RipNAS Statement SSD Windows Home Server Unveiled | eHomeUpgrade
My comments on this Windows Home Server-based NAS
Is this for real that a network-attached storage system for a home network will employ solid-state storage? You might think that the typical network-attached storage will be required to use regular electro-mechanical hard drives for its storage, but this unit has brought the idea of solid-state storage to this class of devices.
Why does this device implement solid-state storage as a main storage solution? It is designed from the outset to be a music server that can exist near one’s hi-fi equipment which will be located in the main living area or home-theatre room. The typical NAS box will be making a whirring or whining noise as the hard disks come to life while a fan keeps the system cool. But this design implements the solid-state disks and the use of a heatsink to cool the unit without any need for noisy fans.
The RipNAS Statement is a DLNA-compliant “ripping NAS” with a built-in optical drive and intended for keeping your music library on a hard disk, available to UPnP AV media clients, iTunes setups and the Logitech Squeezebox. It does implement “best-case” ripping practices where the music will be held as FLAC files but can be transcoded to LPCM or MP3 to suit most UPnP AV devices. The software can do other tricks such as keep highly-accurate metadata for all of the albums held on the hard disk and implement server-side volume levelling for albums recorded at differing volume levels.
This machine is one of a class of NAS units which will be dedicated to storing personal music, photo and video files and it could be a reality that we see households running one NAS for backing up data and another strictly for media-server functionality.
Welcome to a world where the serious music enthusiast can have access to the fun of network media! This may now mean that the home media network can be an acceptable path for the great recordings like Miles Davis’s “Kind Of Blue”, Donald Fagen’s “The Nightfly” or Pink Floyd albums of the 1970s as well as the great classics.