NAS or just leave PC on?

A friend of mine just got a NAS for all his music / vids / photos so he can get to them on the go. He's super happy with the result. My PC is on almost all the time. I have Teamviewer on my phone / pad and PC.

Am I right in saying that I am getting the same benefits of a NAS by simply accessing the PC when I am away via Teamviewer and watching / taking whatever files I need? Or does NAS do something else? I am the only one who will use this so sharing across multiple people isnt an issue.

I also have the option of linking in a external HDD directly to the router (but havent yet). Would this add anything to the mix?

Thanks

There is pro's and con's to each.
I personally have had both.

PC Based version while I just used a windows box for my items there are other OS's to do it as well and probably better. Its a larger system, more components but potentially cheaper and much more customizable. I can't really say yah or nah to this as much while I did have my box for over 2 years, I really never got to customizing it necessarily as good as I wanted. So it was limited to just in house use which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Now my NAS box I have is a Synology and there is lots of systems/setups for it. Makes it very easy to run a box and access it anywhere on nearly any device. From VOIP setup, mail servers, web sites, video serving, video surveillance, etc. I had the thing up and running in 2 hours, with outside internet access for music, pictures and video packages on my phone as well file access. Currently I have also cloud storage setup so it mirrors items from work PC to Home PC's of files that sit in a folder. Kinda nice for easy transferring and its keeping the data on my server especially if its sensitive data. It was about 1/3 to 1/4 the size of my server PC i had setup, probably a little more expensive than the PC I setup for the task (the case was pricey because of space constraints I had) as well used about 1/2 - 1/4 the electricity easily (depending on loads).

Overall between them my NAS box I love. Was easy to setup and less issue with it among devices and not much time needed to keep it going. File Server I was playing with constantly which I really didn't want to do.

Now linking a HDD to the router, it will act as a file server. Here is files to access and read/write. Nothing more than that. Unless you use a backup program and have that as a backup location thats the most that the HDD attached to the router will do as far as I've experienced.

thanks deathman20.

i am not an admin guy - nor especially tech savvy so there is a lot to be said for simplicity. what i am looking for is something that will serve the following purposes - and I use apple products (iphone/ipad), so that might also be a problem.

1. accessing photos and vids on the pc/nas from my phone/ipad when i am travelling or just out and about and wanting to show friends/family
2. access movies / music files from pc/nas to play on my phone/ipad either by downloading to device or streaming from pc/nas
3. doesnt all this require data from a local provider, or would having a nas somehow get around that?
4. transfer files / photos from device to pc/nas


- i dont really know what a VOIP server will do - can I make international calls for free somehow even if I am roaming without a pre-pay or local SIM? I currently use Roamer and Skype for that.
- video surveillance of what?
- websites? pre-load websites? why would one need to do this?

i have found that when i am abroad the hotel wifi tends to suck such that watching a youtube vid for example is almost impossible. would a nas help at all?

tks for taking the time.

My personally I have some experience with IT items. Not fully integrated into server management and all full networking side.
With that said I'll explain your questions. Please take note when I talk about NAS I'm talking about Synology NAS boxes. There is other companies out there that do have similar capabilities like QNAP and WD.

Q 1-4
Around the house just good routers and wifi access around the house will pretty much help this out greatly. Now having devices that support DLNA like TV's and such you will be able to get content on your TV and gaming devices if it supports it with just some software installed on either a server or NAS box. Now getting access to the outside world can take a little more time with a server, and having to know how to do it. I personally never got that far with it, got frustrated and gave up. This is where my NAS box stepped in because it was easy to setup. Only thing with it you will want a good ISP upload connection to it at least.
That being said photos/music are pretty easy on the upload bandwidth needs from my personal experience on my box.

Getting into Videos thats a whole other ball of wax, which really depends on the video size (720p, 1080p, etc) and bitrate of said video if you even have a shot at playing it outside your house. Typically I can stream things that are DVD quality, maaaybe some 720p content if its lower quality. Best way to watch video in this case would be to download it to your device before leaving.

Uploading files to the server outside the network, again my personal experience thats where the NAS box and ease of setup helps a lot. With the short setup time I had access to anything and everything of mine outside of my house. Transferring files are basically as fast as your download connection allows and your upload speed on your device that your using. For me I have a 60MB down and if I can feed it data it will take it.

As for the 4 other questions please see my responses below in red.

bayflats said:

- i dont really know what a VOIP server will do - can I make international calls for free somehow even if I am roaming without a pre-pay or local SIM? I currently use Roamer and Skype for that.
In this case its like setting up a home phone system for yourself. I'm not sure how it works or how expensive it is to register numbers but you are your own phone service provider. Least on the Synology box there is a service/app for that. So you'd still have to have a SIM card for your cell phone and such, you won't be able to get around that. As for what you use, it does the same basic thing except it would be using a house phone connected to your local network. Probably a little above what your looking for
- video surveillance of what?
Of your house, appartment, etc. Setup camera's inside your place or outside your place and you can record it and view it from any device. A toy to play around the house or watch it when your away for a trip. For a business you can use it for security camera footage.
- websites? pre-load websites? why would one need to do this?
Like setting up your own web pages and hosting your own websites. Note that your ISP has to allow this on their side or you get a nasty e-mail/letter from them.

i have found that when i am abroad the hotel wifi tends to suck such that watching a youtube vid for example is almost impossible. would a nas help at all?
In this case no. Internet connection on both sides are important, so your hotel connection and your home connection are equally important to send and receive content. No way around that.

