Windows Phone and NAS / Local Cloud Storage

[jlzimmerman]

Of you who have a NAS/local Cloud/External Storage and use Windows phone:

• Which products work well and which don't with WP?
• How is the synching of files and media?
• Have you been able to stream files and media from your storage to your phone?
• Which apps work well in doing any of the above?
• DLNA limitations with WP?
• What have you had to tweak to get your NAS/cloud to work with your WP?

I'm hesitant to buy something like a WD MyCloud or ReadyNAS without seeing a lot of WP experience on them. Thanks.

 

[a5cent]

I have a Synology NAS. The company has a few apps, all of which start with DS (for Disk Station), for WP. I think they are well designed and work great, including audio and video streaming apps.

 

[jlzimmerman]

Thanks. I'll look into this.

 

[Masaaki-MtOlympus]

I have Synology 712+ as my home NAS server, and audio from several thousands of my CD collection.

Synology provide phone apps called DS Audio for iOS, Android, and WP. I have an Motorola Droid X from Verizon, and Lumia 925/1020 from AT&T. DS Audio in Android often cuts out, just because Verizon's 4G isn't as good as AT&T in my area. DS Audio on Lumia/AT&T works smoother, but that's probably due to AT&T's 4G is better.

 

[Hypnopottamus]

You can try using the multiplatform PLEX media server. They have an app for all mobile OSs, WP included. Here is a link for instructions on how to set it up through a NAS drive:

https://plexapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201373793--Legacy-NAS-Guide

 

[hcrick]

I have a Synology NAS. The company has a few apps, all of which start with DS (for Disk Station), for WP. I think they are well designed and work great, including audio and video streaming apps.

Do the DS apps for WP8 allow for multiple file selection and upload directly to the NAS? Are you using the DS apps to stream content from the NAS? If you or anyone else can answer these questions that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[a5cent]

Do the DS apps for WP8 allow for multiple file selection and upload directly to the NAS? Are you using the DS apps to stream content from the NAS? If you or anyone else can answer these questions that would be greatly appreciated.

No, you can not upload files directly to the NAS using the DS applications. That is just a logical consequence of WP's file system restrictions. Apps can't access anything outside of their isolated storage, so where would the DS file app get the files from you'd want to upload? At least for me though, this is a none issue. I do all my phone/cloud synching via SkyDrive which thanks to the tighter OS/service integration works better than the DS file app ever could.

What you can do is download files from the NAS to your phone, but here too the usual restrictions apply, namely that files must be of a type for which at least one app on your phone has registered itself to receive.

An alternative would be to enable FTP on the NAS and then use something like Pocket FTP Server.

Using the DS Video and DS Audio apps, streaming to a WP device works perfectly. Browsing your collection of movies and television shows on your NAS is also nicely done. I've never used the DS photo app, so I can't comment on that.

Hope that helps.

 

[hcrick]

It helps tremendously, thank you very much.