NAS and MediaShare....

1169 Views 12 Replies 2 Participants Last post by chrisexv6, Sep 27, 2008

chrisexv6

Discussion Starter · Sep 23, 2008

Looking into building a NAS box to provide media for the MediaShare feature. I want something as low power as possible (I plan on leaving it running 24/7) and that will run Linux so I can use MediaTomb.

Looking at the Intel Atom CPU/mobo choices.......the CPU is running along at 1.6GHz, single core. My question is if this is powerful enough to transcode MP3s to the HR2X series of DVRs. I know someone here has posted about getting a pre-built NAS to run MediaTomb and transcode efficiently, but it seems tougher than building a NAS and installing everything myself. Didnt want to buy all the parts and find out the Atom setup isnt powerful enough.

Thanks in advance.

-Chris

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boilerjt

· #2 · Sep 23, 2008

chrisexv6 said:
Looking into building a NAS box to provide media for the MediaShare feature. I want something as low power as possible (I plan on leaving it running 24/7) and that will run Linux so I can use MediaTomb.

Looking at the Intel Atom CPU/mobo choices.......the CPU is running along at 1.6GHz, single core. My question is if this is powerful enough to transcode MP3s to the HR2X series of DVRs. I know someone here has posted about getting a pre-built NAS to run MediaTomb and transcode efficiently, but it seems tougher than building a NAS and installing everything myself. Didnt want to buy all the parts and find out the Atom setup isnt powerful enough.

Thanks in advance.

-Chris

That is definitely powerful enough for MP3. I had an old 1GHz AMD Thunderbird CPU running Twonky (on Ubuntu Linux) and it worked with MP3s. I've been looking to go the NAS route myself and I just bought a D-Link DNS-323 and I'm planning on running MediaTomb on it (MP3s and Photos) when version 0.12.0 is released. I've run some experiments using madplay to transcode MP3s on this 500GHz ARM CPU and it seems to work good enough.

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boilerjt

· #4 · Sep 23, 2008

chrisexv6 said:
Thanks for the info. I actually meant to reply to your thread about using the Dlink NAS. Nice to see you were able to make some progress.........still curious if it will all work with the HR2X before I jump in and get it.

Id prefer just getting an out of box NAS setup like the DLink, just makes life easier I think......but if that wont work with the HR2X then Ill look more into building an Atom box. The mobo/cpu combo from Newegg is cheap enough, then its just a matter of buying drives for it (I read somewhere the 2.5" Scorpio notebook drives draw very little power even when reading/writing, and very VERY little power when idle). But then everything would have to be built and configured, which is always fun!!

I won't have an absolute definitive answer until MediaTomb 0.12.0 is released. I don't want to go through the headaches of cross-compiling the SVN code for the NAS. I went the self-contained NAS route because I'm going to leave it on 24/7 and wanted minimal power consumption.

I've also got flac and ogg decoding working very well on the NAS

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boilerjt

· #6 · Sep 23, 2008

chrisexv6 said:
Is there any estimate on when its going to be released?

Also, is there any advantage to the DNS-323 over the DNS-321? I know the 321 has a 400MHz CPU vs 500, wasnt sure if it would make that much of a difference (321 is cheaper, and in stock at newegg)

The MediaTomb developer is hinting that it will be released soon. I decided on the 323 over the 321 because of the faster CPU and it seems to have a much larger hacker community.

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boilerjt

· #8 · Sep 23, 2008

chrisexv6 said:
Thanks for the info.......I'll wait it out and see if MediaTomb gets released soon.

Looking at the Atom-based solution, Im disappointed to find out that while the CPU uses very very little power, the motherboard Intel chose to hook it up to actually ends up using almost 2x the amount of power as a Dlink-type NAS with the drives included!!! Whats the point of Atom, at that point?

What drives are you using in the Dlink? Im curious to see if I can get 2.5" notebook drives to fit.......the Scorpio line from Western Dig are just so energy efficient. 2W at read/write, 0.85W at idle.

I'm using a pair of Seagate ST31000340AS 1TB drives. These are 3.5" drives and not as energy efficient as your choice, but not too bad nonetheless (8W idle).

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boilerjt

· #10 · Sep 26, 2008

chrisexv6 said:
Any thoughts to attempting to try and cross compile MediaTomb .12 for ARM?

I keep seeing references to "Real Soon Now" for when .12 will be officially released.......anywhere from July to last month to "could be 2 weeks could be 2 months" from the devs.

I dont need a NAS right away, but I dont want to wait and wait and wait Wondering if it cross-compiling is just too much of a pain to try and undertake or maybe it wont be as hard as it seems.

There is a lot of cross-compiling docs out there for the DNS-323 and I may give it a try. Who knows when Jin will get around to releasing the thing... you gotta remember, though. This is a hobby for him and not his real job.

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boilerjt

· #12 · Sep 26, 2008

chrisexv6 said:
Yeah I realized I should have added that its no knock against him, just wasnt sure if it might be worth trying to compile it ourselves.

I keep coming back to it being easier to build a low cost low power NAS box based on an Intel Atom, VIA C7 or AMD 45W CPU.

-Chris

I've started my attempt at getting the cross-compiler up and running. I remember what a pain it was finding all of the dependencies to compile MediaTomb on my Ubuntu setup. This time, I'll probably have to cross-compile most of those dependencies instead of locate them :eek2:

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