About to Purchase a NAS..

[qbie]

Hey guys

I'm about to purchase a NAS device for streaming HD Content over my home network to my Media Center, and wanted to ask a couple of questions if I may! Looking through this forum and reading the reviews the N2100 seems to fit my needs but I have a couple of questions..

1) I take it with the SMB server I can drag and drop files from my Main PC onto the N2100, and also map a drive onto the Media Center so the content can easily be accessed? I also have an Xbox with XBMC on it, and I see that this device works ok with that too according to the XBMC wiki.

2) Is drive access speed sufficient to stream HD across a WiFi network? I will be upgrading my router to a 802.11n device with Gigabit, so that part of the network will be ok I think? Most of the files are either MPEG2 or h.264 files.

3) Can I buy just one HDD, and use JBOD, then add another HDD later on without losing any data?

4) How are the drives formatted? I'm asking this because just in case the machine dies at some point, I want to be able to retreive my data..

Thanks for your help, hope to join the club and be a proud owner of an N2100 soon!

[spiken]

Hi,

1) If your media center support the smb protocol, there is no problem. Don't know for the xbox.

2) I think that the Wifi (G : about 4-5 MB) is a bit short to support a HD stream.

3) Good question : I think that you must reformat your drive to make a new array.

4) Ext 3.

[N2100Owner]

I also have a modded Xbox at home, and I have upgraded to 120 GB disk.
1) XBMC can see all the files on N2100 no problem.
2) I don't use WiFi because of fear of interference. I just used wired ethernet.
3) Yes, you can select JBOD, and add a second HDD at later time and not lose any of your data. During expansion of your file system, you will not be able to access your files. I am not sure what will a sudden power loss do to your data, but I am sure it will not be pretty.
4) EXT3.

Come and join the club.