Home Server or home NAS setup ?

[Stephg2525]

Hi guys, i just watch some NCIX you tube video about it and im confused..

- First i want to make a backup for all my computer in the house

- I also want to make storage for all my video and photo.

- Finally i want to stream movie from it to any device in the house, pc, ipad etc  

 

Home server with windows server seem nice what the diférence with a NAS ? 

Can i just have a HD into my rooter ? 

 

Thank for helping

[Klondin]

On some routers you can plug in a usb device and have that accessible on the network. However, since you are backing up multiple PCs and storing a bunch of media files, I think a NAS would be a better option since it can offer redundancy and increased capacity. A NAS and home server are pretty much the same thing, just designed for different use cases. A NAS doesn't need very powerful hardware since it is just transfering files. A home server might need some more powerful hardware since it will usually be used to run game servers and web services, among other things.

[Stephg2525]

ok thank's 

but for streaming high res movie wifi across the house, do i need some powerful hardware ?

What you recommended ?

[Razor512]

It all depends on if you need to transcode or not. If the video players you plan to use support all of the formats you are working with, then you can honestly get away with connecting an external hard drive to a router, and then creating a network folder for each system you want to back up, and then a additional share for media backups. I currently do this, and it forms my incremental backups. I also use my router to stream media to my various devices. It handles multiple 1080p 10 bit streams with no problem, including when a backup is taking place.

 

Most routers offer DLNA support, as well as smb shares, thus many devices can use them.

For my ARM based systems (tablets, smartphones, etc, I use players which support multiple formats and smb shares, such as BSplayer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bsplayer.bspandroid.free&hl=en

 

For large backups, I use my home server system. which is a cheap system (Phenom II x2 550 build and a MSI 870-G45, crappy video card, and a bunch of hard drives). It runs windows 7, and has network shared for each drive, and I have my other computers simply back up to it. It also acts as my VPN server, NVR, and game server when needed.

 

I use the router because the netgear readyshare vault software is really easy to use and free, and does incremental backups every 3 minutes.