Click to expand...

So like I said my limited experience with a PC based NAS/File hosting solution hasn't been great. This is why I went with a Synology box (you can see my signature on that) which was a whole new feel for it and love it. At least now with less and less time to dedicate to things like this it made sense for me to spend the extra money for the ease of setting up and maintaining the unit.

On my box I have photo/video/music/file services to access anywhere I please. Video is iffy to play on the road depending on my connections. With those services I have accounts setup on the box where people can log in that I create a user name and password and view the content on my NAS box. They have limitations of what they can do, or what they can see which is perfect for me. Now only other thing I do on the box is since I'm running a RAID5 I also backup the content to another drive nightly/bi-daily depending on the files and importance of the data. So not only is it my media/file server its also a backup server that will keep data for as long as I tell it to, from just keep the freshest backup to having 60 different backups of the directory incase a file was deleted and I needed it.

Sorry if this is a little too technical/confusing, rushing to type this to leave work right now.

bayflats said:

thanks deathman20.

i am not an admin guy - nor especially tech savvy so there is a lot to be said for simplicity. what i am looking for is something that will serve the following purposes - and I use apple products (iphone/ipad), so that might also be a problem.

1. accessing photos and vids on the pc/nas from my phone/ipad when i am travelling or just out and about and wanting to show friends/family
2. access movies / music files from pc/nas to play on my phone/ipad either by downloading to device or streaming from pc/nas
3. doesnt all this require data from a local provider, or would having a nas somehow get around that?
4. transfer files / photos from device to pc/nas


- i dont really know what a VOIP server will do - can I make international calls for free somehow even if I am roaming without a pre-pay or local SIM? I currently use Roamer and Skype for that.
- video surveillance of what?
- websites? pre-load websites? why would one need to do this?

i have found that when i am abroad the hotel wifi tends to suck such that watching a youtube vid for example is almost impossible. would a nas help at all?

tks for taking the time.

Click to expand...

Forums like this always surprise me - the sheer generosity of its members to spend so much time and effort in order to educate lost strangers like myself is truly staggering and humbling. Deathman20 - I thank you for the considerable time and effort you have already spent answering my questions.

Now to move onto my queries.

Q1-4 - Much clearer. As I have understood this, the NAS box makes it more convenient to access files on the go - subject to internet up/down speeds. It wont add much in terms of new functionality, but ease of setup in a big plus for me.

The VOIP functionality is a big one as this has the potential to reduce my rather significant phone bill. Whilst my wife is generally good about using Skype / Viber / Facetime to call her parents etc. when both parties are at home and therefore on Wifi, its when either her or the other party is roaming that she uses the old school "001" or "+" numbers. Would a NAS box help her make a VOIP call to a mobile number? As I understand it, as we are using VOIP (ie data), it is practically free for us. The question is does this work when the called person is not on Wifi or data - just using a normal number.

I dont need video surveillance or web hosting so those functions would be wasted on me I'm afraid.

The other big thing is access to photos / videos for family members. That would be awesome and something I have until now just done on Gmail / Picasa. Thats giving me all sorts of good ideas.

Once again Deathman20 - many thanks for your time and efforts in helping me out. Much appreciated.

A lot of questions. Not to muddy the waters, lemme toss in my $.02/£.0134 (as of this post).

Regarding voip, I've been playing around with voip.ms and a Gigaset IP solution (N300A IP). I'm coming from close to a 10 year history with Vonage. It's far, far cheaper and for the normal user, probably more powerful than required, but the features are there if you need it. A NAS as a VoIP server, or any server for that matter...there's no need unless you have a very specific reason for that. It's better and easier to get the related SIP box required that simply becomes part of your network. Most devices will have an ATA, or Analog Telephone Adapter. Simply means you can use your old school phones. I did something similar years ago. I simply disconnected my house from the external wiring.

Voip.ms is a sip based service. The great thing about these kinds of services is that you can get free apps for ios and android and make/receive calls from your mobile as well. The make-a-call part is unnecessary given you're already using a mobile, but receiving calls is nice. You can easily forward calls to your mobile as well.

Prices depend on how you set the service up. There are value and premium routing options, meaning only the reliability and speed of calls and initial connections. The latter is still pretty cheap. They do E-911 as well if that's important to you.

Hope that helps from that side of things.

Railgun - Thanks for your input. Some of what you said went over my head and I do agree that VOIP alone isnt worth getting a server etc. However one thing that really struck me was the ability to share photos / videos without having to explicitly "Share" via whatsapp / skype etc.

I am about to move a long way away from any family so the need to keep the grandparents in the loop is going to become immense.

Will check out the Voip.ms website. Thanks for the tip!

Like photos / video taken with phone or camera I place into the Photo application folder.
From there I set shares to certain groups (in house, close family, friends) which each has different levels of access to the folder tree inside the server. There is even a folder to share what ever photos and is linked to a blog interface that can run. People can comment and like photos depending on how its setup.

The Video app, its more linked to Movies/TV shows and if you have a card that will record (approved USB device) you can even record TV shows via the box.

You can go check out the demo of the unit and how the interface acts here if you haven't checked it out yet. https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/live_demo

Yeah the VOIP thing on the server is a little overkill for general use at least on the Server. Got some IT friends that have looked at it and still not certain fully on it. I personally have Vonage and that works pretty well for me. Gotten pricier over the years but overall works pretty solid.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Still under consideration but I have already learnt a lot from the forum. Will let you if I move ahead with the purchase!