I’m looking to build myself a NAS system for both music and movies. I was wondering if anyone had any experience in building one and would share their knowledge on the subject. I personally would want it to be cheap-ish as I’d obviously like to spend more money on headphones and speakers. I’ve been looking at something like a Dell Inspiron Desktop and turning that into a dedicated server(if possible at least) to store everything I would have. I am fairly tech savvy, in so far as to be dangerous, so I’m willing to do a lot of work myself to save on cost, but if an off the shelf unit is just easier I’m ok with that also.
Any information on the subject or what you’re currently using would be appreciated!
I built a NAS from a 10 year old AMD based desktop system with 8GB of RAM and three 2 TB drives. I am running Unraid OS ($60-ish but worth every penney) because it’s well supported and more flexible than free NAS OS’es (IMO). I’ve probably put close to $1K into the hardware it’s been-bullet proof for 10 years so I have no complaints.
I serve music files (FLAC, WAV and MP3) via DLNA to a Allo Digione streamer and am thrilled with the results. I love the jet black background (through a Aune X1S and X7S), awesome detail, musicality and punch.
Another cool aspect of Unraid is that I can pop a CD into the NAS and in about 30 minutes I have a lossless (FLAC) and a lossy (MP3) rip of it on my system automagically. I know there’s also good torrent support in Unraid but I haven’t gone down that rabbit hole yet.
I have ripped a couple of Movies to it my NAS to prove to myself I could do it but am not a big enough movie buff to do much more. From what I understand, video trans-coding will be more of a determinant of hardware than music streaming is so YMMV on how much horsepower you need.
Thanks for the info! I’m not super into movies but the girlfriend is so I’ll have to take that into account. I’ll definitely use the info on Unraid as it looks to have a lot of info on it.
I would second the UnRAID recommendation. It might need some more work to set it up on your end then simply buying a plug and play Synology box but it’s a lot cheaper (e.g. I payed around €350 for a 4U server case, a board/CPU Xeon bundle from eBay, 8GB registered DDR3 and PSU while a naked 8 bay would cost me around €900) and you have a lot more options. Plex, Torrents, Fileserver, a virtual machine(s) if your board/CPU is able to.
With over 25 years as an IT professional who has built countless desktops and servers, I’m a big fan of Synology NAS appliances. They’re cost effective, easy to use, reliable and flexible. You can get about the business of having a NAS to serve your needs rather than spending your time trying to build one from scratch.
Some of my favorite features:
Redundant file storage is enabled by default.
Cloud Station: It’s like a roll-your-own Dropbox server with as much storage space as you care to throw into the NAS. It even works over the WAN so you can keep a laptop synchronized while you’re out of the house.
Cloud Sync: A service that allows you to back up your NAS to a cloud/backup service like Amazon or Backblaze. You know, just in case your house burns down or you accidentally trash a file.
You can run a Plex server right on the NAS if you get one with sufficient processing power. You can also run Roon Node on one. Now THAT would be a super-deluxe Movie and Music server.
I tried a plugging a USB drive with WAV files into the Pi and didn’t hear much difference from the NAS. Aesthetically, I like not having something sticking out of the Digione. Plus, I can listen to my NAS-based files on any device that’s connected to my WIFI. Theoretically, I could listen through the interwebs but I don’t like having my to go through my firewall. That’s what Tidal/Spotify/Google is for.
