I have a wireless network, and would like to locate a NAS type of thing somewhere away from my pc/modem, without running a cable. so i'm thinking some sort of small form factor pc with a single drive would do well (dont really need RAID).

can anyone recommend a case/mobo/cpu for this sort of thing...or an actual wireless NAS enclosure? only other thing i might do is install some streaming media server stuff on there. obviously it doesn't need to be powerful, and i'd like something on the low power side of things to make the baby seals happy. i'm kinda leaning towards the small pc for the flexibility. throw it up into a corner and remote in when needed.

what say u?

10/2/2009 6:39:46 PM

I needed the same thing. I wound up buying a Apple TimeCapsule. Its like a cheap wireless NAS. The only real problem with it is that file transfer is fairly slow for some reason. I don't own any macs, just a couple windows laptops.

10/2/2009 10:21:20 PM

i pondered the SFF vs NAS options for a long time too (see my ultimate HTPC thread). eventually ended up building my own

hec Black 0.7mm Thickness SECC 7K09 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case - Retail $50
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121027

ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard $78.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131324

AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor - OEM $48.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103299

the case was the trickiest component. i wanted something that looked more like a typical entertainment center device than a PC so my wife would let me keep it out in the open. I actually ordered a LIAN LI http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112186 for $150 but they ended up being out of stock so I got the cheapo hec instead and it's worked really well. it's a very tight fit inside, but it all works and it's a decent looking case. it sits on my bedroom dresser so we can watch tv at night, and also does automated backups of our two macbooks and my development PC, and it streams music/photos/video/live tv to the rest of the house

[Edited on October 3, 2009 at 12:26 AM. Reason : these purchases were all about a year ago, so state of the art, etc have changed by now]

10/3/2009 12:26:11 AM

i just bought one of these MSI Wind boxes, they are pretty cool.

MSI Wind barebones - comes with Atom dual core CPU and wifi antenna - $150
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167037

2GB kingston RAM - $35
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134317

then add your 1 sata disk and you can pop in a mini-PCIe wireless card or USB wireless. if you're installing windows you'll need a usb cdrom drive. most linuxes you can install off a usb flash drive.

10/4/2009 4:05:42 PM

nm

[Edited on October 4, 2009 at 4:59 PM. Reason : .]

10/4/2009 4:38:06 PM

^^ that's pretty tight

10/4/2009 5:58:48 PM

ordered this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119011 but then after reading through this thread a bit I think I'm going to get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119011

Quote :

"and also does automated backups of our two macbooks and my development PC"

what software do you use for this? rsync?

10/13/2009 8:41:55 PM

i'm currently using time machine and win7 backup. but they both do some kind of compression or something so i can't easily browse the backups with windows explorer. also, i'm not completely comfortable with the options either one has for specifying what to back up, the schedule or incremental/differential backup. gonna start exploring third party options when i get a chance

[Edited on October 13, 2009 at 9:57 PM. Reason : btw you gave the same link twice]

can those barebone atom machines play streaming video well? i need to get something cheap to hook my bedroom tv up to so i can stream movies/tv/music from my mediaserver

[Edited on October 13, 2009 at 10:02 PM. Reason : .]

10/13/2009 9:56:30 PM

i was going to look into crashplan.

http://www.memeo.com/abstd.php is pretty good if you just want to backup certain file types..it watches for changes/new files based on filetype and sends new/updated content as soon as it's saved.

also acronis is beautiful if you'd rather backup by images (it's what i'm leaning towards).

or maybe, just run multiple backups programs just to be safe.


and for the steaming stuff browse/search the user reviews on those Wind boxes on Newegg...they talk about it a lot. I think you can stream non-HD stuff just fine, but I wasn't really reading that stuff.

10/13/2009 11:00:06 PM

haha i was just looking at http://www.foxconnchannel.com/en-us/product/Barebones/

Quote :

" [3/2/2006] SysOpt posted their review of our TLM454R7M5-C350 barebones"

10/13/2009 11:19:29 PM

Quote :

"i just bought one of these MSI Wind boxes, they are pretty cool."

I did the same thing a while back. 'cept I got the single core atom. Ended up paying $105 for the computer, $20 for 2GB RAM, and $129 for a 1.5 TB HDD. Threw the Windows 7 RC on it as an OS and I've got a sub $300 Windows box with a ton of storage.

Quote :

"can those barebone atom machines play streaming video well?"

The ones with the new Ion GPU supposedly can play 1080p content just fine.

10/14/2009 12:18:46 AM

I am looking to do the same type of thing. I currently just have a spare PC sitting in the corner of a room acting as a network file server, but I am starting to want to do more with it. We currently just have it mapped as a drive on our other machines.

I am starting to amass a huge amount of pictures/video of my twins, and data backup/storage is becoming a high priority. I really want to make sure I don't lose this stuff.

Currently, I have tversity running so I can view our pictures using the XBOX 360, but it would be nice to have this thing connected directly to the TV so we could do a lot of other stuff, browsing, etc...

I was about to go and buy a couple 1TB drives to throw in the machine I have now, and then realized it doesnt support RAID, so I would need to either buy a controller or just get a new MB. Knowing that, I am trying to decide if I want to go ahead and drop the money to put soemthing together that can go under the TV (looks nice, etc...) or if I just upgrade this spare PC to be a little more safe with my data.

One of my other concerns is power usage. I know this PC isnt the most efficient thing in the world, so that is something else for me to consider.

Thoughts?

[Edited on November 16, 2009 at 12:44 PM. Reason : .]

11/16/2009 12:43:42 PM

didn't wanna start a new topic.

bbbut, any recommendations for a cheap NAS device? just want something that can stream to WD TV live.. no real specs beyond being reasonably cheap/quiet, etc. don't care about brand but want something reliable obviously.

[Edited on January 1, 2010 at 2:58 PM. Reason : although actually i could just use a USB drive and the WD TV will act like a NAS more or less..]

1/1/2010 2:53:32 PM

to follow up on my previous posts in here, i got one of http://www.foxconnchannel.com/en-us/product/Barebones/ for my bedroom for the sole purpose of watching tv at night. i knew the cpu would be underpowered, but it can barely play the .wtv files from my mediaserver, and trying to watch hulu is out of the question. trying to watch anything on netflix is pretty annoying too. not as bad as flash video, but still bad. even just trying to browse the internet pegs the cpu to 100%. i'm probably gonna have to sell it and get something a little heavier duty.

1/1/2010 3:05:36 PM