If you already own an Airport Extreme you can attach an external drive to it. Boom! Instant AFP/SMB compatible NAS.
If you want something more dedicated, the suggestions mentioned above are excellent choices as well.
I have an airport extreme, and tried using an external hard drive, but for some reason only a few of my movies will play, and they are very slow to load, even stopping halfway through a movie, so thought it would run better with a NAS hard drive.
I have a Western Digital MyBook Live 3TB. I have about 300 movies on it right now. I have two separate aTV2's (bedroom and living room.) Both are connected via SMB and work perfectly. I love the email notifications the NAS sends me whenever there's a software upgrade available or the drive has rebooted. FYI, I live in a part of town where we seem to lose electricity quite often for short bursts. Since I bought a battery backup about a month ago, the reboots have stopped. The best part about the NAS is the built-in ability to stream my media files from my iOS devices remotely.
I have a Western Digital MyBook Live 3TB. I have about 300 movies on it right now. I have two separate aTV2's (bedroom and living room.) Both are connected via SMB and work perfectly. I love the email notifications the NAS sends me whenever there's a software upgrade available or the drive has rebooted. FYI, I live in a part of town where we seem to lose electricity quite often for short bursts. Since I bought a battery backup about a month ago, the reboots have stopped. The best part about the NAS is the built-in ability to stream my media files from my iOS devices remotely.
I'm glad to hear the WD MyBook Live works well with aTV Flash, because I just ordered one to replace my Iomega Home Media Network drive since Iomega is apparently never going to release an update to support Mac OS X Lion for that product. I will never buy another Iomega product again.
I had a 1TB WD drive and it was great...until is pooped the bed. Man, lost all my movies on it. Im trying a buffalo Linklink station with ATV 2 and it works great. Found everything right away, wireless stream no issue. My WD live worked great as well. but I guess they have a notrious problem for crapping out. I do recommend either mirror drive or another NAS drive for backup. I think even the mirror drive might have issues if the Linux gets corrupted, copies itself over and now you have to figure out how to rescue it. (like the WD drive). These drives all have some sort of uPNP server running which has pros/cons I guess.
Any recommendations on a 4 bay NAS with Lion compatibility? I haven't made the just yet, but will be as soon as Avid gets Pro Tools out of Beta! I did try the USB drive option on my Airport Extreme and it was fine for .m4v files specifically Handbraked for the AppleTV 2, but it had issues with .mkv files that had some size!
Any recommendations on a 4 bay NAS with Lion compatibility? I haven't made the just yet, but will be as soon as Avid gets Pro Tools out of Beta! I did try the USB drive option on my Airport Extreme and it was fine for .m4v files specifically Handbraked for the AppleTV 2, but it had issues with .mkv files that had some size!
I would recommand a Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4. I had a few Netgear NAS in my house, and now I just keep the ReadyNAS PRO Pioneer Edition (6bays) and it's amazing.
I am using a drobo fs with no issues. It does seem a bit slow when transferring files to it but there are no issues with streaming out to multiple devices.
This weekend I have installed the QNAP 4drive NAS TS412 with 4 WD 1 TB disks in RAID6 config. It is very mac friendly and offers (among a lot of the other stuff) an itunes server. Works fine with aTV flash.
Are there any posts on how to set this up? Tried searching but couldnt find anything...
I just plugged in a USB drive and it showed up in my network. :)
I have been leaning towards a QNAP ts-459U-SP+ for its features and speed. I like that it is dual core and has plenty of RAM. Has anyone heard anything negative about this unit? The redundant power supply version seems like overkill for personal use or is it?
Qnap users, are you connecting over AFP or SMB? I read over on the Qnap forums that AFP is not working properly on aTV Flash.
@ndy, I am afraid you are right. I miss the skills to let my ATV flash recognize the AFP of my QNAP NAS. The AFP does work for my mac, not for ATV flsh. Hence I use SMB on the NAs and AFP on the MAC.
I just got the Qnap ts-459U-SP+ and I am trying to connect to it via smb and having trouble. My NAS automatically shows up as a AFP share and not as SMB. I try to add it manually and it gives me a time out error(60). Any tips? I am overlooking something.
Working with AFP no problems (had to upgrade to beta firmware for afp updates req'd for time machine in Lion. that might not be beta any more, actually: been working so well I haven't paid attention to see if it was released)
I would HIGHLY recommend ANY Synology product because the software is awesome. The 5 bay RAID units are definitely on the high end, but WELL worth the money, IMO.
I'm using the Synology DS210J 2x 2TB and it works perfectly with the apple tv2
Qnap, Qnap or Qnap
Do you use smb or afp? If its afp can you tell me how you got that working? Thanks
I built my own NAS and installed Unraid on it. It's really simple to use
And fast.
i'm using SMB on my sinology DS210J and Of course it's connected to an Apple Airport Extreme :)
If you already own an Airport Extreme you can attach an external drive to it. Boom! Instant AFP/SMB compatible NAS.
