I'm looking to purchase or build a media server for my hometheater. However, I'm not really sure if there is something available to fit my needs.

* Support for 4 drives - Raid 5, etc.

* Replaceable Drives - I don't want a closed system

* UPnP, DNLA, etc - I would also like support for SlimServer ... as well as TVersity if possible. TVersity allows for transcoding.

* Since I would like transcoding, the specs need to be pretty damn beefy.

* Since I want beefy specs, I also need support for Wake on Lan.

* Gigabit ethernet support

* Hotswappable drives would be nice, but not a deal-breaker



Is there anything even close to this in existence?

Check www.thecus.nl (N5200Pro)
Closest match, 1.5 GHz Celeron processor and has modular updates with
tools. Dunno which ones are available so neds a little homework before
decising :-)

Sweet ... thanks, I'll look into that!




You're the boss (I love your site)!

I'm in the middle of building a FreeNAS server; four 750gb drives in software RAID 5. My current server is hardware RAID 5, but I've read some excellent things about software RAID in Unix and I'm going to give it a shot. I believe you can add uPNP & DLNA to FreeNAS, and I know there's a SlimServer module out there somewhere. My 2TB RAID 5 setup ran about $1300, over $300 cheaper than Lacie's nearest NAS offering. I'll post more details tomorrow when I'm done building and testing it. Here's a link to FreeNAS:

http://www.freenas.org/

Edit: Still need to put in the gigabit switches and whatnot, will post back in a day or two.

I don't know if a 1.5 GHz Celeron processor is going to be beefy enough to transcode HD. IIRC, TVersity recommends a 3.0 GHz P4 for on-the-fly transcoding of HD (could be 2.4, as I'm relying on memory).

Here's my build:

http://www.orionmods.com/blog/?p=5

You can add 1TB drives instead of the 750s I used. Alternatively, Norco has a NAS coming out later this year that has pretty much everything you need. According to Engadget it starts at $620:

http://www.norcotek.com/DS-520.php

What norco DS-520 does seems more like a server than NAS drive since it can be installed with windown home server and other linux OS. hmm. interesting ...:P