Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Low energy NAS box recommendation

I'm looking at re reriping my CD collection to lossless. It was initially ripped to MP3 back in the days when a 60GB harddrive was massive, so I was limited by this size.

I'm now looking to probably go FLAC with dBpoweramp and using a dedicated NAS box solely for music. Source is iTunes on PC and Sonos. I currently have a number of NAS boxes which at various points in their lives have been used for general purpose things. But going to a dedicated NAS box means that I am looking at going back to basics as I already have NAS solutions for my other requirements.

My requirements are:
1TB
Power efficiency
Quiet/fanless
Cool
SMB/CIFS
Brand reliability
Option to back up direct to USB drive would be nice to avoid the inherent slowness of backing up large amounts of data over a network

Now one of my Nas boxes, an old Western Digital Netcenter 320GB (WD3200B019), already fulfils many of these, running at 12W power with disk spinning and fanless. But I cannot find any information as to whether I can upgrade the disc.

I'm not particular interested in gigabit, speed, raid, twonky etc as these are not needed in this application. Power efficiency is more important to me, especially a working standby strategy, something that some solutions mention on paper but do not work in practice.

If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it, especially if you know how to upgrade my existing WD NAS box. What about the WD My Book NAS drives - does anyone have any experience of these?

Hi Ian, can't help with the NAS info but I didn't know that iTunes supported FLAC ? Is that a new thing ?

I'm not going to use FLAC for iTunes even if it does support it - don't know if it does or not. I had not really thought that far ahead.

I'm just going to use iTunes for iPod/phone and AE and this can be in a different, lossless format that is separately exported, in similar way that Sooloos does it. So it will be a separate MP3 share. I'm not anal enough to need lossless on my iPod/phone or from my AE into F80 in the study but I would like lossless for my 5200's and Sonos.

I'd be interested in hearing peoples thoughts on this too.

I'm going to upgrade to a digital server system next year but I'm a bit stuck on NAS drives.

I use a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo. You can buy it as a bare frame and put your own drive(s) in it or buy it ready configured.

It does have a fan, but the speed is temp controlled - it is tucked away in the office, so noise was not a major concern.

One feature that I do use is the timed operation, you can setup when you want the NAS to be powered up - so for us during the week it does not power up until 5pm and then powers down again at midnight. On a Friday it comes on at 5pm and doesn't go down until midnight Sunday - so saving power.

It also has a squeezebox server built in, so it saves having the mac powered-up to drive the kitchen system.

Nick

Thanks but the Netgear boxes all look relatively power hungry - 35W - 170W. I was hoping for 10W-15W or less that I measured my NetCenter drawing. It peaked at 19W during a brief period at startup. I may as well stick with my spare HP Media vault if power saving technology has not significantly moved on in the last 3 or so years. Some features look like they may be useful though - I do like the idea of timed operation.

Hello Ian,

I am delighted to answer your question as I am glowing from just having installed my NAS drive to my Sonos 2 days ago. Thanks to the many discussions on this forum that I have been diligently monitoring over the last year and the specific help that I received, I purchased a Western Digital My Book World Edition 1 TB Network Attached Storage WDH1NC10000N (White) from Amazon for an amazing $169 with free shipping.

First a caveat, I am hyper exited from having accomplished a feat that stretched my technical limits of selecting and installing a new component to my system and secondly I only have 3 days experience with it.

I am delighted with it. There is a fan noise, but it is so quiet that I cannot hear it from more than 20cm away. It was a breeze to install with very simple and clear instructions and procedures. I have not yet encountered any snags or problems. The best part is that my music server system is now as wonderful as George has been saying for so many years that it would be.

I concurrently purchased a controller for the Sonos on e-bay and installed that on the wall at a convenient central location with a spare Meridian remote. My music system is now independent from my computer and operated by two easy boxes that has an excellent wife factor.

The bonus is that it automatically backs up all my computers automatically on a continuous real time basis. I did not purchase it with this in mind and was not even aware of this option until during the set up process I came across this option. I ticked off one box and it was done. Apparently it will back up my computer when I am away from home anywhere hooked up via WiFi to the internet and I can access all the info on the NAS including my music from anywhere on the internet. I have not tried this yet as it boggles my mind. Awesome.

Sorry I am more focused on raving about my new toy than answering your question, but please ask any specific questions.

Aloha,

Buffalo Linkstation Minis use about 10W

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/network-storage/linkstation/

Whatever this means for the WD:

Cooler, quieter, eco-friendlier - Equipped with WD drives using WD GreenPower Technology, this system consumes significantly less power and delivers performance on par with power hungry network storage devices using 7200 RPM hard drives.

http://www.wdc.com/en/PRODUCTS/Products.asp?DriveID=587

Aloha,

Thanks Dolf and Seeker. I'm erring on the side of the WD as its a brand that I am familiar with plus it would appear to be cheaper, but can't find any power consumption data except the one above [edit]Just found a review of the WD My Book II (dual drive) unit at 5W standby, 16W in use, so the single drive version should be less or, based on those figures, the dual drive version is an option[/edit]. The copy manager function also looks useful. The linkstation mini at 10W is pretty good though.

I have a Western Digital SharedSpace NAS and could not be happier...no idea about the power consumption issue but it is expandable, feature rich, etc...the url is http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=500 noting that the smallest is 2TB so this might exclude it from your search...

I just ordered myself the 1TB Western Digital World Book. Didn't see the point of 2GB as 1GB is plenty for my music collection including an iPhone share copy of lower quality and iirc that >1TB drives were having reliability issues.

At the price I paid, �114 from Amazon, the price differential between multiple low spec unit and a bigger higher spec unit is nil. Plus power consumption should be excellent compared to my existing HP Media vaults I'm not going to mind leaving it on 24/7 like I use to do with my MV (but no longer) as I become more power concious.

I've got my CD's back from storage do its a matter of getting a copy of the most applicable dBpoweramp and I've got myself an xmas project.

Thanks to all who replied especially Dolf for confirming the WD use with Sonos.