- Jan 12, 2012
- 13
- 0
- 18,510
Aloha! As a nerd (as my wife puts it), I'm looking for a better storage solution for our small, but hopefully growing, home network. Current setup can be found below.
Between using our HTPC as a PVR, movie player, and digital storage, we've exhausted our 500 GB in a short amount of time. I'd like to deploy a longer term solution instead of constantly shuffling files around to make sure (about 30 GB disk space remaining). I'm thinking a NAS solution may be worthwhile at this point instead of adding an extra drive to the HTPC, but I defer to the community for advice.
My thought is to purchase a Synology 213j with 2 x 2TB WD Red drives in a RAID 1 setup, giving us I hope enough space and peace of mind with a local redundancy solution. We currently use CrashPlan for cloud based backup storage.
Would a NAS be overkill for our small network? The thought of using a 213j, for example, would be for cloud and device syncing capabilities. The other question of course would be whether or not to go with a Synology or QNAP system. I'm not familiar with either setup so I'll defer that to the community as well.
I wouldn't mind being able to use a NAS to stream music and movies so I'm not sure what would be powerful enough but still economical for our needs. I'd like to stay under $500 with drives if at all possible. Drive recommendations are also accepted but I'll probably end up with WD Reds since Blacks are a bit too pricey, although the warranty on them may make it worthwhile.
Thanks all!
Current setup
Between using our HTPC as a PVR, movie player, and digital storage, we've exhausted our 500 GB in a short amount of time. I'd like to deploy a longer term solution instead of constantly shuffling files around to make sure (about 30 GB disk space remaining). I'm thinking a NAS solution may be worthwhile at this point instead of adding an extra drive to the HTPC, but I defer to the community for advice.
My thought is to purchase a Synology 213j with 2 x 2TB WD Red drives in a RAID 1 setup, giving us I hope enough space and peace of mind with a local redundancy solution. We currently use CrashPlan for cloud based backup storage.
Would a NAS be overkill for our small network? The thought of using a 213j, for example, would be for cloud and device syncing capabilities. The other question of course would be whether or not to go with a Synology or QNAP system. I'm not familiar with either setup so I'll defer that to the community as well.
I wouldn't mind being able to use a NAS to stream music and movies so I'm not sure what would be powerful enough but still economical for our needs. I'd like to stay under $500 with drives if at all possible. Drive recommendations are also accepted but I'll probably end up with WD Reds since Blacks are a bit too pricey, although the warranty on them may make it worthwhile.
Thanks all!
Current setup
Intel i5 processor
8 GB RAM
500 GB WD Caviar Blue
Verizon FIOS 50/25 into HTPC (wired into HTPC)
CrashPlan (Cloud based backup)
XBMC as daily driver
Chromecast
2 x Nexus Tablets
2 x Android Phones
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