I have come to realize that all I really use my desktop computer for is storing lots of files. Truth is I do most of my stuff on my laptop. The power supply on my desktop just went out, so I have been thinking more and more about just ditching the desktop and getting a NAS instead.
The big feature for me is having Itunes streaming. Down the road it would be great to hook up a network media player to access files on the server. SlimServer (also called squeezecenter) is a media server that can run on a lot of this NAS device. A lot of them also have this as a built in capability.
Right now here is what I have found:
- HP Media Vault, has Itunes aggregation. Comes with 500gb, can add an additional 500gb
- All of the QNAP servers support Itunes integration. seems to have a large firmware dev crowd. it can run slimserver.
- Synology – really well made and support itunes streaming, and ton of other features. I think I might go with them. They can also run SlimServer. This version has 2-bays and goes for about $299