad about the prebuilt ones?
I wanna get one just for storage and bittorrent and scraping together a NAS inside a shitty Silverstone case seems like too much trouble.

>>57443483
I don't think that's the case any more. I haven't used many of them but I recently had a look at a QNap device and their operating system has some crazy capabilities built in. I would still just build it myself using FreeNAS or just plain Linux but OP seems to want something easier to use.

>>57443592
Synology seems to have a very good OS.

Also, sometimes they write about transcoding video or something, for which the NAS would be too weak. Do i need to worry about that?

>>57443568

Welp, you can waste you moneyz on whatever shit you want but you can always open specifications of a prebuilt ones and make a comparable one on your own and see how much money you can save/spend on better drives/cpus/nics/whatnot. srsly, for a price of a prebuilt nas you can build up home server on pretty fast CPU, based on ssds that will run multiple VMs (say - firewall/nas/DVD frontend such as kodi, and will have nice GPU for dat 4k video playback.

>>57443568
The 2 bay ones are slightly over priced but if you want more bays, you are paying a HUGH premium over a self built one.

>>57443407
You're better off building a cheap PC than using a QNAP or similar NAS all in one solution. The processing power is always anemic on these devices. You can pick up a better used system for that money Intel or AMD or buy new AMD as they're cheap. FreeNAS/Linux Distro/Windows 7 can all run headless and have plugins or guides to setup a media server or any server. There are countless threads on forums across the net about these things not being good enough. Don't waste your time or money.

I don't have a lot of files, I shoved an old netbook under my desk connected to my router with an ethernet cable and Homeshared the whole thing. Seems to work fine. I can even stream shit to my TV.

>>57443863

2-bay ones are built on something that has less performance than a soho $100 wifi router

Oh and if you want to run something like Plex on these things good fucking luck. They can't transcode for shit. This means if you want streaming from the home to any device mobile or TV you're going to be in for heartbreak.

>>57443407
>There's sadly no quick/dumb questions thread
What?
>>57442252

>>57443906
Yea something used is plenty fine like an old laptop or desktop off craigslist even. AMD's stuff is also dirt cheap new and used. You can even buy relevant Xeons for 30-50 bucks a pop. The Xeons with full kit can be had on the cheap too due to business leases expiring and upgrades.

>>57443919
You're saying i couldn't watch the videos that are stored on it on my tv?
Doesn't the tv transcode and the NAS just push the bits?

>>57443959
The TV doesn't transcode the source machine does all the work. The TV either plays the files directly because it has the necessary licensing and hardware or it requires the file to be remuxed/encoded to what it does support. This is where Emby/Plex come in here.

>>57443916
True but you can't build anything for that cheap and have it be in a small size with low power consumption, if all you need is storage and torrenting, there really isn't much need for faster processors.

>>57443953

I looked into dedicated NAS setups, but I'd much rather have an actual proper OS linked to multiple drives. I don't think there's any real reason. A small PC build can be cheaper, actually easier to manage and give more flexibility too.

>>57443959
Oh and in the case of something like Kodi/XBMC it's not the source machine it's the endpoint and it supports almost everything so no matter the codec it should play. Kodi doesn't transcode/encode.

>>57443992
It has more of an upgrade path too should you plan accordingly. If you want something uniform you can always install something like FreeNAS anyways or a Linux Distro. Windows works fine as headless OS too. I have a 2500k windows 7 machine as my media server because I'm a lazy bastard. Meanwhile I spent the time to get passthrough and Manjaro w/XFCE working on my main rig to avoid win10 botnet.

>>57443976
I don't get it.

When i plug a usb into the tv, it plays from it.
Why can't it be the same for a nas, which is just like a big usb connected to the router/network instead?

>>57444133
My TV's will do the same provided they support the files you have on your USB device. You could be lucky and your TV supports every codec and format under the sun. I bought a dvd player back in 2000 that supported divx. Rare. It might not be as much of an issue anymore due to the time that has passed and re-release of things in new formats.

>>57443592
Well, it depends on how you want to use your server. If you plan to use it while being away from your home, you might look into ways to encode the video before sending it. I sometimes use VPN to access my files while on the go so a streaming server instead of a simple file storage might be of use. I do it so rarely though that a simple file server will do - when you are on your local network, the speed is good enough to send the whole files to your device and decode them afterwards (it also happens in real time, so you won't have to actually download everything you wanna watch beforehand). I'm no expert though, I have never used streaming software / media servers, all I know is that for my needs a simple file server does the job. I am using SMB and I can play music on my Android device (SMB Player / ES File Explorer), I can watch videos that are stored on the server (MX Player / VLC), I can mount the share on both Windows and Linux machines to access the files as if they were local, I get near 800Mb/s read speeds over ethernet even with the overhead from virtualisation on my server, the wifi transfer speed is enough to play FLAC files and watch 1080p videos. Unless you plan on using the server by multiple devices at once, which I usually don't do, this simple solution works.

