Hi All, So I wanting to build a 'NAS ' of sorts, but on a serious budget I was planning so...

[G+_Darryl Gibbs]

Hi All,

 

So I wanting to build a 'NAS' of sorts, but on a serious budget.  I was planning something VERY simple in the region of using a RPi 2 and an externally powered 3.5 HDD.  Now I know this is far from a perfect solution in terms of speed etc, but in all probability, the chance of more than 1 device accessing it at one time is extremely low.  I plan to use it to hold my backups etc, and stream content to my networked home theatre (Samsung HT-F5505K) which seems to find my Windows PC's on the network, so I'm guessing the same would happen with the Pi?

 

Now this article (http://www.mikronauts.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-2-nas-experiment-howto/) threw a spanner in the works as on the first page the author goes into detail about the speed limitations which look horrifying and I'm afraid about having a really shoddy experience in using it, such as buffering to the HT.

 

Before I go about buy this stuff (of which I have a VERY small window of opportunity here, due to lack of availability in my country), can anyone help me understand if this truly is a bad idea, or if infact anyone has done this and could share their results?  Thanks!!

http://www.mikronauts.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-2-nas-experiment-howto

[G+_E. Matt Armstrong]

I have used kodi on my pi 512 model b to stream movies from my tablet running tvmc and vice versa via Wi-Fi without a problem. Use a good class 10 SD card and USB stick for better performance.

 

http://hometheatrelife.com/supercharge-raspberry-pi-media-center/

 

I don't know if kodi has an add-on for files. I think you could install an ftp server via the underlying Linux if you use kodi/openelec. If speed is a concern use something better than a pi. A pi should work fine for this it will just be slower than other dedicated NAS.

[G+_Darryl Gibbs]

would your setup stream some high bit rate 1080p files easily enough?

[G+_E. Matt Armstrong]

I think I was using 720p and the movies were from the SD card. So you may have an issue with a HDD being the slow down. Correct me if I'm wrong but a Rpi 2 is USB 3.0, if you used a SSD instead of HDD, it may be faster than the SD.

[G+_Darryl Gibbs]

It's still only USB 2.0 unfortunately, and both the Ethernet and USB ports share a controller on the Pi, so this seems to cause serious bottlenecking

[G+_E. Matt Armstrong]

Just found this on a banana pi. You may try it, an orange pi or a NUC may work better if the price isn't too much.

 

http://www.htpcguides.com/raspberry-vs-banana-pi-benchmarks-sata-gigabit-matter/