Media device vs NAS

A

astrauss

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I have two items on my wish list I thought might be combined.

1. Sharing data on my homne network via a USB attached drive shared from a PC is not working out for me. I want to move the data drive to a NAS device (no RAID required).

2. I like the idea of a device connected to the TV for recording and playing of other media (something like the Mvix PVR).

Which device would you recommend that can combine both the media and network file storage functionality?
 
What are your budget constraints.

I ran the freenas on a old p4 box with 4 x 320GB Ide drives, 2 x 1GB ethernet cards, for a budget open source system it was great for file storage, performance was excellent considering. way faster then using the mapped drive scenario.

However with that approach you have a machine just standing sharing files and making a noise, thats it.

So i scratched that recently, upgraded the machine and now running windows media centre, I did try mythbuntu but didnt have the patience. I share my drives using a free iscsi app, just cant remember the name off hand, google free iscsi target. I can record tv, playback movies and also share media over the network. It may not be as fast as the NAS device but way more practical.

I would go the media center route, way more fun.
 
Spazmatic said:
What are your budget constraints.

I ran the freenas on a old ....
Click to expand...

On the budget: its almost bonus time, so I might convince myself to spend more than I would otherwise be able to afford.

I also went the FreeNAS route on an old box I got from my folks, but performance was terrible. Running it off my old P4 desktop works like a charm, but the kids need the P4 for their entertainment.

Come to think of it, I have an old P4 laptop I could use for FreeNAS, but then I'm limited by the USB connection to the external drive again.
 
I'll have to look into it. It would require new hardware as the P4 tower is too large for the lounge and sounds like a jet engine.

Any suggestions? Custom build?
 
This is a entry level MCE case,

http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?cPath=50_52&products_id=14497

I reckon that would look nice in a rack with your amp etc. and pricing is not to bad.

I have gone down the road of custom building the mce case but now rather just buy what I want, generally the amount of effort you have to put into customising pc cases far outweighs the cost of a mce case. just my opinion.
 
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