What NAS to buy?

[Thorin]

You can get a cheaper NAS that will have poor throughput or get a Synology or Qnap and performance should be fine.

I have a VERY cheap Buffalo NAS and it is only during large transfers (backups / bulk moves) that I notice that it is slow. It streams files and runs torrents for me just fine. I also have an irc bouncer running on it.

I've been looking at Synology and Qnap, and the ones I'm looking at are over $400.

Which Buffalo NAS do you have and what do you consider "very cheap"?

[Melbosa]

I have client's with the Synology devices, and as Lazy says they really don't slow down all that much unless you are doing high IO insensitive work.  Although they don't use theirs as webservers, they do use them for backup, streaming, data shares, bit torrent clients, print servers and itunes libraries.

To answer your question from earlier about Transcoding, yes when the format is not supported natively by your XBox 360, you will have to put a PC in between and transcode on the fly (using TVersity, PS3Media Server, Media Center with a couple add-ins, etc).  All my hi-def viewing is done this way at my home - file server to media PC running PS3 Media Server, to PS3/XBox 360 depending on what room you are in, and I never experience breakups on my video or slowdowns.  But that could be because of my Gig backbone on the network, as my transfer rates are pretty solid between devices.

I am like you though, I need an upgrade on my file server, and have been researching the hell out of NAS devices.  I just can't find one yet that gives me what I want in the price I can afford.   And I so want it to be smaller than a PC, as I like mine being portable .

[Lazybones]

Which Buffalo NAS do you have and what do you consider "very cheap"?

See my post from when I purchased it.
http://forums.righteouswrath.com/index.php/topic,7280.0.html