Can anyone recommend a great NAS drive that works well with ubunto desktops and also streams well to TV'S? One that has a fast write time and expandable storage abilities maybe a 4tb. I took a look at buffalo, sinology, iomega, LG, but these have so many features and none of them claim to run great on Linux. I do understand all of these are 'Linux based' but it has to be able to sream quickly to my tv as a media server.

I am interested in hearing your experiences with NAS drives and Linux and TV's in particular.

As a partial answer to your questions, you may find it inexpensive to build a NAS of your own, which if using a standard *ATX case will be extremely expandable.

I do not have any experience with network-connected televisions.

aren't nas drives essentially PC's with networked shares ?

as long as they have Ethernet/Wi-Fi they should be Linux compatible. most Linux distros are able to do NFS/sshfs/samba/...

Thanks you guys! Is Samba a package installed by default or will I need to install it prior to installing the NAS? I heard lots of talk about Samba I don't understand if its a sharing language or just a service in Linux for networking volumes. what is the microsoft equal?
Will I need to install it or is it default?https://lqo-thequestionsnetw.netdna-...s_lq/icon7.gif

yeah i read afew threads on people with the knowledge to build a custom NAS but I am afraid I don't have the knowledge or funds for it. The nas has all of that stuff built in and all i have to do is shell out a few extra funds. but from what I read building a nas server is better more scalable. how much have you spent doing it? if i may ask.. it does sound like a fun project and I will be learning all the way!

samba is microsofts printer and file sharing server message block protocol. if you dont have any windows machines your better off not using it. the standard for file sharing is network file system; but i prefer secure shell file system. depending on the distro, most of those would be installed by default else use the package manager to install them.

like everything else its easier to buy something than to make it yourself... i have an acer revo ($200) that runs fedora and feeds tv shows and movies to another revo downstairs (running xbmc on a live-usb connected to my tv) via wifi.

schneidz, that's a very interesting setup and 200 bucks..smart man!. I was going to get myself a rasburry pie and hook it up to my smart tv. then network from there but I just installed ps3mediaserver on my ubunto machine and I can watch all the movies I download from frostwire on my tv now. It works but the media server doesn't have a complete list of codec so some stuff doesn't play well but I am happy.
I am still thinking about the nas because of the amount of space movies take up.. I only have a 160mb drive! I will consider building one, so you really think the performance is better Thank a large nas? have you benchmarked it? Is the Shell service you are talking about also known as SSH?

sshfs is an emulated file system (that makes it appear as if remote directories and files are on a local harddrive) that runs over ssh. that means that each packet is encrypted so there is some overhead in data transfer but not very much. i rip all my dvd's to xvid so the transfer doesnt buffer much on wireless-n but i havent tried with blu-ray rips so i suppose my cheap cisco router/revo pc's/sshfs will make things bottleneck.

ubuntu soppesedly has some restricted-extras codecs you can search for in the software center.

Oh, I understand. You should consider upgrading your router. I have the default at & t one when you get Uverse. I am not sure how good of a router that is as like it says im a newbie. I will try looking for the codec in ubunto thanks! I saw a website for my directtv receiver apparently there is a way to watch videos from the receiver into my pc. I have to find another way besides that application direct tv has. "directtopc" apparently my pc doesn't have the proper hardware acceleration, I tried upgrading the drivers like it suggested. Guess the hardware isn't good enough. I would like to get into ripping videos too one day. Ripping is when you burn them to cd's only? oh wait.. that's right ripping is when you take from cd's.

Ive got a 2Tb Iomega (Now Lenovo/EMC) nas drive which includes Cloud manager software. I keep my movies and pictures on it. The cloud Manager software comes in Windows, Mac OS and Linux flavours and allows you to access your drive from anywhere in the world (Though over a 3G network fails due to too many proxy servers in the way! It can't resolve your personal cloud IP.)
Streaming to a TV? I've got a Raspberry Pi running Raspbmc which works pretty well.

Oh! I'm running Ubuntu 10.40 ls (I think that's the version)
Hope that helps.

Play Bonny!

Thank you that does help! I will check out Iomega. I am glad the software comes in Linux flavor too!
Hey, what does play bonny mean? I was in love with a girl named bonnie, are you messing with my mind?

I own a Synology DS11J. has two hard drive bays and works great with my linux and windows machines, also my smartphones. yes NSF works with it.

@ escolm

"Play Bonny" is a Scottish expression, it means "Have Fun"

I'm glad about that. You can hit the "Yes, it was helpfull" link in the bottom right of my post which would be nice.

And... Er... Play Bonny!