How To Select Network Attached Drive With Media PC
This article discusses how network attached storage can improve your media center experience.
User media PC are increasingly facing the need to share the media files over the computers the home network. Some might even want to stream iTunes music without turning the computer. We all have different requirements for an additional storage but as the need for more storage increases often needs to be accessible from more than one place. This is where a Network Hard Drive (also know as Network Attached Storage NAS) become very tempting option.
Gigabit Ethernet
After trying with my old Ethernet router I realized that both wireless & 100MB Ethernet felt quite sluggish especially if I wanted to work with HD video files. After buying a new gigabit router (Apple Airport Extreme) the network hard drive read & write speed felt about the same as using computer s own internal hard drive. So upgrading your home network to 1000MB Ethernet really makes a difference particularly as gigabit routers are not so expensive anymore.
Two Hard Drives RAID 1
It is important not to use only one external hard drive to store your backups. If your backup hard drive fails you will lose all your data. Thus I recommend having at least two hard drives RAID operation.
RAID 1 is the main setup most beginners considering buying a network hard drive should now about. RAID 1 writes or mirrors data to multiple disks so you will have multiple hard drives with the exactly same data. This way if one hard drive fails you still have another copy. Buying two or more hard drives can feel a little costly but remember that losing your data will be extremely costly.
Synology Network Hard Drive
I use Synology DS209+ Network Hard Drive with 2 x 1TB hard drives inside. If you have a Mac you can also use Synology as a Time Machine. Synology also provides a good backup software for Windows. Synology is quite expensive & might feel difficult to use for networking beginners but offers excellent throughput speed & nearly all the features you could ever need from a network hard drive.
One simple but important feature that many external hard drives do not have is that Synology shuts down the hard drives after certain time inactivity. Then automatically turns hard drives if you search any data from the hard drive. Lacking this functionality can be very annoying with external hard drives as you need separately turn them when you need to access data.
Synology has also made mapping a hard drive very easy Windows machines with their Synology Assistant. This is particularly useful for beginners who do not know how to map network drives Windows.
There a lot features packed with the Synology hard drives iTunes server functionality being one the useful ones. This means that you can stream your iTunes music any computer with iTunes without turning the computer where your media files would normally locate. In practice iTunes server functionality is nice but not necessary my setup.
Lastly here is a useful tip as a take away. You can easily make a network drive available iTunes or other media players by adding a shortcut into the iTunes folder pointing to the network hard drive. E.g. you create Podcasts shortcut into iTunes Music folder pointing to a folder located the network hard drive. This way all your Podcasts will be automatically downloaded into a network hard drive instead your computer s own.
So summary I recommend considering getting a network hard drive with a RAID 1 mirroring functionality to share media files across the digital living room while ensuring that everything is safely backed up.
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