Music streaming & NAS

Probably an FAO TerminalJunkie actually.

So I'm after buying a Sonos Music streaming setup. You connect a bridge to your wireless router, then wireless speakers. You point the bridge at some media somewhere, either a computer or more likely a NAS drive.

I'm looking for some advice as to the best way to set all this up. Having read the manuals and a few posts on their forums:
http://www.sonos.com/support/onlineuserguide/en/
http://forums.sonos.com/showthread.php?t=33468

Currently, I've got 2 music libraries. My "compressed" library which I sync to my phone and lives on my Mac Mini and my "uncompressed" library which sits on my external HDD. Use my external HDD for storage mostly, and as a backup for my Mac Mini - done manually, plug the HDD in when needed.

What I *think* I'm after, is too keep my "compressed" library on the Mac Mini, but move the "uncompressed" library onto a NAS drive. The library on the NAS drive then gets turned into an iTunes library and I just point the Sonos system at it, then that takes care of that. What I was wondering, was what sort of NAS I need, and should I then start looking into moving my backup off the external HDD and onto the NAS or what. The external HDD would serve no purpose if the uncompressed music lived on a NAS and the backup also lived on the NAS. But then that also raises questions like should I RAID the NAS so it mirrors to a backup... but then thats overkill and its still all held within the same unit.
There's also a question of size. With it being uncompressed its a large amount of music... or at least will grow to be. It's a 1TB drive with 700Gb free at the moment, which suggests my music could happily sit on a 1TB drive for quite a while longer - so do I get a NAS that has a built in drive, or one which I can swap out the drive when needed.

Never used a NAS before, so not sure how much I should be paying, how overkill I should go, what I need to look out for in terms of features (like spinning up only when needed, stuff like that). Any advice welcome & much appreciated!

Regarding NAS and RAID, it's a pretty common feature of NAS boxes to offer to RAID the drives within. So you can bung 3*2TB disks in the unit and you've got a 4TB RAID5 drive available (keep an eye on it's log files so it can tell you if one of your disks is about to go titsup).

Edit: just had a look at pricing and what I had in mind might be a bit too enterprisey for what you're after. £200+ just for the enclosure (no disks included). NAS - just add disks

On and off I mooch around the wireless sound thing and there is little doubt the Sonos setup is the best, but it is pricey.

I saw an alternative from PURE the other day which I thought might be a cheap and expandable alternative even if it has a mad name in 'Jongo' but I don't have too much knowledge of the 'tech' behind it yet http://www.pure.com/product/jongo-t640b-vl-62157/

Anyway if you are happy with the price of Sonos then it will do you no wrong...

You have to think about NAS a little as it can get expensive, I use a HP Microserver (£130), extra memory £30, with 4 * 3TB drives (£300 total) using Windows Storage Server (Free with my Technet subscription) - but it is limited as it does not natively spin down the volumes for on-access server features. I use RED drives from Western Digital as they are made for such requirements and branded as NASware. I do use this for all my streaming of music & film, plus all my training purposes including hosting VM's for testing shit so I had somewhat expanded needs.

I have had some great experience with QNAP NAS enclosures over the years, but as Yoda pointed out even the smaller enclosures get expensive very quickly, in my view you need to have the following features to keep it real:

- at least one (possibly two bonded) Gigabit Ethernet Wired connection(s)
- Power / Spin down drives after user specified time
- Wake on Access / LAN
- I'd start with 4Tb (3Tb Usable) in a raid configuration to allow for loss of single drive - when you've filled this storage may have changed beyond recognition anyway!
- Look for a unit that might have some specific mention of Sonos - I've seen manufactures do this with other platforms but not Sonos specifically)

I'll have a think and possibly a look round & see what the craic is with others.

Cheers for the reply guys. I'm pretty much open to any suggestions here as its an area I've not looked at before. I think the key will be too keep it simple! I'll do some Sonos specific digging.

If you've got one laying around (who hasn't) any old PC can be your NAS solution. If it's got a motherboard that supports RAID then great, if not there's always Linux software RAID. That's what I use for my storage server at home.

Reading your post again, you mention the MAC Mini, can't you add RAID based storage to that (Firewire or whatever fandangly stuff Apple do) and share from that to the rest of the house?

Like This but in a less capacity/expensive configuration

Hmm, interesting alternative. I had thought about using the Mac Mini as a sort of NAS host, but originally dismissed it. Not sure my reasons for doing so were sound though - essentially I don't want to leave the Mac turned on all day in, and don't want to have to turn it on when I want to listen to music - but would a NAS give me adequate power savings over leaving a mac turned on 24/7? Hmm. If I could hook up a RAID external storage solution to it as you suggest, then I wonder if I can wake the Mac & drive 'on demand' whenever I want to access the music off it?

e.g - Mac asleep, use the Sonos bridge to request music, Mac automatically wakes up to allow music to be streamed from the connected drives.