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Advice Plz... HD Videos to PS3 with ReadyNAS Ultra 2

ipaul81
Aspirant

Advice Plz... HD Videos to PS3 with ReadyNAS Ultra 2

Hi All,

I am looking for some advice before I go and spend my $$$ on a NAS. My home network and Entertainment system is made up of...

Apple Airport Extreme Gigabit 802.11N Router
2x Macbook Pros with OSX Snow Leopard connected by WiFi
PS3 and Nintendo Wii
Panasonic Plasma with 5.1 surround system

At the moment the MacBooks are backed up to external hard disks using Time Machine. All of my Music and HD Movies are on a 500GG external portable drive. I use the PS3 as my media centre by plugging in the external hard drive to play my movies or music. This is not ideal because the PS3 will only work with FAT32 formatted drives which as you know has its limitations. By adding a NAS to my home Network I am hoping to achieve redundancy to my media and backups, eliminate the need for multiple external disks in the house hold, have the ability to remotely access my data and most importantly make it much easier to manage my HD movie collection and stream it to the PS3 without any issues.

In terms of disk space I am confident that 2x2GB drives will be enough for me. I have been looking at the ReadyNAS Ultra 2 and the Ultra 2 Plus. They both fit within my budget and at first glance seem to do what I require. Based on the above can someone please answer the following for me?

1. Will the Ready NAS Ultra2 be able to meet all of my above requirements?
2. Is it worth spending more for the Ultra 2 Plus and if so why?
3. Can I successfully stream HD movies from my NAS over the network to the PS3? All my files are AVI or MP4 (no MKV files). Basically I want the PS3 to see the NAS as it did with my external USB hard drive and keeping it nice and simple. I know that there may be issues streaming HD content to the PS3 using Wireless so I can always connect using a Cat6 cable. Will this work without buffering problems on the PS3?

About a year ago my ex flatmate had his older ReadyNAS Duo attached to my network however it seemed quite slow and struggled to stream HD content over to the PS3. I want to ensure the newer Ultra 2 and Ultra 2 Plus can perform before I spend all my money.

Thanks
Message 1 of 9
PapaBear1
Guide

Re: Advice Plz... HD Videos to PS3 with ReadyNAS Ultra 2

1. The Ultra 2 should be able to satisfy your demands, although I would suggest that if you can swing it, go for the 4 bay Ultra 4.
2. That is up to you. The Ultra 2 Plus (and Ultra 4 Plus) use a dual core Atom processor as opposed to the single core Atom processor in the Ultra 2/4. Both lines are 64 bit, however. (All current x-86 desktops have 64 bit processors).
3. While I cannot say definitely, since I don't own any of the hardware in question, but I would certainly expect that it would. (I store video on my NVX which is now discontinued in favor of the Ultra 4, and have no problems playing it on my PCs. FWIW - The NVX has a single core 32 bit processor)

The Duo uses an older Infrant designed processor and has 256MB of ram as opposed to the newer systems processor with 1GB of ram. FWIW - increasing the ram won't help much as the processor is the bottleneck on the older systems. Sufficient for most file server tasks, but it's file transfer speed is around 25-30 MB/s max. My NVX is three times that at 60-70 MB/s max and the Ultra series is a bit faster still.
Message 2 of 9
ipaul81
Aspirant

Re: Advice Plz... HD Videos to PS3 with ReadyNAS Ultra 2

PapaBear wrote:
1. The Ultra 2 should be able to satisfy your demands, although I would suggest that if you can swing it, go for the 4 bay Ultra 4.


Thanks PapaBear. Can you tell me why you suggest the Ultra 4? I am a home user with fairly basic needs. Besides the two extra bays and higher price, what will the Ultra 4 be able to do for me?
Message 3 of 9
PapaBear1
Guide

Re: Advice Plz... HD Videos to PS3 with ReadyNAS Ultra 2

It provides you a growth path in the size of your volume. Saving video files eats up drive space at an alarming rate. I started with 2x500GB drives in an NV+ and that 500GB volume was more than enough for years. When I started copying video files, my volume started growing. I expanded my NV+ to 3x500GB and 1x750GB drives for a volume of almost 1.5TB. I then upgraded to an NVX with 4x1TB drives which gave me a 3TB volume. In the space of a year, my data usage expaned from 800GB to 1.7TB.

I recently started expanding my NVX vetically by replacing some of my 1TB drives with 3TB drives. A dual bay unit with redundancy will only give you the space of 1 drive. While you can start with 2x2TB drives, that only gives you a net volume of 1.8TB. If you start with a 4 bay unit, you can start with only two drives and as you need to expand, you simply add additional drives. Then when you max out, you can upgrade to 3TB (or simply add 3TB drives instead of 2TB in the second two bays). X-Raid2 in the x-86 will expand vertically once you have 2 drives of the larger size rather than having to wait until all drives are the new size as is the case in the older X-Raid found in the Duo/NV+.
Message 4 of 9
ipaul81
Aspirant

Re: Advice Plz... HD Videos to PS3 with ReadyNAS Ultra 2

Lets just say I have a Readynas Ultra 2 populated with 2x 2TB drives in Raid 1. If in a few years time they reach capacity, will the ReadyNas Ultra 2 allow me to replace one drive with a larger 3+TB drive, automatically copy the data over to the new drive then allow me to replace the other drive with a 3+Tb drive? Is it that simple when it comes time to upgrade the drives inside a 2 bay NAS?
Message 5 of 9
PapaBear1
Guide

Re: Advice Plz... HD Videos to PS3 with ReadyNAS Ultra 2

Yes it is. When you replace a drive with another of equal or larger size, it will resync the drives, in your case, synchronizing the data sector by sector on the old drive with the new drive. Then when you replace the second drive with a larger drive, it will again synchronize the data on the other drive to the second drive. It will probably require a reboot after the resync on the second drive to expand vertically. (Horizontal expansion is achieved by adding drives, vertical expansion is achieved by adding larger drives. The vertical expansion will not take place until there is redundancy - at least two drives in a unit with single redundancy).
Message 6 of 9
ipaul81
Aspirant

Re: Advice Plz... HD Videos to PS3 with ReadyNAS Ultra 2

So would I be better off using X-Raid2 or Raid 1 in a 2 bay NAS? Will they do the same thing? WIll I still have the same amount of disk space?
Message 7 of 9
PapaBear1
Guide

Re: Advice Plz... HD Videos to PS3 with ReadyNAS Ultra 2

They will have the same amount of disk space. X-Raid2 is the default for all x-86 ReadyNAS units, and will expand vertically. I am not sure about Flex-Raid set up in Raid 1. We tend to point out that X-Raid2 with 2 disks emulates Raid1. Netgear has made some improvements in Flex-Raid, but IMO, X-Raid2 is the best choice. This difference could be more significant if you ever decide to go to a 4 bay ReadyNAS. You two drive volume can be transferred into the 4 bay intact and then expanded horizontally (the X in X-Raid2).
Message 8 of 9
ipaul81
Aspirant

Re: Advice Plz... HD Videos to PS3 with ReadyNAS Ultra 2

Thanks once again PapaBear.
Message 9 of 9
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