I am thinking about putting all of my music in an external HDD with an ethernet connection. I would like to know if I could somehow stream from an HDD on the network without using a PC?

What kind of external HDD device with ethernet do you plan on using that isn't a PC?

Sure, that's what NAS (network attached storage) devices do.

As an alternative you can also use NDAS disks. I have a 250GB NDAS (Ximeta NetDisk) that contains my media files. It's a small standalone enclosure which contains the hard drive and has an ethernet port. See www.ximeta.com

I use a Rapsody N35 to play the stored files. Note: With NDAS disks you must have a device (ie, Rapsody N35) that contains the NDAS driver to play/open a file stored on an NDAS disk. You can also load Ximeta's driver on a PC that will then give the PC access to the NetDisk.

With either a NAS or NetDisk you must have a device that can read files from these type of devices.

So if I bought a generic NAS case, shoved my existing HDD in there and bought a media streamer such as the Mediagate 350HD, I should be all set to stream from the case without the computer being on? Or is there more to it than that? :confused:

- Sorry if I'm sounding a bit daft, I just wanted to make sure before making the purchase. The last post confused me quite a bit esp. since I had previously thought that NAS and NDAS was the same thing. :(

So if I bought a generic NAS case, shoved my existing HDD in there and bought a media streamer such as the Mediagate 350HD, I should be all set to stream from the case without the computer being on? Or is there more to it than that? :confused:

- Sorry if I'm sounding a bit daft, I just wanted to make sure before making the purchase. The last post confused me quite a bit esp. since I had previously thought that NAS and NDAS was the same thing. :(


NDAS is some properietary Garbage... I would avoid like the plague. It is not widely supported.

Take a look a buffalo linkstarion NAS or Infrant NAS or many others.

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/network-storage/terastation/

http://www.infrant.com/main.html


The thing is there are different protocols used by NAS's and by the media clients that pull content off them. The 2 most popular are uPNP and SMB. There are many other protocols out there which require some SW on a PC or on the NAS. You might want to try picking a streamer first and then finding a compatible NAS.

Sean