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Considering getting a NAS device...


jasonmcroy

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jasonmcroy

So, I am thinking about getting a NAS device to add to my network. I have gone back and forth on this decision for the past couple of months and I have done a bit of research. Now I have decided I do want to, now just trying to decide how to approach this.

 

My server needs are pretty simple. It's just my wife and I that use my server setup right now. I have Emby on my HTPC (AMD FX 8-Core with 8 GB RAM). I record a lot of TV currently using the HDHomerun DVR and I have about 200 Bluray movie rips that I am adding to on a weekly basis.

 

We watch most everything in our Living Room on an Nvidia Shield TV Pro or in the bedroom on an Nvidia Shield TV 16 GB device. All of this is easy enough and no need for transcoding.

 

We have some occasions where we go out of town and have a need to stream our recordings in the evening. This may be 3-5 times per year for a week to 2 weeks at a time. I always take the Nvidia Shield TV 16 GB device to connect to the TV wherever we end up staying.

 

The current NAS Device I am looking at is the WD My Cloud EX4100 Diskless 4 Bay. I am mostly trying to get enough bays for future storage expansion needs. I currently own 2 8 TB NAS (Red) hard drives. I also have an 8 TB Black hard drive and a couple of 4 TB green hard drives.

 

Is this device (spec-wise) overkill for my needs? Can I use the mix of hard drives without any issues or do they all have to be the same specs?

 

If anyone has used this specific device I would love to hear feedback. If anyone has other suggestions I am open to research those as well.

 

I am leaning toward one of the WD NAS devices because SiliconDust has apps you can install to use their DVR service without having to manually install their software.

 

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jasonmcroy

Thanks @@Luke . I have looked at some of those a little bit. I will look at them a little more.

 

I was also looking at the possibility of turning my existing HTPC computer into a NAS device since I have the hard drives already. Does anyone have experience with that type of setup? It would probably have to be openmediavault since the FreeNAS option looks like my current HTPC only has the minimum specs required for it.

 

Anyway, still searching all these different options. It's a little overwhelming! lol

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My vote would be low end or old pc hardware (>= 2 core cpu, 8GB RAM) that supports sata 3 and load it with with freenas.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edited by Tur0k
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jasonmcroy

My vote would be low end or old pc hardware (>= 2 core cpu, 8GB RAM) that supports sata 3 and load it with with freenas.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

My current setup has 8 core cpu. However, the 8 GB RAM, per the freenas website is the bare minimum requirement and isn't suggested for streaming video. Do you think it would be enough? I looked at increasing the RAM to 16, but unfortunately my current motherboard only supports up to 8 GB RAM.

 

I would totally do this if the specs worked. It isn't clear to me either why the Openmediavault OS has their minimum specs to be much lower than freenas.

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PenkethBoy

Another option is use your existing pc and try xpenology - its a modified version of the firmware/software for synology - works well and easy to use and Emby is supported on it as well

 

One thing though - if you setup a nas - dont use the black or green drives in raid - they are not rated for NAS use and will come back to bite you

 

And Another option (windows) is drive pooling with your existing pc - Drivepool or DriveBender - both work well and you can use any drives with them as the setup is different - i use this setup with Drivepool on my 2012r2 server

 

QNAP / Synology have a wide range of options - but both are pricey but you get what you pay for. Also as you do not need transcoding (now) a low power NAS should suit you - but if there is a chance you may need to transcode in the future then i3,i5 or i7 (Qnap have just released Ryzen based NAS's) is the way to go 

 

My QNAP 853A has been very reliable and EMBY works fine - but it does not have to transcode - and with a passmark score of only 1600 - one 1080p transcode is just about possible

 

You are going to get a lot of opinions - but take your time - be clear on what your requirements are and what you can support easily or are willing to spend time learning etc

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jasonmcroy

Thanks for this data! It gives me some more things to think with and ponder.

 

I am starting to lean towards trying to build my own NAS with the existing HTPC, but then I started wondering if I even need to do that and if I should just leave everything setup as it is. I currently have two 8 TB internal drives with all my movies and recordings. I have one external drive connected (also 8 TB) that I back up my movies and recordings to. I do this manually every day when new recordings happen or I rip a new Bluray.

