gnan

@Richard good advice. Just a note if one is on Windows you can install ext2/3/4 support http://www.ext2fsd.com. Another option is to run a live Linux temporarily on your Windows system: just install Ubuntu (for example)to a usb stick and boot your Windows computer, transfer files to Windows.

It depends what you are using to feed the SonicOrbiter. If LMS you could use iPeng on iOS, Android has several good apps, or web interface on PC. Regarding YouTube- on LMS there is a YouTube plugin that you can use

FYI no need for Silverlight for Netflix w Linux. Touch screen works in everything from Ubuntu to Tinycore. No idea about your other issue. Ubuntu et al not are perfect by any measure, but for many Linux is a good compromise for various reasons. including what OP expressed.

Your preference is Windows Server 2012 over FreeNas because it is for you "simpler"? Is the primary reason or are there other reasons such as you like specific Windows only software? Why do you run the other three instances of Freenas (as you imply it is not "simpler")?

Woosh Lol I think tongue was firmly in cheek.

NFS is faster, less CPU overhead. Personally I find it much better than SMB (ubuntu/debian/mint clients, debian server). But - the link Jabbr posted points out the security issues summarized in the tldr and down at the bottom of the article. Basically don't use NFS if you don't trust all the machines on your network. FYI You can use HFS+ and Snapraid if you want an alternative to ZFS with bit rot protection.

The question isn't whether you or I would use one. Using your car analogy, not everyone wants a race car as their daily drive . Different devices fit different needs and budgets.

Why do you think it can't work as NAS?

100Mbits is fine for streaming audio. OpenMediaVault distributes a Pi2 image, download and try it out. I personally don't hear a difference between any of the music servers I have used but ymmv.

It is limited to 100Mbit network so this is an even bigger bottleneck than lack of SATA. Connecting drives to the RPi via USB2 in theory gives you 480Mbits/s. But as long as you understand the limitations it is still fast enough for music and video streaming, plus it sips electricity. Here's an example Réalisation de mon multiroom audio à base de Raspberry Pi et Hifiberry - Maison et Domotique

If you are willing to go outside windows there are many free OSs that will do the job. Whether you can read the data disks in Windows will depend on how you set up your disks and your technical ability.

But how do you detect the errors? Do you run checksums against the files or use an automated tool? Not trying to be pedantic, genuinely curious.

What I took from the comment is not that the syno NAS boxes use "garbage RAID." But that they are just low spec computers running versions of what amounts to linux software raid. You've mentioned monitoring for bit rot and the need to catch it before you sync it to your backups. How do you do this with your Synology?

With Flexraid (and for ex SnapRaid) you can start with filled disks, so you don't need to start with a large 9tb empty array. You can start with your current disks, add a parity disk, then move your data to larger disks as needed. Here's a comparison between some of the options. http://www.snapraid.it/compare.html

You are talking about ZFS here though right? Hardware raid will not solve all silent corruptions particularly in case of software induced errors (such as bad software and viruses) - but if you are using ZFS you already know this [emoji3]