Vero 4k+ as a NAS?

General Discussion
1

Hello

I currently have a NAS, but under-use it, e.g. storing movies, music (for sonos) and running syncthing.

I’m wondering can the Vero 4K+ do something similar (and I ditch the NAS). Not sure if its ram will be adequate? I’m assuming that I would be able to plug in via USB a couple of drives. Just wondering if this is practical/advisable?

EDIT: or would I be better off building/buying a RP box with more ram etc? But more generally, can OSCM be used as a NAS in terms of attached drives and installing debian based software?

Thanks

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2

I use my Vero 4K as a NAS, plugged USB drive into it and installed SMB server and working fine. I only really use mine as a backup/sync target from the PC so performance not important to me but it works fine.

3

Things to be aware of:

  1. Transfer speeds will be limited by USB2.0 speed, meaning you won’t be able to read or write to the drive at more than 30-40MB/s.

  2. You’ll need either to use drives that have their own AC power supply, or to use a powered USB hub - the Vero’s USB ports don’t produce enough current to power a drive that draws its power from USB.

  3. If you have two drives connected to the same USB port (via a hub) then transfers from one drive to the other will be painfully slow. (And the Vero has only two USB ports).

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4

I’m ok with limited tx speed.

Though would watching a 4k move on an attaced drive be ok? Or is it advisable to use a NAS?

EDIT: actually more generally, storing movie collection, scannng of it etc. Would an attached drive be a bottleneck compared to a NAS?

Thanks

5

4k movies will work fine from attached drive, SMB shares too.

I used to do it in the past, but now sharing NFS exports from Asus router due to faster transfers.

6

That’s not a problem. The maximum allowed bit-rate on a 4K blu ray is 128 Megabits per second, or 16Megabytes per second. So if you can read 30-40 Megabytes per second off the drive, that’s more than twice what you need.

The USB speed is only a limitation when you’re transferring files across the network, or defragmenting a hard drive.

7

Thanks for all the very useful responses!

8

Hi, I just realized for the Vero to operate as a kind of NAS, it would need to be ‘always on’ in terms of attached disk access. Would that be wasteful in terms of power consumption, or does it have a low power state anyway; or can automatically set go into ‘sleep’ mode as you can do for a linux system and would it wake-up if trying to access attached drive?

Thanks

9

The Vero4k is designed as a 24x7 device (it doesn’t have a power on/off button anyhow.
Generally power requirement is minimal but it also has a Standby Mode that put CPU governor to powersave.

10

Thanks for all the replies.

Hopefully, this is my final question: The Vero 4K+ has 2gb ram. In relation to using it as a ‘NAS’, as it’s debian based, I’m assuming this is enough to run a few linux progs alongside kodi running (e.g. syncthing, duplicati).

My original plan was to use a RP device with 4 or 8gb ram (I have some linux experience), but the Vero seems a lot less hassle as it will be used by the family - the less things that go wrong with it the better.

Though checking that the Vero has enough resources to be used like a NAS.

Thanks

11

Yes 2GB is more than enough. With just the Mediacenter running normally Vero only use 500-600M.