NAS storage for data
I am currently running a large amount of data on a single machine via external enclosures (2 4 disk containers holding about 16TB of data). The machine it is attached to is now at its limit for hard drives.
I am considering building a home made NAS (partly as a hobby project!) and wondering if anyone has experience in how much delay I could see in data in Media Browser.
IE: If I want to watch a show that is stored in a NAS over a 1gb network connection how much slower should I expect the response to be for starting a video (say 30 minute show, vs 2 hour 1080P movie)… will fast forwarding lag a lot?
So far my limited testing I can see that displaying of the collections is not hurt too much as the images are stored locally in the image cache.
Any help would be appreciated.
I have been using a separate Windows 7 machine with my movies stored on it as a server/nas for a few years. I have a shared 12tb drive mounted with a drive letter on my HTPC’s. There is no noticeable delay. I have had local HTPC storage in the past and cant see a bit of difference in playback. It is all connected via 1GB/s. The only speed difference you can see is ripping discs to the server vs local storage but even that isn’t bad.
To be honest every computer in my house uses that 12TB server as its storage. I don’t have more than 160GB physically in any other computer. 1GB/s is plenty fast to interface with it both read and write.
The only speed difference is maybe on spin up of the NAS. That all depends upon the machine, but once it wakes up, there really is no lag.
I agree, i run a WHS box in the loft with 15tb storage, it sleeps if idle between 0100 and 11am the rest of the time its awake and running.
if its asleep there is a 3 second delay in starting media, if awake its as instant as the local machine
Dan.
I’m using a QNap NAS with 8TB on a GB wired network for storage of my IBN and all movies. There is no lag at all despite my having 3 computers accessing the NAS. What I would recommend is a quality NAS with a decent processor, and high speed (7200) drives. A decent NAS will allow you to set the sleep timers on the drives. Mine awake as soon as my Media Centre or any other machine runs and only sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity. I use WD Black drives for better lifespan.
When I first moved to my 8tb netgear readynas I had some problems with 1080 movies stuttering which I resolved by enabling jumbo packets on my nas, gig router and gig Ethernet card. I have never ran a home built nas so I cannot comment on how they work in comparison but once I made that change I have not had any problems. It takes about 3 sec for a 480p movie to start using the internal player and up to 6 sec for a blu-ray folder rip to start using mpc hc as an external player.
I have been using 3x1U servers dual GigaNIC, 16TB each, with my movies stored on them for a few years. I have a shared Network drives mounted on my HTPC’s. There is minimal delay. I have had local HTPC storage in the past and cant see a bit of difference in playback. Even when loading my Blu-ray content.
Every computer in my house have a local cache of Root_folder. (for folder.jpg,backdrops and metadata.xml) with links to videos on these servers as storage. I don’t have more than 160GB physically in any other computer. Drives on server are in sleep mode till video requested.
