NAS

[Xerxes]

Curious what everyone is running as a NAS.  

 

I have been running a Lenovo (rebranded Iomega) ix4-300d w/4x2TB hard drives for a number of years but the NAS is filling up and I need more storage.  Looking at getting a Synology 920+ but don't know much or even if it is remotely better than QNAP, for my usage, which is way cheaper.  WD also makes relatively cheap NAS's but from online reviews they are not great.

 

I know I can build my own or repurpose an old PC fairly easily but I like the low power / small form factor as what I have now sits in a cupboard and just hums away.  I use it for storage and network play via DLNA, not on the plex train...yet.  

[Pic0o]

Last NAS I have worked with were QNAPs too.  I did setup a Synology but overall I feel they were comparable experiences.

No current NAS here at the pad for space reasons but I would consider another QNAP, granted more drive bays might be more problem than benefit. I agree on rather having a purpose built appliance than a desktop and a ton of drives spinning off.

How did your drives hold up in RAID? Many replacements over a year or few?

[Xerxes]

I want to go Synology over QNAP simply for software reasons.  Synology has a hybrid raid software option (SHR) which means I can pair any amount of any size drives together in RAID and make use of all the combined space.  I want to allow for easy future expansion rather than having to replace an entire array at once.  Hardware wise QNAP and Synology offer exactly the same specs but SHR has sold me.

 

For example, I could swap the 4x2TB HD in my current NAS for 4x4TB drives, but would need to find somewhere to store the data in the interim which means buying 4x4TBdrives + a 6TB drive to hold the data while I swap.  That would cost me ~800 to double my storage from 5.2TB  to ~10TB in RAID 5.  For ~1300 I could get new hardware with 3x6TB drives and have space to add another drive in the future when/if I need more space.

 

In my Lenovo which I have had for ~7 years now I had 1 drive fail over its life.  I had the NAS configured to send me an email, which it did, when it detects a potential drive failure.  I have it running ~18/7 as it powers off from 2am -7am since nobody is awake anyway.  it has a scheduler which automatically shuts down/boots up at times I specify.  The drive that died is till technically operational as well, it just seems to randomly lose power and rebooting will fire it back up for an undetermined amount of time.  The NAS is really only used currently as a DLNA server, torrent client and file server.  

 

Of course the more I shop the bigger I end up trying to go.

[Pic0o]

Appreciate the details. I hear you on the new setup with drives bump. Almost more time and cost effective to have a target and prior set of same data still intact, if only to verify new set. Then you get into storage of things and what to do with other storage. Could repurpose prior NAS?

Tempting things but priority is to working plumbing as to not be in apartment anymore. That may be a spell though with renorestivations.

[Xerxes]

I ended up splurging and going a little crazy.  Got the Synology 1621+, it's a 6 bay NAS but I am currently only stuffing it with 4x 6 TB drives.  With Synology's RAID options I can pop another drive of any size in and the RAID will rebuild retaining all my data.  This is the sole reason I went with Synology, other features were just a bonus.  They have a RAID calculator that will show you usable space with whatever drives you want.  

 

I decided to go big and newest because I want it to last a long time.  The more I thought about a 4 bay NAS the more I determined I would need to swap out drives more often and then have a functional hard drive to add to the shelf.  This allowed me to get smaller drives now and not need to worry about the future until I get there and hopefully larger storage will be cheaper.  It runs modified Linux and I could run VM's on it if I choose to, there are lots of things I could do on it but probably won't.  It is way more machine than I need or will probably ever need.

 

Getting it setup was a breeze, it transfers files faster than my old one (60MB/s -> 100MB/s).  The AI photo tagging functions of Synology Moments is something the wife really likes.  Completely tool less to add drives which is nice, my old one was tool less as well but I had to take the outer case off via thumb screws.

 

Overall, it does what it is supposed to 🙂  I had to turn off transcoding for the time being as it was transcoding stuff into a format one of my smart TV's did not understand.  Browsing around I found the area where I can configure transcoding on a per device basis which is a bridge I will cross when I find files I cannot read natively.  

 

 

[Pic0o]

I have an Asustor SAN AS5304T and I ❤️ it

 

Finally have data not scattered among random disks. I have to finish migrating to the same array so I can shed some older HDDs and free irl space