Tuesday, January 14, 2014

XBMC project - Post 6 - Installing NAS

Story Board:
Post 1http://blog.karthiksunil.com/2013/07/installing-home-media-centre-dyi-xbmc.html
Post 2http://blog.karthiksunil.com/2013/07/xbmc-project-what-you-need.html
Post 3http://blog.karthiksunil.com/2013/07/xbmc-project-post-3-operating-systems.html
Post 4http://blog.karthiksunil.com/2013/07/xbmc-project-post-4-installing-openelec.html
Post 5http://blog.karthiksunil.com/2013/07/xbmc-project-post-5-updating-to-latest.html

Make or Buy decision :)

The latest on my XBMC project is that, I added NAS to my landscape. After a lof research, I decided to buy Iomega IX2-200 as my NAS. Initially I thought of building my own NAS using an old PC and installing FreeNAS on it. May be I did not have enough enthusiasm or din't get right hardware, I dropped the idea and went for a ready made NAS. I bought used NAS (IX2) from eBay. Actually it was not used, the box seal was just open, everything was intact. Seller could not sell as new as seal was opened. Seller was from Bangalore, I went to his shop in SP road and checked the box, tested and bought it for RS 10,500. More over he gave the bill as of current date so that I get company warranty for 2 years from purchase date. MRP of new box was RS 19,000. It was a good deal for me 

Upgrading firmware
This is the first thing I did. The box import date was Apr 2013. As it was pretty old, I wanted to upgrade to latest firmware. Downloaded from Lenovo, Iomega site and uploaded to NAS and upgraded. It upgraded without any glitch. 

Using NAS
It was pretty straight forward. Almost plug n play :).. Created users/ admin users etc and started using web interface. All was well :)

My Initial feeling
Slowwwwwwwwwww file transfer. I get 1-2 mb/s using SMB file transfer. FTP was better 10-15 mb/s.
Otherwise it is just fine.

Backed up my old 1 TB HDD, my phone, my laptop. Everything took almost 2 days.

Integrating with XBMC
Added my NAS as source in XBMC and it could stream audio, video and pictures without any issues.. No issues with streaming media files