Xpenolog or Synology?

[icanic]

Greetings from Croatia !

I am new to NAS stuff and on this forum, I need you to help me decide .

I need a NAS for data backup on mac (iPhoto library, Time Machine) and on windows (File history and some other things), I also need NAS because of torrent downloads and media files streaming to my Apple TV 3, iPhone, mac and PC. I really would like if I could install xpenology on some hardware that is capable of doing transcoding and fast data speeds (I also wanna try put my games for PC (steam and origin library folders) on NAS and run games from NAS). Are all that things doable with xpenology? Is it better to go and buy something like DS215play for that things or is it better to go with custom build?

How does synology "play" versions do transcoding video, via plex media server or somehow different, is it the same as with xpenology?

I'm not new in IT stuff, I am familiar with OS X, Windows, Linux and other oses, so... installation and setup would not be a problem.

Is it hard to do updates on xpenology without reformatting HDD's.

What hardware for custom build do you recommend?

Is Asrock Q1900B-ITX enough for things I plan to do or I need better hardware?

 

I have just asked a lot of questions, I hope that someone would answer me

 

Thank you!

[Schnapps]

Don't take the B version as it comes with only 2 SATA ports.

There is a version with a DC adapter(sold separately) that's more efficient in regards to energy consumption and it's also making your case cables-free.

 

Cheers.

 

 

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[Schnapps]

An xpenobox is more scalable and cheaper but it's not the same thing as the real Synology box.

A 6-8bay xpenobox is probably cheaper by at least 50% than a synobox (HDDs not taken in consideration) and the synobox has 2bays

 

Updating xpeno is not hard if the update is done by "The Elder Geeks" of xpenology(meaning h4ck3d). Currently, xpenology cannot be used with the last DSM version.

 

Uhh, and running games from an iSCSI mapped LUN is doable but the games load slow. Haven't tried yet with normal SMB shares or with SSDs replacing my 4HDDs in SHR1

 

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[icanic]

Thank you for your answer!

I have just installed xpenology DSM 5.0 4458 with GNU Bootloader on motherboard that I had laying around, it is Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L and CPU Intel Xeon X5460 with 4gb of ram and everything is working great for now.

I have one problem with MAC OS X, when I try to upload file from OS X, the OS X just froze (the mouse is working but the processes not responding) and I don't know why, I had the same problem with FreeNAS when I have tried it.

I have managed to get video transcoding of MKV file with DTS so DTS is demuxed to AC3 with 5.1 support for watching on apple TV3 with AV receiver (installed ffmpeg with DTS support and for 5.1 have edited some file in @appstore/videostation folder) and CPU usage while transcoding is about 25%.

I will think about real synology nas because I think this is working really great, but I am really scared of updates.

The transfer speeds are ok, about 70mb/s but I really have some old seagate HDD in NAS because of testing and I think that the hdd is capped at 70mb/s.

Download station is working great with iPhone app.

The CPU is definitive overkill for all this I think, I think that some core 2 duo e7400 or greater will be more than enough for video transcoding.

I have one more problem with transcoding, I really would like to get Croatian subtitles integrated in VideoStation. Is there anyway to make that working, to add Croatian in subtitle language choice? I have added manually croatian subtitle to the folder where video file is, but the encoding is wrong, don't have all characters appear on screen while watching

Thank you once more.