NAS recommendations

This isnt exactly a question about the live streaming, but I was hoping the community could offer some suggestions. I currently have 1 live streaming and I love it. I have been planning on adding another at my other TV. I currently stream movies (primarily 720p mkv’s)from network shares on my PC. I filled the 1TB drive on my PC. I could just get another internal drive, but I am considering a NAS of some sort so I don’t need to run my PC anytime I want to watch videos. I’m hoping for some recommendations. Sine I want another media player, I could get the wd hub and plug my 1TB external into it to get 2TB total. Or I could get another live streaming and get something like a Seagate go flex home or WD my book live. Or I could look at a dlink dns-320 and add drives to it. I’m curious what others have done and what will provide the best wired performance (I currently have no stuttering issues sharing from my PC). Thanks!

My Book Live is your best bet

I use a Dlink DNS323…works great. Enable the media server and the WD TV Live will pick it up fine. Just be sure the workgroup name matches the workgroup name on your WD TV Live (I think the default is WORKGROUP).

I have a DNS-320 from D-Link and it works fantastic … lots of options and was only about 100 bucks.

I actually have 2 of them … yeah … i have that much stuff :slight_smile:

You guys haven’t run into any issues on those with slow network speeds?  Just about every reasonably priced NAS solution I looked at inevitably had a few reviews complaining that network throughput was too slow and caused choppy streaming.  That was why I posted here to see what people were actually using with the WD TVs.

Those of you with D-Links, do you run them in RAID1 (mirroring) at all?  

I use a Thecus 3200 with 3 * 1TB WD Green disks setup as JBOD - so not exactly bleeding edge. But with a wired connection I can view most files as well as if they were on a USB connected HD. I say ‘most’ as a couple of ripped blu ray files do show a slight tendency to judder. However this could equally be the ‘MKV stutter’ issue that is often discussed on these forums. When I get the chance I intend to look into it. 

mattbooty wrote:

You guys haven’t run into any issues on those with slow network speeds?  Just about every reasonably priced NAS solution I looked at inevitably had a few reviews complaining that network throughput was too slow and caused choppy streaming.  That was why I posted here to see what people were actually using with the WD TVs.

 

Those of you with D-Links, do you run them in RAID1 (mirroring) at all?  

I have a DNS-323, running 2x 2Tb disks as a RAID 1 mirrored array. It doesn’t have the fastest network transfer speeds, but as the SMP only has a 10/100 NIC interface it isn’t a problem. If you will be using the NAS with other Gigabit devices the slow speed may be a problem there. Anyway the DNS-323 is discontinued. In fact I’m using mine as a backup to my main NAS, but it’s still working well, if a bit slowly. I’m not sure if the DNS-320 is any faster.

If you will only be using the NAS with the SMP or even a Hub these low-end NAS boxes are not bad, but if you are planning to have a lot of transfers going on between the NAS and other devices you may be better off saving for a higher spec NAS like a Synology .

This will be almost exclusively for media straming to the SMP so transferring large files would occur when I move them to the NAS and then rarely after that.

Thanks, now I need to decide which direction to go!

I have a GoFlex Home 2TB NAS drive, don’t get one. The DNLA server on it is not always available, sometimes it shows up as a printer to Win7, and I am fairly sure its just plain “buggy”. I wish I never bought that brand. :frowning: – Movie files work fine from it though after being networked, BUT you can not Index the files as if they were on an attached USB Drive or internal HD.