>>57443890
>the processing power
Even though the QNap device I saw had so many features in it (domain controller, dns server, RADIUS server and much more) it seemed like that particular model would do well only with file sharing. It ran on an ARM processor and had 512MB of RAM, you won't go far with that even when the OS is capable of crazy stuff.

>>57443407
Hahaha that's funny. No, they don't.

>>57443509
Lower power consumption. And maybe you want DSM, which is pretty nice, to be fair.

Is it worthwhile getting a NAS ?

I am just looking for a backup solution..

as much as I would think I need lots of space, I think a 2 bay would be enough.

Also what would be a decent external HD ? I am thinking of the WD mybook 3TB (it is on sale here)

>>57443407
No they don't.
Also on that note, I have two of that exact same devices and they're great. Good choice, OP.

>captcha prosperity hall

>>57445050
NAS were made for backup. Every NAS nowadays has a feature to link up to another of the same model, increasing redundancy.

>>57445127
I just don't know about the expense

Spending the money on a NAS or just getting some external drive.

I don't think i am at a point that I can warrant the cost of a NAS just yet

>>57445190
NAS are cheaper than graphics cards. Get a fucking job you lazy bum.

>>57445205
>NAS are cheaper than graphics cards. Get a fucking job you lazy bum.

which graphics cards a fucking gtx 1080 ??

shot, this
>>57444994
was meant to
>>57443658

>>57445190
>Spending the money on a NAS or just getting some external drive.
Depends on whether you want to share your stuff on your LAN or share it on the Internet when your PC is off.

>>57445292
I would still go for a NAS even if I only used it for backups. It's easier to write a backup script and forget about it than connect a USB drive to each machine and fucking with folders whenever you need to do a backup.

Literally just came here to ask about a cheap home built nas and what kind of processor requirements there would be. Would something like an AM1 Kabini quad core be enough? Really just want a file server I can offload all my shit to. Doesn`t need to be streaming capable, but it would be nice. I`d be perfectly fine with something I could just read and run media / programs / games off of.

Isnt it risky having all your files connected to your router?

ZFS or Btrfs?

Synology vs FreeNAS or OpenMediaVault?

Only bluray players made after 2012 and anything sony makes have such faggotry.
Even then they just make you get out the dvd player or a more obediant device instead.

>>57445127
would you use it to store downloaded shit on it , and keep your OS empty ?

>>57449245
ZFS. I only ever hear bad things about BTRFS.

Stupid question: Will it be noisy if I put a Banana Pi + HDD about four meters next to my bed?

>>57449962
If you consider the noise a spinning HDD makes noisy.

>>57449993
Yeah I probably would consider it noisy. Another stupid one: Does the HDD spin just by being connected to the Banana Pi when there's no file transfer? If not the HDD wouldn't bother me that much.

I'm using a Qnap and have no issue playing back files. Also you get a hdmi port instead of only wifi bs. I've had issues with some vcr tapes not converting with Powerdirector due to copyright bullshit. As long as you use Kodi or other software you should be fine.

>>57445028
>Lower power consumption than a ras pi + hard disks

Lolwat

>>57450018
yes. if it's been inactive for a while sometimes it parks, but you should disable this because it isn't healthy for the drive.

>>57445028
Nigga my gen8 microserver burns 25w idle to 45w peak.

That's like £30 in angry pixies per year.

>>57450018
Set up autofs. Will auto-dismount drives after a set time. Mine is half an hour, and they're almost never being used so it's better and quieter. Also when you try to access the drive, autofs will remount it just in time.

>>57450070
>>57450205
Thanks for the answers. I'll definitly checkout autofs. I have two stupid questions: I guess the HDD doesn't spin when unmounted, or does it still make noise but is just quieter? And is it safe to use a HDD without an enclosure in a wooden cabinet temperature wise?

>>57443407
the one I bought had a built in torrent client

>>57450385
Autofs will dismount the drive after period of inactivity - you can think of it nearly as safely removing. You can take it out etc. once it is dismounted. My experience is that it will send a "sleep" signal to drive after dismounting, which will in 99% of cases spin it down. External HDDs will slow flash the LEDs to show sleep. Not sure about internal drives though

>>57446310
only if you have a shit router without a firewall

>>57450119
how much did you pay for it ?

>>57443555
Sony and LG put DRM like Cinavia in their TVs.

>>57450473
£170
But it has 4 drive bays.
I can expand the ram and add an ssd for caching etc.

I installed FreeNAS. Also hosting my website on it in a FEMP jail.

Shit is cash senpai.

>Don't even work in an it related industry
Piece of piss desu.

Qnap TS-251C


powerfull enough to transcode 1080p.

Synology DS 216+ II, easy to setup, easy to access from laptop/smartphone, good for backups.
If you've got the time, a self build computer will probably be more tailored to your needs, but this thing is easy as fuck to setup, and there's very little maintenance to do.

>>57450525

What about Samsung?