How to Set Up a Home Media Server
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
1,225 words · ~6 min read
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thanks for watching techwiki click the subscribe button then enable
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notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos streaming
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content from the internet is fantastic today's higher internet speeds mean that
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you can watch or listen to nearly anything you want from almost anywhere
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you want i mean 30 years ago it was practically unthinkable to watch an
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indian cricket match from the northern reaches of canada and yet here we are
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but even though streaming services like spotify netflix and youtube have totally
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changed the way that we consume media that doesn't mean that there aren't
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still major advantages to keeping your own copies of the music movies shows and
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podcasts that you enjoy and one of the best ways to do this is with a home
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media server so seagate reached out to sponsor a video about how to set one up
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having a server that you own as a central hub for your media not only
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prevents you from being at the mercy of a slow or finicky internet connection it
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also avoids the folks that run these streaming services removing something
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you've been wanting to check out without warning and since a local network can
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frequently move data at speeds that are much faster than your average internet
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connection even wirelessly you won't have to compromise on visual quality or
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worry about buffering even if you're watching 4k videos with full blu-ray
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quality or you have a lot of users on your network at once
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this setup can also help you avoid storing individual copies of everything
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on each of your devices hogging up a ton of space over and over
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so how should you get started then well another upside to having a home media
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server is that you don't need a fully blown pc to house this data while you
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can repurpose an old computer as a server if you'd like i actually did a
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video about that very thing on our other channel a more elegant solution is to
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use a home network attached storage device or a nas these are bare bones pc
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like devices that are dedicated solely to delivering files as fast as possible
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a typical nas usually includes its own lightweight operating system and easily
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accessible drive bays so that you can add more hard drives as your content
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library grows some compact desktop units can support
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nearly a hundred terabytes of raw storage today
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bear in mind of course that if you're using raid or a similar scheme to
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protect against a disk failure some of that space will be consumed by
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redundancy you can learn more about raid here
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now many nas units ship without pre-installed storage so you can
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actually choose your own configuration depending on your budget
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some special use cases might benefit from solid state drives to cache your
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data or hold virtual machines but for
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file and media streaming duty on a gigabit network which is what you're
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probably running hard drives are more than fast enough
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if you're in a pinch typical desktop drives will serve you just fine though
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for a little more money you can get nas optimized hard drives that are normally
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more power efficient and that are designed for always on operation in
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close proximity to other spinning drives
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another thing you'll need for your nas is a good enough CPU if you want it to
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handle transcoding your media to different formats for seamless operation
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with all of your devices like your pc television smartphone or tablet and this
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requires more processing power than a small
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ARM CPU can handle a reasonably modern
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quad-core desktop CPU should suffice for this but you might be able to get away
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with a dual core if you're not running too many streams at once
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the lack of CPU power is actually one of the reasons that many folks decide not
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to simply plug an external hard drive into their home wireless router many of
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those do have file server functionality built in and this netgear one even
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supports plex a popular tool for managing and streaming media
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but most of them will suffer from one bottleneck or another so let's say
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you're going for the cadillac experience of a standalone nas plugged into your
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router and you've just turned it on they all set up a little differently so the
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manufacturer website is the place to start or if you're running something diy
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then the project website for something like unraid or a free os like freenas
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will have plenty of community getting started guides
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once your nas is visible on the network your next step is to fill it up with
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your favorite content this usually means transferring files over the network but
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if your collection is as disorganized as ours was when we upgraded
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many of them also support plugging external media in directly
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but you don't want to just dump your files onto it willy nilly instead make
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sure to organize your media into a folder structure that breaks your tv
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episodes down by season for example or your songs by artist and album
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popular media server software like plex will provide instructions online about
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how best to do this speaking of plex your next step will be to download the
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server software that you'd like to use through your nas itself or your web
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browser and the client software for your devices
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from the web or the appropriate app store this will allow you to easily
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access your media kind of like your own personal netflix plex as we've mentioned
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before is a very popular option although others such as kodi and ambi are also
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fine choices configuration after this point is mostly a matter of following
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the on-screen instructions and opening up some router ports for remote access
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and then you're ready to enjoy your content from anywhere in the world
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whatever that content might be
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now if you're interested in setting up a private multimedia server then check out
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seagate and synology the bar has been
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raised officially with 12 terabyte capacity options in the seagate ironwolf
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pro family and that is seagate's specialty nas drive it's built for nas
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by working closely with leading nas vendors such as synology the result is a
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drive that works perfectly even in enclosures with lots of drives stacked
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right next to each other where heat and vibration can become a concern for
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lesser drives and it's got iron wolf health built in which allows you to
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easily monitor your drive through your nas os for peace of mind on top of that
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they've got a five-year limited warranty and ironwolf pro includes two years of
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data recover services that cover data corruption viruses user error and even
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natural disasters such as fire and flood so build your own private cloud with
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seagate and synology by checking out the links below
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so thanks for watching guys like dislike check out our other channels leave a
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comment with video suggestions and don't forget to subscribe and follow so you
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