Need NAS That Supports FLAC

[timequest]

I am looking for a NAS device that will support the .flac codec. I am not very familiar with NAS devices, but the ones that I have looked at (such as the Buffalo Linkstation products) do not support .flac.

Requirements: DNLA certified, Ethernet, fan-less (quite), 500gHz min., supports .flac

I will greatly appreciate all recommendations.

Additionally, how easy is it to transfer a large music library from one DAS device to one NAS device?

Thank you

 

[fmw]

It is the media playing software that has to support flac, not the NAS. The NAS is just hard drive storage shared across a network. You can use whatever media playing software you use now to decode flac with any NAS. The NAS is just another hard drive.

My assumption is that the unit you want to buy includes some software that doesn't decode flac. So use software that does.

Flac is a common codec, for that matter. You should be able to find a copy of the codec for virtually any media playing software. Certainly you can find a copy for windows media player.

 

[timequest]

It is the media playing software that has to support flac, not the NAS. The NAS is just hard drive storage shared across a network. You can use whatever media playing software you use now to decode flac with any NAS. The NAS is just another hard drive.

My assumption is that the unit you want to buy includes some software that doesn't decode flac. So use software that does.

Flac is a common codec, for that matter. You should be able to find a copy of the codec for virtually any media playing software. Certainly you can find a copy for windows media player.

Thank you. That makes sense. As I said, I know very little about NAS devices. The product that I mentioned - along with many, many others, from different manufacturers, embed ITunes as a server. I know ITunes does not support flac. If I understand you correctly, I can interface a player/server device that does support flac, with a NAS that happens to include its own server (i.e.: ITunes). That way, I am "bypassing" the embedded server and utilizing the NAS as a dedicated storage device. Is this correct?

 

[fmw]

You are making it way too complicated. NAS units are not servers. They are simply storage devices. They are no different than any other external drive except that they connect to a network. View the NAS as another hard drive. You can write files to it just like you can to any hard drive. You would load a flac file into your media playing software from the NAS no differently than from your computer's hard drive except for the navigation to the drive. Here's a recommendation for you.

http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=666

This little box is about $100. You can put one or two hard drives in it and configure a 2 drive setup as two separate drives or as a RAID 0 or RAID 1. I've installed many of them. They work great and appear to be quite reliable. The drives can be SATA drives of any size (they should be the same size if you are making a RAID 1.) It has a standard wired ethernet connector and will connect directly to your switch or router. You just put the drives in it (no tools required,) plug it in to your switch or router, run a setup program, map a drive letter to it and you're done. Then you can write to and read files from it to your heart's content.