NAS POLL - How much NAS do you need in times of streaming???

[jabbr]

On 3/11/2020 at 7:24 PM, Teresa said:

Under 5. The need for capacity is slowing ...  I checked "Other reasons/answers are welcome"

 

I don't need capacity as under my apartment complex's lease agreement I am no longer allowed to stream or download using their free wi-fi internet. Which is OK with as I prefer playing SACDs.

 

I’m sure you could purchase & download without calling attention? You could always use a VPN like NordVPN and that will obscure what you are doing but that’s probably too complex for what you need. 

On 3/11/2020 at 7:24 PM, Teresa said:

 

The DSD and 24-bit PCM music files I downloaded (and kept) before this change come out to 65 GB total and I have 403 GB available on my hard drive. I didn't know what a NAS was and looked it up and it appears to be different than the backup drive I use. Some of these computer terms are hard for me to understand.

 

A NAS is a backup drive that connects to your computer via your network rather than a USB cable. 

On 3/11/2020 at 7:24 PM, Teresa said:

 

95% of my music is on physical SACDs, I have thought about adding them to my computer. However, from the threads I've read here on creating DSD music files from SACDs it looks like too much work. So I just play my SACDs.

 

Yeah it’s a bit of work... there are a few ways to do it ... I have an old PS3 that’s attached to my network. When I get a new SACD I send it to my NAS using software that runs on the PS3.

 

On 3/11/2020 at 7:24 PM, Teresa said:

I do have a question about NAS that my google search didn't answer, is it a drive that can be activated by multiple devices that play computer music files?

Yes! It is actually a low powered computer that shares its drives on the network. That’s all. (My NAS runs Ubuntu Linux)

[jabbr]

20 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Suggested edit.

Yes!

 

and let me reiterate that a NAS is no more than a box that holds drives, has a network connection, and runs an operating system. 
 

my NAS runs Ubuntu Linux. The included ZFS file system handles RAID/mirroring, RAM cache etc. ZFS was developed by Sun Microsystems now Oracle to run their bulletproof big iron NAS devices. It’s free, and well tested.

 

Using 100GBe fiberoptic Ethernet, my upstairs workstation can access its storage in the basement faster than a local drive.
 

The biggest reason to have a NAS is so that you don’t worry where your files are, which machine they are on — it’s a private cloud for your house. I have >20 year old files that have been migrated from NAS to NAS.

[jabbr]

1 hour ago, DuckToller said:

However, uitilzing the modern multicore technololgies and advanced software for NAS systems, i.e. UNRAID, they do allow the user to have the machine running other tasks, too.
For instance Virtual Machines (WS2016 does that as well) and Dockers for ROON, PLEX or Minimserver.

To be clear Ubuntu/Debian and other free Linux distros certainly support docker, virtual box etc