cheapest/best NAS drive for itunes/sonos

[admin_exported]

a contradiction i know!

i have recently converted to sonos and im loving the experience.
my itunes library (90g's worth) is all stored on an external seagate 500mb drive. connected to my samsung nc10 notebook.

the issue is, every thime i disconnect the hard drive, then plug it back in, sonos cant find the files, and i have to re-attatch the routed files. takes ages!

so, i was looking at nas drives. but looking at amazon, they all have eccellent, and terrible reliability reviews. buffalo, seagate, wd. all of them. can i back up all files (and its only music files) on my old seagate just incase the new drive fails?

also, as said, theres nothing wrong with my seagate. its 4 years old and functioning perfectly. i was in maplin, and im sure a guy pointed out a device that connects my router and existing drive that permanently connects it to the network?

help is happily received

 

[scene]

Yes, connecting your external drive to an appropriate router would be an option. You'll need a router with a USB port that supports external drives. Netgear do them (I've got one). Then you plug your extenrnal drive into the router and it effectively turns it into a NAS.

 

[andywscott]

Hi I have been using this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Buffalo-LinkStation-MultiMedia-Attached-BitTorrent/dp/B001FNYWFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298554109&sr=8-1 drive from amazong with my sonos and all I have to do is turn this on and I can get radio and access all my itunes at this price its a bargain

 

[andywscott]

Yeah I meant you just need the nas on to get your music off the itunes library

 

[Zarn_Smith]

If you do go down the NAS route, may I recommend QNAP. They sell a vast range of NASs. I was going to recommend the 219P but I re-read the cheap bit... Perhaps the 110 or 210 model.

 

[kinda]

While I was on with a Sonos support guy a few weeks ago I aked what they recommend and he said Buffalo.

However, I used a LaCie for ages before it packed up, and now have a Netgear Stora. Cheap, and you can choose your own drives and configuration, (mirror drive so you don't lose data, stripe data across drives for faster reading, and so on).

Virtually no sound either with one of the energy efficient drives installed, and you can set a day by day timer for when it comes on and goes off, but it goes into a standby mode anyway when not in use then springs to life when accessed.

If you want loads of different accounts on the dirve or to tweak every last detail the Stora won't be for you, but if you want an easy top use quiet NAS you can stick your own drives in, then it's not bad.

 

[Anonymous]

tbh the buffalo for £80 on amazon looks like a good bet. il always have my itunes library backed up on another hard drive. i need to speak to sonos to see if i can plug the nas into either the zp90 or zonebridge.iv ran out of ethernet ports!

 

[visionary]

Hi Paul

my NAS is plugged in to the spare RJ45 on the Zonebridge for exactly that reason. It works perfectly like that

 

[Anonymous]

top top man. thank you for that.

how easy is a nas to set up. is it as simple as plug into the router,/zonebridge, my computer sees it on the network, and i set the route path through sonos?

60gig of music seems alot of info to move from my current hard drive in one go. can i move the files hard wired from usb, or does it all have to be done over the network?

 

[Anonymous]

Have you had a look at the LG NAS which is an iTunes server as well as most other things? So far it has been very reliable and very easy to set up. Customer services on the phone were very good as well when I had a small initial issue.

I've got 2 one TB drives in mine (Raid1) hard wired to the BT router and then hard wired to the receiver (only because the receiver doesn't have a wireless facility) where it happily plays my iTunes as and when I want it without the PC being on.

From past experience I wouldn't touch Lacie with a barge pole