Newbie asking about simple media servers or NAS

  • 5 February 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 470 views

Hi,

I'm thinking of getting a Sonos system starting with a Sonos Play 1 or Sonos One. One thing we'd want to do is leave music playing though the day to help keep the dog happy and therefore I think we need some sort of media server or NAS as I'll have my phone with me. Getting a NAS (even a cheap one) or a WD My Book type device basically doubles the price of the system so I'm wondering if I can use some of the gear I already have. What would be the pros and cons of these options with regards to effectiveness, ease and electricity use?!

1) PS3
2) Laptop
3) Old mobile phone

Our router doesn't have a USB so I can't just slap a hard drive into that unfortunately.

All advice greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Wag

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5 replies

You can use the laptop if you set it to never go to sleep. Just load you music library into a shared directory and add the share in the Sonos controller.
Userlevel 7
Badge +16
Plenty of free radio stations, once you've chosen one you can just leave it playing all day?.

My 3tb WD mycloud was under £100 and nice and quiet, if you end up buying more Sonos kit it's a good investment.
Thanks for the replies. I'll have a look at the laptop settings. I didn't realise there were free radio stations! I thought it was just paid for services. Handy.

I was thinking of a mycloud but they've discontinued the original and replaced it with My Cloud Home which has got terrible reviews on the community here. I can't find any "out the box" wifi storage like the mycloud made by anyone else.
Seagate
Buffalo
Synergy
Netgear

All make NAS drives like the WD My Cloud.
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
I'm happily using a Raspberry Pi for my SMB v1 NAS feeding my Sonos system my local music library. Cheap, easy to set up and well supported for many years. Using less than 5 watts, not sure how much less.

My WD is out of support and not getting patches so it is unsafe to use, that made the cost per year of use high.