A New NAS

simon · Post by **simon** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:25 pm

Sigh. I'm not having a good run at the moment. First, friends' young son bent the cantilever on my 103pro. Ouch. That would need another trip to Japan to replace.

Then my EX4s are pronounced beyond economic repair. OUCH!

Next the DAC buffer decides to play up - fortunately that was an easy fix, for now at least. I'm still pondering what might have caused the SSR to fail.

And now the power supply to my QNAP NAS drive has died.

You may remember that this isn't the first time the PS has died. It's been a bit flaky of late so maybe this is a warning.

So I think it's time for an overhaul of my network and would appreciate some advice from those who know more about this stuff than I do. The QNAP came installed with an ancient version of Slimserver (subsequently upgraded to 6.something IIRC) but more recently I've used a nettop and currently a Raspberry Pi running Squeezeplug. I'm pretty happy using the Rpi - it works well enough and only consumes ~2W. There seems to be a problem playing 24/96 which I haven't bottomed yet, but I don't have much of that anyway.

The QNAP was being used just for network storage - music, photos, documents etc. so we can get at them from whichever computer we're using. I know they can be used for all sorts of exciting things like web servers but I don't have any need for that at the moment, and TBH don't feel confident to open up any ports anyway.

I want to replace it with something that first and foremost is reliable and not too difficult to setup and use - Linux scripts don't fill me with too much excitement. And as I'm starting again I'd like to build in some backup capability, perhaps two disks with automatic backups and some way to check if the primary disk is up to date.

So is this possible and/or which is the best way to go? There looks to be quite a range of prices - is this simply quality or is there more to it?

The Stratmangler · Post by **The Stratmangler** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:43 pm

Zyxel NSA310, or whatever the equivalent model is now.
I've had one running for a couple of years now, and it has barely missed a bit.

I had a minor issue with buffering a short while ago, likely as not to the fact that I'm often adding and removing stuff, and that creates filepath associations, but because the thing in configurable from a web browser it was dead easy to uninstall Squeezebox services and forget any cached files, then reinstall Squeezebox services.

No painful lessons in Linux required

Post by **Nick** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:48 pm

That would need another trip to Japan to replace.

Or maybe have a word With Dominic at NW Analogue about a new cantilever?

Ali Tait · Post by **Ali Tait** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 8:32 pm

Drobo are good, if not the cheapest, though you can pick them up secondhand on ebay. Good thing with these is they automatically back themselves up between the four HD's, and you can lose a drive and hot swap a new one in with no loss of data. You do need a Droboshare to turn it into a NAS, but they are often sold together.

andrew Ivimey · Post by **andrew Ivimey** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 9:08 pm

This is just the sort of thread that I haven't a clue what you lot are all on about except that (I think) I can commiserate with Simon that things go wrong sometimes. Hasn't our Ed been running up against the odd hard brick wall of late. After a year or so I plugged in my 801SEamp. I can't find the 801s but have 10s so they had to do and the amp sounds like shite.

Somewhere in the shed there is a Thorsten 300b Monkey and as Dave the Bike has raised the issue (of 300bs) I thought I might find it, dust it down and start all over again.... which is what we all have to do from time to time, I suppose.

But sometimes I just want to -( deleted )- and substitute 'get quite cross about it all sometimes' . HA!

Ali Tait · Post by **Ali Tait** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 9:33 pm

Yep. Just had to haul the battery out of Michelle's car as it's dead, which meant I had to be the kid's taxi driver for the last hour, and I needed the bloody car tomorrow as mine needs repairs and is due an MOT, so is going into the garage. Sheesh!

Dave the bass · Post by **Dave the bass** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 10:00 pm

simon wrote: I want to replace it with something that first and foremost is reliable and not too difficult to setup and use - Linux scripts don't fill me with too much excitement. And as I'm starting again I'd like to build in some backup capability, perhaps two disks with automatic backups and some way to check if the primary disk is up to date.

So is this possible and/or which is the best way to go? There looks to be quite a range of prices - is this simply quality or is there more to it?

Though its Linux based...VortexBox is maybe another avenue our-Simon? Mine runs LMS. It rips CD's for you, gets the art work and rescans yer music library. Its simple to use.

Add more music via the 'flac' folder, drag n drop over your home network. S'easy.

