NAS advice please

[basshound]

I currently have all my music on a Dell laptop using JRiver MC (see sig ), I`m beginning to run out of space and wonder if NAS is the way to go ?

I want to increase storage space and also have some sort of automatic backup in case of disaster (RAID ? ) I do backup my files to an external HD but prob not as regularly as I should ! Now if I got a NAS drive am I right in thinking that I would copy all my music to the NAS and then point Jriver at the folder on the NAS ? I would have no problem using the laptop as a "front end " but I also have a Nexus 7 with Gizmo which is used as a remote for Jriver, can this be used directly with the NAS to bypass the laptop ?

Thanks in advance for any advice and please be gentle as I`ve no experience with NAS or similar!

 

[professorhat]

I don't really know JRiver I'm afraid, but just want to get a couple of things in quickly before people start arguing about it:

1. A NAS in basic terms is an amount of storage that is accessible to all devices over the network. So yes, if JRiver just looks at a folder on your laptop, it should be possible to set this up so that you move all the music in that folder to a shared folder on the NAS, then point JRiver to look at this instead.

2. As I understand it, JRiver is a program which runs on the PC. So the PC would have to be switched on in order for the app to act as a remote for it. Not sure if this is what you meant or not? If you want to access music without the laptop switched on, this is going to need something else in the equation to allow that access e.g. some NAS devices with an appropriate amp / AV receiver allow music to be streamed direct from NAS to amp. If you don't have this, something like the Sonos system would also be appropriate.

3. (Warning - this is the bit that often starts arguments for some reason - be prepared!) Getting a NAS with RAID is a good idea, but please don't think of it as an automatic backup. The R in RAID stands for redundant - what it does is it protects you from a hard disk failure. There are different types of RAID, but that's the most used function. Why is this important? Because a backup protects you from pretty much everything e.g. if a file is corrupted, your backup is okay, if you accidentally delete a file on your system, that file is still on your backup. RAID doesn't do this - it only protects you from a failure in one of the hard disks. It's a fine point, but what I'm getting at is, even with a NAS protected by RAID, you really should still run a backup to an external disk on occasions - it's worth it to protect your data fully. That's it, warning over, it's up to you whether you do this or not!