NAS and Media Server experts..

[octafish]

For the last 10 years or so I have been very happy with a Western Digital Live Hub, which provided 2 key features.

1, It would send my collection of movie backups, in various formats, to my TV via HDMI

2, It was visible on my home network via Windows PC, or various devices using ES file explorer or similar, enabling the sharing of any files.

 

However, it has recently died, although I managed to save my data by removing the drive and popping it into an external usb case.

 

So, I am looking for a replacement, and I am absolutely drowning in specs.

 

I have been looking at Synology, Qnap, TerraMaster and WD.

All of the above offer solutions for media streaming, although few have HDMI, this is not a problem as most streaming will be to the plex enabled TV via ethernet.

 

Confusion arises when it comes to file sharing, as most seem geared towards automatic backups and the like, which is fine although not needed, I just want to be able to see the drive on my network, and drag files about.

 

I am not concerned with backups or drive redundancy, so a single drive setup would suffice, maybe 3 or four Tb.

 

I am so lost, I don't even know what I am asking.

 

Any experiences or input would be very welcome.

[Joint hogger]

I dont run a server/NAS but I recently got a 6tb western digital Black & its a good hdd, its dear in terms of hdd but its got a good guarantee & is pretty fast for old tech,

ie ssd's but they cost a good bit more. my 2 tb of ssd's cost double what my 6 tb WDB hdd cost me.

 

as for an actual NAS, qnap make better equipment but synology have better software.

 

 

[mystic_roots]

I have a NAS (LaCie) which has room for 5 hard drives (i've got 4TB in each slot) but I run them in Raid 6, as it has all my films, music and photos on there so if a hard drive did die i can replace it and recover all of my files, which i'd recommend as i've had 2 die on me few years back.

 

It's useful, i can stream to the smart TV, can stream to my phone, or play it on my phone and cast to another TV with a chromecast, basically if you can get the internet you can stream to it. As your not bothered about redundancy or backups then you could buy a normal hard drive, SSD are good but they're very expensive for the larger sizes. Think the 4TB x5 drives i bought came in around £450 the other year.

[octafish]

Thanks for the input so far.

 

I have a few USB drives, and the TV will play most files from them, but the interface is a but clumsy, and there is no scope for metadata and subtitles.

The drive that was removed from the WDTV is now attached to an old laptop (intel atom based) which is running as a Plex Media Server, and does a pretty good job streaming to the TV, which has built in Plex client, and other devices such as phones and tablets. However it is tucked away, and in order to add new media I have to power down, remove the drive and load files from another pc, which is a bit of a pain.

 

I'm guessing a proper NAS, most of which seem to be able to run Plex Media Server, would allow me to add media over the network to the Plex folder, and also allow use as a family shared storage accessible from PCs or mobile devices.

 

Really getting fed up with swapping sd cards etc to share non media files (I know this can be done via the likes of Google Drive, but would prefer to keep off the wider network).

 

All the family (even less techy than me) are comfortable with using Plex.

[Exhale]

If you're only needing one drive then why not just set-up a HDD in a PC and share it that way?

[Flamedodger]

 

5 hours ago, octafish said:

However it is tucked away, and in order to add new media I have to power down, remove the drive and load files from another pc, which is a bit of a pain.

Can you not enable FTP on it and send files that way? 

[superfruit]

I've been using a Synology NAS for years. Tons of features but for your needs, the DS Video or Plex app for most tvs will stream media over IP.

 

Quality bit of kit.

[speedwell68]

I have been running a media server for Kodi for a few years.  It started life on an old Acer Revo but that couldn't supply enough power for all of the external drives.  So I bought a second hand HP Enterprise Grade PC, an Intel i3 with 4 GB of ram.  I installed a lightweight Linux distro with a GUI so it could run an RSS downloader.  I have all the media on external HDDs, currently running at 8TB.  I added a dual port NIC to go with the onboard one.

All of the media is shared using NFS and I have added a MySQL database for multiroom support in Kodi.

Total spend about £50.