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Post by manaspen on Aug 9, 2008 1:38:57 GMT 7
To the thecus community, I have been researching NAS drives for some time now and have a good feeling about buying a thecus, but wanted to get some community feedback on which one i should buy. Here is my situation: I have about 1 TB of music (all kosher  and about 50 gigs of photos and videos of the family and my past stackable drives have crashed on a regular basis. I am looking to have a nas device that can serve and protect my music library and photo/video collection to the computers on my network. the computers will be both PC and MAC and serving about 175,000 songs which tends to choke iTunes...so a media server is key for the Roku. Also, I will be using Mac Minis as audio and video devices connected to 2 x 42" 1080 LCD's and stereo equipment so that music, dvd's streaming video etc call be connected and viewed through a TV and stereo. Any advice? Which N5200 would be best? N5200 Pro, B BR BR PRO? or is there a better alternative? Thanks. J |
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Post by tankslappa on Aug 10, 2008 8:14:08 GMT 7
Do you really need to go for a 5200? I thought some of the 3 drive models were specifically made for this kind of home use (and half the price of the 5200). 3 x 1TB drives in Raid5 would give you just under 2TB of storage. The 5200 isn't exactly silent you know, I wouldn't want mine sitting in the living room (so I hope you have a box room for the noisy stuff). There's a big fan at the back drawing air over the drives which makes a fair bit of noise. I'm thinking of dropping the fan speed down with an inline resistor, but the Firmware also checks fan speed, so it might take a few attempts to find a drop I can do without setting off alarms, if any. However, if you are set on a 5200, I'd say go for one of the pro range, purely because they have more guts in the CPU department, and don't cost much more, if any than the older non-pro. I doubt you need the network partitioning/routing abilities of the RouStor (That's the R suffix on the model name), so a 5200B Pro. There's a comparison table here esupport.thecus.com/support/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=8&nav=0If you experience regular drive deaths, maybe you should change drive manufacturer and/or invest in a UPS to smooth out your electricity. Hope this helps. |
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Post by drewy on Aug 11, 2008 1:07:20 GMT 7
it's not the big fan that makes the noise, it's the psu...can't do anything about it without breaking the seal either alltough there are workarounds....
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Post by manaspen on Aug 11, 2008 11:25:14 GMT 7
Thanks for the advice. As fo the N5200, I am looking for a solution that will last at least 5-7 years and with the speed of the music collection, kid video and picture growth, as well as personal hobby stuff, I'd rather have enough room for servign 3 TB of collections once I start downloading movies and in the future, when blue ray is available, it will be a space hog...
I started 2 years ago with 250 gig of music, in 2 more years i should have about 1.5-2 TB of music alone...
As for noise, guest room closet and i dont sleep in the guest room. other people do...haha
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Post by tankslappa on Aug 12, 2008 23:38:43 GMT 7
it's not the big fan that makes the noise, it's the psu...can't do anything about it without breaking the seal either alltough there are workarounds.... Really? My PSU fan is hardly pushing any air out, and when I put my hand over the vent there is no noticeable change in noise. Putting my hand over the the big fan really does drop the level. It's no good... I'm going to have to do it... Screwdriver out! [edit] Right, after a bit of digging I found some 3 pin fan connectors with inline resistors, 56 ohm. (Zalman RC56) I've just installed one onto the big fan, and the fan alarm hasn't gone off (woohoo!), the noise has dropped, and I can now hear a difference when I put my hand over the PSU fan. The volume of air coming out of the box had definitely dropped. I'll leave it for a while and come back and check the drive temperatures in a bit. According to INFO Fan 1 speed: 1136 Fan 2 speed: 3163 Unfortunately I don't know which one is the Big fan, and which the CPU.  |
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Post by drewy on Aug 13, 2008 2:27:54 GMT 7
I would guess at big fan = slow small fan = fast. it's possible that different production runs used different fans or even different psu's. With mine the psu fan is by far the worst offender and as luck would have it the most difficult to change, at least without killing the warrenty. I have thought about removing the psu altogether and using a dc-dc convertor conected directly to my ups batteries but havn't got around to it yet...that way I could always replace the psu if I had to send it back under warrenty, I also get rid of any psu noise and hopefully it's a little more effeicent  |
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Post by tankslappa on Aug 13, 2008 4:00:22 GMT 7
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Post by drewy on Aug 13, 2008 4:59:09 GMT 7
yep that's exactly what I was thinking of. Good price too, cheaper than a replacemnt psu.
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Post by tankslappa on Aug 13, 2008 5:03:24 GMT 7
yep that's exactly what I was thinking of. Good price too, cheaper than a replacemnt psu. Couple of car batteries and some solar panels, and you could have a green Thecus :-) |
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and about 50 gigs of photos and videos of the family and my past stackable drives have crashed on a regular basis. 
