NAS Recommendations?

I have the 4TB World Edition II, and I have no problems with it, and it works well with the WDTV Live.  I’ve never had the network drop issues that people have said in their reviews, and I’ve been running it for over a month.

Obviously I’m hoping WD fixes the .mp4 audio sync issue soon, as that’s my only complaint about my WDTV Live.

Have to recommend Synology devices. The software is astonishing. I use a DS207+.

I use a Zyxel NAS (NSA210) with 2 TB drives. Works very well with my WD. ce

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I used My Book World edition 2TB. I did not like it much due to network drop and terrible slow while using in Raid mode. Only mirror Raid 1 possible. I switched over to WD Sharespace 4TB and using Raid 5 mode. No Complaints.

Thanks for all the recommendations guys.  :)

The ZyXEL NSA-210 looks like it might be just what I need.  Comes well within budget, has a good feature set and seems well-regarded (not many reviews but what few there are being positive at least!).  Seems to cost around $112, plus the cost of a HDD.  

A nice feature is that you can schedule backups from your workstations to the NSA-210, then schedule the NAS to back itself up to a connected USB drive.  So you don’t get the performance hit of a mirrored array but do get the security.

The other suggestions were interesting but most fell well outside of my budget; a Synology DS209 is around $300 diskless, a WD ShareSpace 4TB is about $550! :dizzy_face:

They look like fantastic pieces of hardware but I can’t justify that kind of outlay right now.  I will bear them in mind for future purchases though.

Will report back when I make a purchase.  Thanks again, cjeman!

You can also get a external USB drive, connect it to the WDTV LIve and access it over the network. Has the benefit of being able to turn off everything on the network if you like and still play files.

You can get a good external enclosure for about $30 and put any desktop drive inside. Power usage is also much lower this way. USB drive uses about 12 watts and the WDLive uses about 14 watts so 26 watts total .

ckeegan wrote:

I have the 4TB World Edition II, and I have no problems with it, and it works well with the WDTV Live.  I’ve never had the network drop issues that people have said in their reviews, and I’ve been running it for over a month.

 

Obviously I’m hoping WD fixes the .mp4 audio sync issue soon, as that’s my only complaint about my WDTV Live.

 

 

It loses sync even when using a local usb drive and MP4. Not sure what the issue it.

I use an older WD Netcenter drive & it works great over the network. Both the drive & the WDTV Live are connected to the network via ethernet. The WDTV Live always finds this drive & I have successfully been able to stream 1080p from the NAS to the WDTV Live without any problems. Keeping within the WD family may be best if you’re looking for compatibility with this unit.

I use a D-link DNS-323 with a 1 TB and 2 TB WD Caviar Green drives installed (non-raid).  Seems to work fine.

Any experience on Synology DS410j. ?

DLNA nas’s stream  subtitles?

Ty in advance

can’t comment on that particular machine but the synology software is second to none.

I have the WD Black Armor. It was very easy to set up, runs super quiet, and is pretty full featured for the money. Heck, you can barely buy 2 1TB drives for the cost of the unit. With a 3 year warranty, SMART email notification, and running RAID 1, it works fine. I like it just as much as I like my QNAP 8 TB NAS, and it was a fraction of the price.

Does DLNA just fine. I’m fighting to find a format that will work for both my PS3 and WD Live TV, but that’s not the NAS fault. 

Have you looked at FreeNAS ?

No Winblows to worry about. Just get an old PC, stick a couple of drives in it and download the free freeNAS.

I use a feature of freenas to software mirror two drives so i will never lose my media etc.

Its free, has a great web page for setup and works easily with WDTV. The operating system is run off a USB stick

so its small and fast. My hard drives only contain my media. There’s no operating system stuff on them.

It even emails me the status of my hard drives every day (or when i choose).

There’s plenty of tutorials around as well.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/

So will you say that a WD TV Live will work “out-of-the-box” with my Sonology DS209+II ?

I have the DS210j.  It works with network shares and DLNA.  I’m actually having better success with network shares on large BD-ripped MKV files (no stutter).

It may be something in my setup, but then why does network shares work?

Modem—>Linksys WRT54G Router—>Buffalo WLI-TX-AG300N ethernet converter —>DS210j and WDTV Live

I’m using the DNS-321 from DLink  and a 2TB drive with a wired ethernet connection and found out he wdtv live doesn’t have a gigabit port.

