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Talk about slow work takes time! I'm just now getting around to putting this together and getting it operational, after having purchased the QNAP HS-210 in November 2014!
Why the QNAP HS-210? Well, for better or worse, I got it in my head that I wanted a smallish low profile NAS setup, with redundancy, that might be easy to carry around, for mobile demo's or something that just might be easy to tuck away somewhere.
The HS-210 looks more like some kind of set top box than the typical NAS unit...
It's billed as being a silent NAS, because there is no fan, but as anyone knows that works with 3-1/2" HD's, it's not the fan that's the only source of noise.
It uses two drive bays, capable of working with 3-1/2" or 2-1/2" drives. It can be purchased partially or fully loaded with different drive configurations; or with no drives installed, which is how I bought it. The standard drives are Seagate low power NAS HD's.
Because all of the cooling is done through the top side aluminum plate, thermals are important- so the power usage of the drive you select if you choose to roll your own is not a minor factor. QNAP says only to use the specified Seagate drives- I went with two HGST 4TB drives, because their reported reliability by Cloud vendors that release failure information on the drives they use is so much lower. OTOH, I suspect these drives are running warmer than the Seagates would- fairly warm on the top surface- but then, I'm been running them steadily loading music files from my Mac Pro over the network, using both drives, which are set to RAID1 for mirroring. The likely way to get these to run less warm is to only use 1 drive, which is the case for many of the reviews on Amazon. We'll have to see how that decision works in the long run.
Setup can be done using a cloud based installation program, and that doesn't take very long to download and install the most current version of the operating firmware- a sticker is provided which is sort of the redeemable code entitling you to the software. Setting up your own naming for the system, and your own admin passwords is a walk in the park; just be sure to record everything!
The built in controller is a single core ARM 1.6 GHz CPU; it seems quite up to basic serving tasks, but note, unlike some more powerful NAS units, it will not do video transcoding on the fly! PLEX lovers beware...
QNAP provides a web based interfacer for doing uploading and using your NAS, but in most cases you'll probably want to go a little more direct. There's a utility from QNAP to download so you can find the NAS on your local network; the default setup loads the Mac drivers in the NAS so the built in shared server support will find it immediately from Finder on your desktop, and you can just drag and drop files to the folders you want to use (Multimedia being recommended for both music and video)
I checked the "playback" functionality using the QNAP browser client, and while copying music files to the HS-210, played back a few from another album on the Mac Pro. No glitches, no drop outs, everything working as expected. That marked my first music playback from NAS.
Later this week when I have all the current working library uploaded, I'l try access and playback from the NAD M50 and from the AURALiC AIRES. It might be an interesting test to see if it can serve both simultaneously.
I also have a 6TB LaCIE NAS that has been sitting around a like amount of time, and plan to get it setup later this week- the little QNAP will be going back to Livermore, and will be used for "mobile" applications from time to time (can't hardly call it "portable" - that HS210 is small, but its heavy! )
Note, at the moment, it's connected to a Comcast cable modem/router; the Airport Extreme audio subnet will be re-setup this week, and all the audio gear run off of it, so that local wired and wireless traffic won't interfere with outgoing/ingoing internet services. I think this is the sensible way to do it; I found out from AURALiC that if you use only 1 router, they recommend either an enterprise grade WiFi router, or an Airport Extreme.
So far, things are working fine, if a bit warmer than I expected. Stay tuned for how it runs in "normal" usage.
Why the QNAP HS-210? Well, for better or worse, I got it in my head that I wanted a smallish low profile NAS setup, with redundancy, that might be easy to carry around, for mobile demo's or something that just might be easy to tuck away somewhere.
The HS-210 looks more like some kind of set top box than the typical NAS unit...
It's billed as being a silent NAS, because there is no fan, but as anyone knows that works with 3-1/2" HD's, it's not the fan that's the only source of noise.
It uses two drive bays, capable of working with 3-1/2" or 2-1/2" drives. It can be purchased partially or fully loaded with different drive configurations; or with no drives installed, which is how I bought it. The standard drives are Seagate low power NAS HD's.
Because all of the cooling is done through the top side aluminum plate, thermals are important- so the power usage of the drive you select if you choose to roll your own is not a minor factor. QNAP says only to use the specified Seagate drives- I went with two HGST 4TB drives, because their reported reliability by Cloud vendors that release failure information on the drives they use is so much lower. OTOH, I suspect these drives are running warmer than the Seagates would- fairly warm on the top surface- but then, I'm been running them steadily loading music files from my Mac Pro over the network, using both drives, which are set to RAID1 for mirroring. The likely way to get these to run less warm is to only use 1 drive, which is the case for many of the reviews on Amazon. We'll have to see how that decision works in the long run.
Setup can be done using a cloud based installation program, and that doesn't take very long to download and install the most current version of the operating firmware- a sticker is provided which is sort of the redeemable code entitling you to the software. Setting up your own naming for the system, and your own admin passwords is a walk in the park; just be sure to record everything!
The built in controller is a single core ARM 1.6 GHz CPU; it seems quite up to basic serving tasks, but note, unlike some more powerful NAS units, it will not do video transcoding on the fly! PLEX lovers beware...
QNAP provides a web based interfacer for doing uploading and using your NAS, but in most cases you'll probably want to go a little more direct. There's a utility from QNAP to download so you can find the NAS on your local network; the default setup loads the Mac drivers in the NAS so the built in shared server support will find it immediately from Finder on your desktop, and you can just drag and drop files to the folders you want to use (Multimedia being recommended for both music and video)
I checked the "playback" functionality using the QNAP browser client, and while copying music files to the HS-210, played back a few from another album on the Mac Pro. No glitches, no drop outs, everything working as expected. That marked my first music playback from NAS.
Later this week when I have all the current working library uploaded, I'l try access and playback from the NAD M50 and from the AURALiC AIRES. It might be an interesting test to see if it can serve both simultaneously.
I also have a 6TB LaCIE NAS that has been sitting around a like amount of time, and plan to get it setup later this week- the little QNAP will be going back to Livermore, and will be used for "mobile" applications from time to time (can't hardly call it "portable" - that HS210 is small, but its heavy! )
Note, at the moment, it's connected to a Comcast cable modem/router; the Airport Extreme audio subnet will be re-setup this week, and all the audio gear run off of it, so that local wired and wireless traffic won't interfere with outgoing/ingoing internet services. I think this is the sensible way to do it; I found out from AURALiC that if you use only 1 router, they recommend either an enterprise grade WiFi router, or an Airport Extreme.
So far, things are working fine, if a bit warmer than I expected. Stay tuned for how it runs in "normal" usage.