I'm at the very beginning of my journey in the NAS world and I want to start it with the best resources available
I'm wondering which NAS to buy, one of the Asustor's or Synology's product. The front-runner is AS202TE (or 202T - not sure if HDMI is needed in my case), so I'm here to ask you for a help in clarification of some question points, I will be very appreciated for any comments from your site. I count on you
My goal is to have a network storage that:
- will share all kind of multimedia via DLNA (movies with my TV (sound should be played via my home cinema soundset, not sure how it should be connected, the threads in Tips&Tricks section don't answer this question), music (e.g. flac, mp3) with HiFi amplifier, photos with TV and tablets/smartphones). I think my laptops can use the storage simply as a network drive, isn't it? My TV plays right now all kind of movies directly from USB drive, so I think DLNA can be used in my case (no transcoding is probably needed, at least for now). It is important to have the subtitles, right now I'm using srt format and it works great (from usb). If comes to the requirements: some of the movies are in HD quality but I want to have the opportunity to play them on one TV at a time. Btw.: my TV is Samsung LE46C650.
- will have torrent client,
- regular backups will be made from my laptop to the NAS in the intervals (I want to have a backup of some parts of the data taken from two laptops: e.g. documents, photos), after that it would be brilliant when the copy of the backed up data will be copied to the external hard drive automatically - I think RAID is a little bit overheat in my case, I think that the classical duplication of the data to another drive will be enough in my case. Additional to this: as I had read the usb harddrive can be plugged to the NAS, but it is possible for NAS to wake up this external harddrive? I won't plug and unplug the drive forth and back each day but I won't have the drive working 24h/day (I won't to start the backup procedure during the night when nobody uses NAS for streaming).
- for sure I won't use any web/mail/print servers. Probably also surveillance and encryption services aren't be used.
- right now it looks like max. two users will access the NAS, downloading and backup can start in the night, media sharing/streaming can work only during the day. I think it is also important that I don't plan to give the access to hundreds of people
Other topic which make my selection even harder is that I would like to place my NAS in a closet - I know that this is not the best possible solution (because of the ventilation and so on), but do you think it is doable without any harm to the equipment? I have not the biggest area which can be used: 30/30/70 (width/height/depth, all in centimeters). I have found some overall information about temperatures and that CPU is not the coolest one (~70C), but no information about overall situation similar to mine is mentioned. Have you maybe any experciences in this area? As i mentioned earlier: I wouldn't like to use it as a web server for 24h/day, it will be used only as a storage for home usage.
My plan is to connect the NAS via the cable to the TP-Link TL-WR1043ND router (it handles gigabit connection), this router is connected via the cable with the modem/router '2in1 combo' device delivered by the internet provider, other equipments are connected with TPLink via WiFi (according to the manufacturer: throughput is 300MBit/s).
Both routers are already in the closet in which I want to place also my NAS (on different shelf). On the paper it looks like a nice and clean solution. I don't have any ethernet sockets in the leaving room so I don't have any other solution in my mind (my fiancee won't be happy when I announce the refurbishment because of the NAS). Of course if the placement in the closet or connection via WiFi won't be enough for media sharing I need to go probably different way: access point (made from my TPLink) near the TV and NAS connected via the cable to it, the access point connected via WiFi to the modem/router in the closet given by internet provider. In this configuration HDMI port can be a very nice bonus - I can decide not to use DLNA for sharing the movies, but as far as I know the delivered modem/router is a piece of scrap when it comes to the WiFi (can't be changed because of the ISP policy) and it will be for sure a bottleneck when it comes to the performance.
Btw: Is the HDMI and XBMC working well right now? I have found some comments about the audio issues, are they already handled?
Many thanks in advance for any comments
regards,
Chris