No issues, all works now.

It just takes a little time to load and be available, probably because I added bonjour and modified the configuration so it plays nicer with OS X.

So, I am about to do the same thing. Does the WD TV Live recognize the NetCenter, or can you install the EasyLink on the WD Live? Sorry to bother, but I want to make sure I can do this. I know that some items can be connected via the USB ports on the back, so I just wanted to see if I could pick your brain a bit before I start planning my attack.

Thank you!

P.S. This was meant mainly for axeman1206, who seems to have the same set-up as I am working towards.

As I did a LOT of searching for the perfect NAS for my home and was based on cost (though my price range is up to $2000 as I wanted 12TB) I found this web site very useful:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_nas/Itemid,190

It lists virtually every NAS you could want, their relative speeds in which modes, functions, abilities and every bell and whistle they have it’s a very handy web site.

I ended up setting up my friend with the Promise Smartstor NS4600 with 4x1TB drives in a RAID 5 configuration (total cost of $800) it’s interface to the WD was a little wonky, can’t access it as a network share, but it has a media center built in (as well as an Itunes integration, and almost anything else you could think of, and if it doesn’t have it, you can download modules to do it that integrate with the unit) and after a couple minutes surfing through how it’s all set up it’s virtually native on how to select what you want. Good unit, fairly speedy and not even a studder when streaming even full 1080p movies (1Gb network backbone at home)

If you had the cash and more importantly the need for that much space, I’d recommend it, now if you needed more space they sell a 6 bay model with more RAM that’s faster for a little more money, but again, if you don’t need it, I wouldn’t bother.

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Mike has posted an informative thread regarding the D-Link DNS-321 NAS here:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Networking/D-Link-321-NAS-and-the-Live-review/td-p/21327

Also, if you purchase it today (Friday 30th April), you’ll be eligible for a $20 rebate, making it an even more attractive option.

I still haven’t pulled the trigger on a NAS yet (despite starting the thread 3 months ago!).  Managed to stabilise my network somewhat and the WD TV Live connects fine 99% of the time (gets screwy if I turn the Live on before the share PC, which is the rare 1%).

My search continues and I’ve been considering running a 2x1TB NAS in RAID 0 for performance and hooking up a 2TB external USB drive to synch up / act as an effective mirror.

The following NAS drives would seem to support that:

  • Synology DS 210j (~ $230, diskless)
  • ZyXEL NSA 220 Plus (~ $250, diskless)
  • QNAP TS 210 (~ $280, diskless)
  • Netgear ReadyNAS Duo (~ $247 after rebate, inc. 1 x 1TB)

The WD My Book World Edition II with 2x1TB drives is excellent value at $240 but doesn’t support RAID 0 unfortunately (nor am I sure it would sync to an external drive).

Of the above, the Synology seems a compelling choice given their history (need to add another $160+ for a pair of 1TB drives though).  But the ReadyNAS Duo is best value.  Just need to buy a matching 1TB drive and I can set it up as RAID 0.  Hmmmm.

The 2nd route would be to forget RAID 0 altogether and get a single drive NAS with a 2TB drive but again the ability to sync to an external 2TB USB drive.  With that in mind I have the following options:

  • Synology DS110j (~ $150, diskless)
  • ZyXEL NSA 210 (~ $72 with rebate, diskless)
  • QNAP TS 110 (~ $172, diskless)

Well, it goes without saying that the ZyXEL NSA210 is extremely tempting.  I actually really liked the look of this way back in January when cjeman recommended it (hence Kudos-ing him).  The only thing stopping me was that by nature I’m a procrastinator and some comments regarding the media server software placed doubts in my mind.

But for $72 I think I could live with it purely as a network share box!  The only other niggle was speed, as most reviews comment on it being sluggish compared to other (admittedly more expensive) units.

Probably pair it up with a 2TB WD Caviar Green WD20EARS for ~$140, making the total around $233 inc. tax.

QNAP at $100 more is completely out of the running.

The Synology is still tempting due to excellent benchmark results and its famously awesome interface but with a 2TB drive comes in at $320 inc. tax.  I think I could justify that…

It goes without saying that I’m still undecided but hopefully this update makes others aware of the options available.  :)