I purchased an MSS shortly after they came out and have succesfully used it to store my itunes music (library and files on the MSS, program on the PC), stream music to my Sonos system, and stream video to my 3 Popcorn Hour boxes. I did have some problems with video streaming for a time but running a script that turns off DE Migration during the day has fixed this. I have 3 TB of storage in my MSS and now have a need to add more but before I do this I have a question. I am not a computer expert and have about enough knowledege to be dangerous so I need some help thinking through this. I am not using any type of media serving software on the MSS, it's a very basic setup...I have a music folder which I allow iTunes to keep organized and I have a DVD folder with some basic structure that I have setup. As my MSS gets older I wonder if it's not time to let it perform only backups of my computer and begin to move my digital files storage to a simply system like a NAS. Should a NAS work as well for serving music and movies as the MSS? Any thougts as to what I should do?

Mike

If you can find one that's a true NAS (i.e. - hooks directly into a network instead of connecting to a computer that always needs to be on) - there's no reason you would need the MSS for your current set-up.

My biggest reason for buying the MSS was - it's is it's own windows operating system - so I could install itunes on it to serve my apple tv with an "always-on" solution. You can't do that with NAS as far as I know.

Since then, I've found other useful purposes for the MSS though - streaming through Orb, serving up my webpage of media. and most importantly, a single source to serve my HTPC, my internet streaming, and my home networked computers. The NAS may do some of these tasks - but not all.

My 1st suggestion is see if putting whs 2011 on there solves your performance issues while streaming. I'm not sure what model MSS you have but my 487 with 4gb ram and e5200 cpu is faster with 2011 than it was with V1. 2011 has it's own issues but streaming is not one of them.

My 2nd suggestion is to get yourself a quality name brand NAS such as a ReadyNAS by Netgear. Almost all modern NAS products will let you easily stream media to DLNA appliances, almost all of them come with itunes servers, bittorrent clients, and remote access all built in. Option such as the ReadyNAS have a large 3rd party developer community who have created a library of add ons over the years. NAS products generally come with some sort of backup software, so for the most part, a NAS can do everything a WHS box can do. Where the WHS box excels is it's form of pc backups (bare metal, ease of use) and the ability to install almost any Windows application.

Before you buy a NAS, do as much research on the company user forums as possible. If they don't offer user forums, don't buy that brand of NAS. Over the years I've owned many NAS products, my Buffalo NAS gave me the most issues and their support staff were very friendly, but they can't fix software problems, their developers back in Japan have to. I'll just say Buffalo (Japan) didn't seem to have any interest in fixing their issues.

One more thing, never once did I experience media skipping/pausing/playback issues on any NAS I used. There also was no management what so ever to do with any NAS I used unlike WHS that requires maintenance like any PC. Although it seems like I promote a NAS over WHS that is not a complete thought. I find NAS products good for simple media sharing/streaming for average home users who don't want/need a robust backup solution. WHS is best for someone who wants, well, a server. My 2011 machine runs PS3MS, WebcamXP (2 ip security cameras) and Subsonic (stream music to iphones). A NAS product would not fulfill my needs, but WHS does.

Thanks for the replies.