Time Capsule as a NAS server?

Question

Time Capsule as a NAS server?

I've both a MBP and an iMac. My music, videos, pictures are located on my iMac and I use PS3MediaServer to stream videos to my Playstation3. I'm thinking of buying a NAS (Synology) and place all my music, video, pictures on it. As far as I know I'll then be able to access all the files from my computers. And the NAS further has a build-in DLNA which means I can stream the videos directly from it to my PS3. Am I right?

What if I also bought an Apple Time Capsule? Can it be used as a NAS - maybe in cooperation with a Apple TV? Many of my files is mkv, so it's important that the setup can play these files.

Hope you have some ideas on which devices I need to setup this.

MacBook Pro 13", Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Nov 17, 2010 6:39 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 17, 2010 7:23 AM in response to Dennis Madsen

For me, one problem with having my multimedia-files on the Time Capsule, is that the TC are not running RAID.

I would like my multimedia files to be stores stored on a HD with RAID1 (two mirrored hard discs).

Maybe it possible to make a setup with the AirPort Extreme Base System and a external hard disc?
1) Would that allow me to enable Time Machine
2) Would the backup of my devices be slower with a setup like that?
3) Which external hard disc station with RAID1 would you recommend?

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Answer 2

Nov 17, 2010 1:30 PM in response to Dennis Madsen

Dennis Madsen wrote:
For me, one problem with having my multimedia-files on the Time Capsule, is that the TC are not running RAID.

If RAID is important to you, that would be an argument against the Time Capsule disk.

Maybe it possible to make a setup with the AirPort Extreme Base System and a external hard disc?

Yes.

1) Would that allow me to enable Time Machine

That's not supported by Apple. See item 23 of this discussion post:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018

2) Would the backup of my devices be slower with a setup like that?

Backing up over a network (particularly wirelessly) would pretty much always be slower than to a locally-connected device.

3) Which external hard disc station with RAID1 would you recommend?

I have no experience with those, so won't comment.

Regarding some of your previous questions:

the NAS further has a build-in DLNA which means I can stream the videos directly from it to my PS3. Am I right?

You seem to know more about that than I do.

What if I also bought an Apple Time Capsule? Can it be used as a NAS - maybe in cooperation with a Apple TV?

As far as I know, an Apple TV can't communicate directly with a NAS but has to relay its requests through a Mac (or, I suppose, a Windows box).

Many of my files is mkv, so it's important that the setup can play these files.

I doubt that an unhacked Apple TV would be able to deal with such files.

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