Community connected storage at its core is an easy concept: get one or a number of arduous drives and join them as much as a neighborhood space community with the assistance of a gradual however environment friendly mini PC. Inside that class although, there’s an enormous quantity of selection, from lifeless fundamental fashions that seem like a traditional exterior arduous drive, to extra highly effective items that may run different helpful applications – like media, sport or ad-blocking servers.
Realizing the place to start out with it may be fairly troublesome, so I’ve taken it upon myself to be your guinea pig and wade by the fiddliness to work out which sort of drive is finest to your wants.
This can be a 4 web page article in regards to the world of NAS drives, and my journey of bulk storage in direction of the end-goal of getting a functioning machine for what I want it to do – with out tearing my hair out.
What do I want a NAS for?
That is the primary and most necessary query you are prone to ask if you happen to’ve determined that you simply need to transcend having a stack of exterior HDDs or SSDs for storing your information on, or for extra superior duties corresponding to working servers of all types.
A NAS can do many issues, be it to be used as a media server on companies corresponding to Plex or Jellyfin, for working a house surveillance system, or turning it right into a Minecraft server, as an illustration.
As soon as you have determined what you are going to be utilizing the system for then determines what sort of system you may get.
My system is usually going for use as a Plex server for storing and having fast entry to residence video and photographs, in addition to for the big choice of native music and DVD/Blu-Ray backups I nonetheless have. Sure, I’m a bit analogue, however it’s good to have what’s primarily your personal model of Netflix with out the pesky subscriptions or adverts, however extra on that later.
Stage 1: WD MyCloud residence storage (or comparable)
If all you are going to be doing is storing photographs and movies or utilizing it as an additional backup machine such as you would a traditional exterior drive, then one thing like one in all Western Digital’s MyCloud House units is good for these extra fundamental workloads.
It is about as plug-and-play as you may get with a NAS-style machine, and one thing we have used as a household for just a few years. Consider it as an exterior arduous drive in an enclosure with some networking connected to it, which implies you possibly can plug it into your router, and it will work as a storage server with some small setup.
Ours is among the barely older three-terabyte WD MyCloud drives that you would be able to’t really purchase anymore, though the method for newer fashions is prone to be fairly comparable.
You may plug these drives into energy after which connect with them in the course of the preliminary setup by way of the MyCloud cellular app or with the desktop website, relying on the mannequin you may have. They might additionally want a direct connection to your router with the Ethernet port to get related to your community.
As soon as you have received it related, then you should utilize WD’s MyCloud net portal to check in and set issues up, earlier than including any folders and such that you really want onboard, and loading up something you need to retailer. At this second, the one strategy to entry the drive is thru the cellular app or net portal.
Nevertheless, if like us, you may have some movies you need to watch on appropriate units, then you possibly can poke round within the machine’s settings to get them to work as a sort of server all on their very own.
Our WD drive is ready to work as what’s referred to as a Twonky Server, which is one other type of Plex-style system that means that you can connect with the server on units corresponding to sensible TVs to view content material with out going by the built-in net browser.
To do that, I wanted to enter the settings of our Virgin Media router, and discover the IP tackle of the MyCloud drive, because it is not one thing that may be completed from the online portal. When inside, you possibly can examine on issues corresponding to system utilisation, how a lot house you may have left, and set up apps, together with Twonky. These can both be completed from the interface, or by ‘sideloading’ them and putting in them from a file you have already downloaded to your PC.
As soon as I received it working by enabling it, it is ready to present up as a tool our LG OLED TV as a ‘storage machine’, and works as an exterior arduous drive plugged into the TV would, displaying up within the menu when choosing an enter.
The one factor to notice is you have received to verify your recordsdata are named correctly with the correct metadata, versus simply naming the file itself. You are able to do this in Home windows by accessing the properties of the file by right-clicking it, after which going to the Particulars tab. It’s because, for no matter motive, the tactic the system makes use of to tug by file names depends on it utilizing the title saved within the file, versus the ‘XXXXX.mp4’ title.
You may set up third-party apps corresponding to Plex onto a few of these WD MyCloud drives too and set it up utilizing one thing referred to as SMB to entry it as a community drive in Home windows or MacOS, though I am going to go away these till we get to the extra ‘superior’ choices afterward.
The limitation to this machine is its storage capability. No matter-sized MyCloud you get is what you need to work with, whether or not that is 2TB, 3TB or extra. You may plug one other drive into the USB port on the rear if you want for extra storage, though that is determined by what exterior drives you may have at residence as to how a lot additional it provides.
For simply beginning out with a smaller quantity of media recordsdata, these WD MyClouds are nice. However, if you wish to get into extra superior means than simply internet hosting a small quantity of recordsdata, then you definately’ll need to learn on to search out out about Stage 2.
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