Back up is via a USB port on the front of the unit, access VB via the GUI and hit 'Back up toUSB Drive' each time it performs an incremental backup to an external VB formatted HD.

Not as cheap as it was but I'm still very pleased with mine.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LIV-Juke-2Tb- ... 3cc98b89de

DTB

simon · Post by **simon** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 10:37 pm

Nick wrote:
That would need another trip to Japan to replace.
Or maybe have a word With Dominic at NW Analogue about a new cantilever?

Yeah, that's what I'll likely do. Much cheaper than another trip to Japan, but much less fun

simon · Post by **simon** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 10:46 pm

Some interesting suggestions Ali and Dave, but I'm a bit old school I guess. I like to copy the files where I want with Windows Explorer or whatever, probably why I've never got on with Apple - I want to do things my way not theirs. Perhaps I'm just out of touch

.

The Stratmangler wrote:Zyxel NSA310, or whatever the equivalent model is now.
I've had one running for a couple of years now, and it has barely missed a bit.

The Zyxel looks interesting Chris, more functionality than my QNAP 109. The Zyxel website reckons you can automate backups - it's not clear if a 2 bay NAS would back up from one disk to another, or whether a second NAS would be required. Hmmm, so much info out there, yet so little.

pre65 · Post by **pre65** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 10:56 pm

No wonder grandpa dumbshite gets so confused.

The Stratmangler · Post by **The Stratmangler** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 11:03 pm

simon wrote:The Zyxel looks interesting Chris, more functionality than my QNAP 109. The Zyxel website reckons you can automate backups - it's not clear if a 2 bay NAS would back up from one disk to another, or whether a second NAS would be required. Hmmm, so much info out there, yet so little.

There is one issue with the NSA310, and that is that it will only see HDDs up to 2TB on its USB port.
The NSA310 is happy with running a SATA 3TB drive, but won't see a USB 3TB HDD for backing up.

A 2 bay NAS configured for RAID2 and with overvoltage protection (most UPS devices do this) might be a decent way to go.

Ray P · Post by **Ray P** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 11:12 pm

Simon, I went down the Computer Audiophile Pocket Server route; CAPS2, albeit with my own twist. Windows based and using JRiver media center, which is a great piece of software. Can have you files on local media or, more normally, on a cheap and cheerful NAS drive (I have my music on a local SSD but other media and backups on a Windows Home Server).

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/section/c-p-s-489/

Ray

Dave the bass · Post by **Dave the bass** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 11:29 pm

simon wrote:Some interesting suggestions Ali and Dave, but I'm a bit old school I guess. I like to copy the files where I want with Windows Explorer or whatever, probably why I've never got on with Apple - I want to do things my way not theirs. Perhaps I'm just out of touch .

No prob's, You do still copy and paste files in ExplorerBTW, VB appears as a network drive. Any music files I buy or rip from CD away from the VB I just copy and paste into VB's flac folder and rescan my library. Simples. Even I sussed it out and I'm still a newbie in Pooter Audio!

DTB

Post by **Nick** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 8:16 am

You could do a lot worst with a cheap PC from ebuyer (say £200), with 500Gb of disk, then fill it with extra disks. I use ubuntu as my server and it works just fine. But you could use a more dedicated distribution like http://www.openmediavault.org/

I would suggest using at least three disks, a boot disk, say 500G then storage disks and copys if you want. Say 1.5TB a time. Depends on how much storage you want. If you want more than a few TB, get a better case and power supply, and pack with disks. NAS distributions will let you setup RAID arrays or do automatic mirroring from one disk to another. And have simple GUI interfaces.

ed · Post by ed » Wed Sep 18, 2013 8:30 am

I know I've been banging on about my server travails on another thread but the truth is I've been planning on changing it for some time.....

if you fancy the diy route I've just looked at my notes from January this year, which involve:

Atom board ebuyer £52
Akasa crypto case dabs £54
Ps amazon £10
2.5â€ sata ebuyer £60
Memory ebuyer £15

I don't know whether these prices are still current but they can't be that far off......my thinking was that this is more versatile for upgrade/change than an off the shelf solution.

I had planned on ubuntu server but if that's daunting I believe that a windows version can be had for about £30.

diet: forgot to mention.....my big requirement is no fan!

audio-talk

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