If you want something more dedicated, the suggestions mentioned above are excellent choices as well.
Infuse 6 for iOS and Apple TV is now available!
Just checked and saw that i've got XMBC working with smb and media player with afp
I use a Synology DS211J with 2x Samsung EcoGreen F4 HD204UI (2TB). Works like a charm.
Single SMB share, with dedicated subdirectories for different kind of media.
I have an airport extreme, and tried using an external hard drive, but for some reason only a few of my movies will play, and they are very slow to load, even stopping halfway through a movie, so thought it would run better with a NAS hard drive.
I have a Western Digital MyBook Live 3TB. I have about 300 movies on it right now. I have two separate aTV2's (bedroom and living room.) Both are connected via SMB and work perfectly. I love the email notifications the NAS sends me whenever there's a software upgrade available or the drive has rebooted. FYI, I live in a part of town where we seem to lose electricity quite often for short bursts. Since I bought a battery backup about a month ago, the reboots have stopped. The best part about the NAS is the built-in ability to stream my media files from my iOS devices remotely.
I own a ReadyNas Pro Pioneer Edition, modded with a Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 instead of a Intel Pentium Dual Core E2160 and 4 Gigs RAM.
Best NAS I ever tried ;-). I would buy another if needed (but 6x3TB are enough for me for now)
With it, I am able to stream everything with my ATV2.
I have a drobo FS, but I wouldn't consider it a cheap or really the best overall option. I need the ease of use and redundancy over raw speed.
works fine with ATV2Black tho!
I'm glad to hear the WD MyBook Live works well with aTV Flash, because I just ordered one to replace my Iomega Home Media Network drive since Iomega is apparently never going to release an update to support Mac OS X Lion for that product. I will never buy another Iomega product again.
I had a 1TB WD drive and it was great...until is pooped the bed. Man, lost all my movies on it. Im trying a buffalo Linklink station with ATV 2 and it works great. Found everything right away, wireless stream no issue. My WD live worked great as well. but I guess they have a notrious problem for crapping out. I do recommend either mirror drive or another NAS drive for backup. I think even the mirror drive might have issues if the Linux gets corrupted, copies itself over and now you have to figure out how to rescue it. (like the WD drive). These drives all have some sort of uPNP server running which has pros/cons I guess.
Any recommendations on a 4 bay NAS with Lion compatibility? I haven't made the just yet, but will be as soon as Avid gets Pro Tools out of Beta! I did try the USB drive option on my Airport Extreme and it was fine for .m4v files specifically Handbraked for the AppleTV 2, but it had issues with .mkv files that had some size!
I would recommand a Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4. I had a few Netgear NAS in my house, and now I just keep the ReadyNAS PRO Pioneer Edition (6bays) and it's amazing.
Everything streams nicely from my Synology DS1511+. I highly recommend it. Fast, reliable and expandable to 45TB
I am using a drobo fs with no issues. It does seem a bit slow when transferring files to it but there are no issues with streaming out to multiple devices.
This weekend I have installed the QNAP 4drive NAS TS412 with 4 WD 1 TB disks in RAID6 config. It is very mac friendly and offers (among a lot of the other stuff) an itunes server. Works fine with aTV flash.
i'm using a ds211 http://www.nasreview.org/nas/Synology-DS211 and pretty happy with it
Are there any posts on how to set this up? Tried searching but couldnt find anything...
I just plugged in a USB drive and it showed up in my network. :)
I have been leaning towards a QNAP ts-459U-SP+ for its features and speed. I like that it is dual core and has plenty of RAM. Has anyone heard anything negative about this unit? The redundant power supply version seems like overkill for personal use or is it?
Qnap users, are you connecting over AFP or SMB? I read over on the Qnap forums that AFP is not working properly on aTV Flash.
@ndy, I am afraid you are right. I miss the skills to let my ATV flash recognize the AFP of my QNAP NAS. The AFP does work for my mac, not for ATV flsh. Hence I use SMB on the NAs and AFP on the MAC.
I hope QNAP will repair this
good luck Marc
Thanks Marc for confirmation. :) I hope they update 3.5 soon!
I just got the Qnap ts-459U-SP+ and I am trying to connect to it via smb and having trouble. My NAS automatically shows up as a AFP share and not as SMB. I try to add it manually and it gives me a time out error(60). Any tips? I am overlooking something.
I figured it out! I was putting server name instead of ip address.
Synology DS509+
Working with AFP no problems (had to upgrade to beta firmware for afp updates req'd for time machine in Lion. that might not be beta any more, actually: been working so well I haven't paid attention to see if it was released)
I would HIGHLY recommend ANY Synology product because the software is awesome. The 5 bay RAID units are definitely on the high end, but WELL worth the money, IMO.
I'm using the Lacie 5big raid and it's spectacular.
A bit pricey, but very pro and stable.
I'm using the Synology DS210+ working with AFP and its fast and reliable. Highly recommend it.