Got a couple of these and need info WRT what seems to work well as a NAS (reliability, is RAID an absolute necessity, etc) and who moves the files. I called Request and their phone message just tells people to contact them online and that they usually respond within a day. It has been two weeks and bupkis. Any luck with this?

I know a couple of people who use a Mac Mini for media storage, but they don't use any kind of nice looking GUI, which I think is a basic necessity at this point. Who wants to wade through a tree view of everything that's on a computer?

To get music files off Request hard drives, you can mount them (using a USB hard drive caddy or adapter cable) to a Linux computer, as those tend to support most hard drive data formats. I've done several extractions using a virtual machine.
What you put the data on will depend on what media player you want to use it with I guess. Not sure what GUI you're looking for, but a Mac Mini could run iTunes, Plex, Roon, Squeezebox Server, or share a network drive for Sonos.

Are these units dead in the water? If not, have you set them up on your network to see if you can access the 'MP3s' folder? With some of the F2/4 and N models you can find the content in a FAT32 folder and just drag the content onto an external drive.
You say these are 'old'. How old exactly? Better still state the model#s and software revs to get a fighting chance at an accurate answer.
Also not sure what you mean by 'who moves the files'?

Used to be ReQuest would move the files IF you were upgrading to some new POS that they made.


How that crap company is still in business is beyond me.

No, both still work, although I have to replace the processor fans every year and a half.

Installed in 2007, N Series P730, (only difference is the size of the hard drives), version 6.4.2.4681.

Why would I want the MP3 files?

I thought they had a third party that would extract the files, but I may be thinking of the place that used to load the CDs in bulk for a fee.

The web site indicates that they still move the files to a different drive if the user wants to pay for the upgrade to use a NAS or a new model. That's great, but they haven't returned my calls or e-mails.

That's typical for the company.

Don't even think about using them to move the files for you.

If you do get in touch, they'll claim a two week turn, you send the drives to them and maybe 6 months later you might get your things back. Might, being the key word.

Been there, done that.

They were a nightmare to get a hold of years ago, sounds like it is not any better

Did an F1 client for a vacation home about 6mths back and had OK interaction through their dealer portal. Think they just don't like talking on the phone- or keeping customers for that matter.

No, both still work, although I have to replace the processor fans every year and a half.

Yeah, dirt cheap base motherboards / hardware was ReQuest's 'Achilles' back then. Never had a problem with their own audio cards and I always liked the GUI. The current gen hardware seems OK, time will tell - but back on topic:


Installed in 2007, N Series P730, (only difference is the size of the hard drives), version 6.4.2.4681.
Why would I want the MP3 files?

That sw ver. dictates that you have a FAT32 partition containing an 'MP3s' media folder. You can just go ahead and copy the media files from the 'MP3s' folder. You are not looking for '.mp3' files. You may see those if the server was originally setup to dual encode. However that folder also contains the uncompressed '.wav' and '.png' cover art files. If there are a bunch of '.mp3' files you can navigate settings > functions > 'remove dual encoded media'. This will leave you with just the '.wav' media in the 'MP3s' folder.
So yeah ..... the folder has a stupid name.

I thought they had a third party that would extract the files, but I may be thinking of the place that used to load the CDs in bulk for a fee.

Many years ago that was an optional upgrade service if you were updating to newer ReQuest hardware.
In this decade ....... to copy your media in Windows 10 go to Start > File Explorer > Network > then navigate the ReQuest server name and use the drop down folder list > MP3s folder. Copy / paste what you need to USB or NAS drive.

Always had solid email tech support with ReQuest. Never call anyone if I can avoid it :). It's harder to write crap than talk it.
According to their support pages they no longer officially support anything older than the current gen F1/F3 hardware and its siblings.  I think this policy was part of their restructuring deal with the current Swiss owner. Hope this helps.

When I sold these, it was easy to talk to someone, then they hired someone from Apple and things got ugly. The last time I spent any time on the phone was about a year ago and I got the president, who did his little song & dance about how they wanted to be better with communication, blah, blah, beep beep. The time before was when Bill McKeithan was VP, but he went back to Krell.

If they stay on this course, I don't see good things in their future, even though it seems that they have some interesting things in their lineup.

The files for on-site listening are .wav and the streaming files are 192K mp3. I'll have to look into extracting the files on the smaller drive- less to screw up and the cost was lower/less time involved loading music.

I was a huge fan of their product way back when. When they had the iTunes integration with the 3rd party from Germany I lost respect for them. That was a nightmare for support. Everything was via e-mail 16 hours later.

Just edited my last post to clarify that you will find a FAT32 partition containing the MP3s media content folder.

I just found something interesting- I needed to reboot my Request to acquire a new IP address (using a Luxul now and the Request wasn't in the same address range), so it now shows up when I click on Start, Computer, Network. I clicked on the Request and a group of folders appeared, one called 'Best'. That one has three folders, one with a number that seems to be in hex, which shows all of the Artists, Albums and Songs. I clicked on a song, clicked on 'Open with' and chose Windows Media Player- it opened and played. While it was playing, I went to the song in the folder and right clicked, then clicked on Properties and found that those are all .wav files.

Woo freakin' hoo!

I'll copy them to my external hard drive later.

So now, the main question is "Which media player works best if the files are stored in a NAS?".