How cool is this, alternative to buying a NAS box

Lee H

http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/?p=8089

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Comments

kriscamaro68

No gigabit connection though. I dont like that. On a couple routers now you can actually plug in a usb hd and use it as a nas right from the router.

Lee H

and how expensive would a router like that cost??

tiersten

Nothing new or revolutionary. The Linksys NSLU2 and other devices have done this for years now.

kriscamaro68

$89. it has gigabit with wireless n and network storage.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124081&Tpk=linksys%20wrt%20350n

tiersten

The throughput on these devices and small NAS boxes is usually terrible. The CPU inside just can't push data around that quickly.

Lee H

is it capable of playing a blu ray rip, 8Gig avi to a PC?

apart from moving files around from 1 drive to another which I would have patience for, this is the biggest file I would be accessing from such a device, would it play without any issues

kriscamaro68

I couldnt tell you that. I would guess that it could cause its a gigabit connection and it supports usb 2.0. You could buy it and try it out worse case scenerio just return it. I remember I bought that awhile back when it was new and it was $200 now its $89 sucks for me I guess. Nice thing about the router to is that it will also support dd-wrt firmware and from what I remember the dd-wrt firmware still supported the usb connection. Just food for thought.

tiersten

Not sure whether it'd be able to play that. You'll have to do what kriscamaro68 said and just give it a go or try and find a review. I've got an old Buffalo Terastation with GigE and that maxed out at about 60-70mbps with jumbo frames enabled. A Blu-Ray movie needs 54mbps to play.

Lee H

I only used that as an example, a friend of mine has Batman dark night on 720p 8 gig in size, dont know exactly what the details are but its definitely an AVI, CAT5E is a gig, and my mobo also has Gig lan, and USB 2.0 is 480 mbps, I think this would work but I would only pay about £5 for it, otherwise it would be better to get a NAS box

tiersten

Lee H wrote:

my mobo also has Gig lan, and USB 2.0 is 480 mbps

You're quoting the absolute maximum possible speeds which you don't ever get. USB has huge overheads by itself. The CPU in most NAS boxes is nowhere near as fast as the CPU in your PC. The amount of time spent handling packets coming in from the ethernet interface is non trivial. Enabling jumbo frames will ease this slightly because the CPU won't be interrupted as much but it still isn't nothing.

Lee H wrote:

I think this would work but I would only pay about £5 for it

Not going to happen.

Lee H

So what the hell is this good for, me personally would only use a NAS to centralize all my media including films, and be able to play them on any pc in the house, I would prefer to avoid having a server that I would have to have on round the clock which would double running cost

tiersten

Lee H wrote:

So what the hell is this good for, me personally would only use a NAS to centralize all my media including films, and be able to play them on any pc in the house, I would prefer to avoid having a server that I would have to have on round the clock which would double running cost

Storing backups, documents, music etc...

tiersten

It may work still. I'm just saying to not expect what they rate the interface at. They tend to quote the raw signalling rate without any protocol overhead.

Claymoore

tiersten wrote:

The throughput on these devices and small NAS boxes is usually terrible. The CPU inside just can't push data around that quickly.

I have a Linksys with a USB hard drive and the throughput in iTunes is so slow that it will make you consider buying a Zune. iTunes doesn't support a centalized, shared library well - which is why I bought the damn thing - so the NAS feature is really only good for storing pictures.

In the future I will probably look to MS Home Server or an iSCSI solution like StarWind iSCSI Target for centralized home storage.

kriscamaro68

Well I use to rip movies to an iso and store them on my nas and then mount them with a virtual drive on my computer and it always worked for me with no lag. I also loved the fact that my data was in a central location like you said Lee. I would go for it. It was worth it in my book. I also Had a Buffalo terastation that was gigabit nas and it worked fine for streaming and mounting iso's from. I also would mount the iso's on my laptop over wireless without issues either.

tiersten

kriscamaro68 wrote:

Well I use to rip movies to an iso and store them on my nas and then mount them with a virtual drive on my computer and it always worked for me with no lag. I also loved the fact that my data was in a central location like you said Lee. I would go for it. It was worth it in my book. I also Had a Buffalo terastation that was gigabit nas and it worked fine for streaming and mounting iso's from. I also would mount the iso's on my laptop over wireless without issues either.

The bitrate of a DVD is quite a lot less than what you get from a Blu-ray. If you're just using DVD rips then it'd be most likely okay but no idea if it'd work with a Blu-ray rip.

I had a Terastation as well and the throughput from that wasn't anything to write home about. If you enabled jumbo frames then you'd be able to squeeze a maximum of about 60-70mbps from it. The drives were capable of more but the PowerPC CPU inside just wasn't fast enough.

tiersten

Lee H wrote:

would only use a NAS to centralize all my media including films, and be able to play them on any pc in the house

Are these PCs using WiFi or wired ethernet? If it is 802.11b/g then playing a Blu-ray rip is out of the question.

I've got a fileserver that stores all my data including my DVD collection. I originally purchased it for when I was doing my VCP so it is overpowered for what it needs to do.

Kasor

I need to find a cheap NAS enclosure, so I can put all my old EIDE HD together. Anyone?

msteinhilber

Kasor wrote:

I need to find a cheap NAS enclosure, so I can put all my old EIDE HD together. Anyone?

How about an old PC if you have one laying around and FreeNAS or Openfiler? I have tested both in the office, in our environment Openfiler provided better throughput than FreeNAS but it is more difficult if you wanted to authenticate it through AD. Either should perform well in a home environment.