NAS Decision Time

[katywu]

I've been mulling over the purchase of a reasonable NAS solution for some time and think I have narrowed it down to either the Thecus N4100 Pro or the QNAP TS-409 Turbo. I need a 4 bay solution and will primarily store music on the NAS along with other multi-media files.

 

I use SqueezeCentre so it would be nice to run this on the NAS without a separate music server. The QNAP appears to be more suitable for this purpose than the Thecus from what I have read? I know you can run SC on Thecus but it may need more tweaking on the N4100 than on the QNAP.

 

I also want to stream video content but that is a secondary and not as important requirement as the music server.

 

Both devices have 256MB memory which doesn't seem a lot in today's high performance environments. Is this likely to be an issue in any way with regards acceptable performance with regards searching music libraries (20,000 songs) or stream audio/video do you think?

 

I read somewhere that the Thecus memory can be upgraded but the QNAP memory can not?

 

Would appreciate any thoughts or experiences to help me finally make up my mind!!.

 

Thanks

 

Mike

 

[Roseval]

Digital audio is a bit of a paradox. At one hand playback doesn’t ask much, any MP3 player proves this point. On the other hand, scanning a library might take years on a slow machine.

I think a 500 MHz/ 250Mb will do running SC but will it do tomorrow too?

Maybe you should have a look at TS-439 Pro (1.6GHz, 1GB), it is more expensive but probably more future proof

 

 

[katywu]

Yes, I like the look of the TS-439 but its £200 more expensive. Perhaps buying the Thecus and potentially upgrading the memory (if needed) is a better option although I guess this would invalidate any warrantee.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Be very careful upgrading the memory and who you purchase the unit from. A friend of mine purchased an "upgraded" Thecus with extra memory from nashq.com and the front display did not work. Thecus looked at the unit themselves and said the memory was not compatible with the unit. I'm not sure if other memory would work or if there is Thecus certified memory that is needed. I do know that nashq.com shipped a non-functioning product and told the customer to send the unit to Thecus for warranty repair. nashq did not even offer to take the unit back on return even though it never worked to begin with. After Thecus corrected the memory issues created by nashq it was clear there was something going on with the drives. The amount of errors being reported by the drives was astronomical. As of today Thecus has the unit back in for repair. nashq did not offer any customer service and Thecus confirmed nashq is not an authorized dealer.

 

[katywu]

Chris,

 

That's very useful information, thanks.

 

From a support perspective the QNAP solution looks preferrable, there appears much more discussion on their forums and quite a professional look and feel to everything.

 

Mike