 

Looking at the NAS solutions, I am not sure if I gain any benefit with that setup. That is where my hang up on the decision is. What are the benefits to NAS vs just keeping my current setup. I sort of want to get away from Windows and possibly setup a Linux based HTPC as well.

 

However, I do like playing around with new things is part of my problem! lol

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PenkethBoy

sounds like apart from an automated backup - you are fine as you are as its working now.

 

Think of a NAS as a file server - yes with QNAP/Synology/Xpenology etc you get "apps" which can add extra functionality to the NAS - but be careful as a low power nas which will be fine as a file server/file streamer - usually suffer when asked to do things they are not designed or specified for - and that includes EMBY/Plex et al. Yes EMBY etc will work and it does on my 853A but as i said transcoding will produce patchy playback - i dont use hardware acceleration as this affects the quality for me.

 

One significant advantage of a NAS is lower power draw and its designed to be on 24/7 - if thats important for you.

 

If you want to play then go the xpenology route - its free easy to setup and you have the plus of being able to use synology apps which will have less effect on your 8 core amd chip. Also if you do not like it you can re use the pc for something else - which would be difficult to do with a NAS box. 

 

If a NAS then floats your boat - consider a full fat one from the usual suspects at a later date and when you have saved up a sizeable chunk of cash :)

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dcrdev

My current setup has 8 core cpu. However, the 8 GB RAM, per the freenas website is the bare minimum requirement and isn't suggested for streaming video. Do you think it would be enough? I looked at increasing the RAM to 16, but unfortunately my current motherboard only supports up to 8 GB RAM.

 

I would totally do this if the specs worked. It isn't clear to me either why the Openmediavault OS has their minimum specs to be much lower than freenas.

 

Depends how much data you have, you can limit it obviously but ZFS works best (and by default) when it has 1gb of memory per tb of raw disk space; then you have to consider the additional memory required for containers, vms etc...

 

But if you can - use ZFS, you'll never look back!

Edited by dcrdev
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jasonmcroy

Thanks for all the responses and additional information guys! I have more research to do with some of this and I am planning a new weekend project now to play around with this. I am considering starting something small to test and play with before turning my HTPC over to a NAS device.

 

I have a couple of ideas and some spare hard drives I am not using for my little project, just to get familiar with some of this. I may even use one of my Raspberry PI 3s that I am not currently using for anything else just to test the waters, so to speak. I know performance-wise they aren't going to give me the final solution, but it's a start.

 

 

EDIT: Although, after reading a little more about the RPI NAS solution, that seems pretty useless for any type of transcoding needs. Probably fine for my in-network needs when something is direct play. I think I will try out my older computer and see how that goes first.

Edited by jasonmcroy
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  • 4 months later...
jasonmcroy

Ok, so this thread is pretty old, but I wanted to get some more thoughts on this.

 

Since my last post I ended up going with openmediavault on the computer I was using as my HTPC box. However, about 2 weeks ago I started getting curious and did some testing on it with a kill a watt meter. I left it on there for about a week. This thing is costing me about $45.00 per month!

 

So, my new search for a NAS box for the purpose of finding something with lower power consumption has continued. I am finding that the boxes that I would be able to install Emby onto and possibly need transcoding are a bit out of the range of money I want to put into this.

 

My next thought and this is the question that I have for anyone that may know: If I install Emby on my Shield Pro device and just use the NAS box literally for storage only can't I get away with one of the lower powered devices? The Shield would do any transcoding as needed, although about 90% of my usage wouldn't require it.

 

My only concern that I haven't been able to find an easy answer to is by having a lower powered NAS device, does that also affect the network file transfer speed? In other words, let's say I rip a bluray disc on my desktop with Makemkv. Now I have to move that file over to the NAS via my network (wired). Currently I am hitting about 80-90 mb/ s speeds doing this which is pretty good from what I understand. It only takes a few minutes to move that file. Moving documents and such is even quicker since the file itself is so much smaller.

 

Anyone have any insight on this?

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mastrmind11

Ok, so this thread is pretty old, but I wanted to get some more thoughts on this.

 

Since my last post I ended up going with openmediavault on the computer I was using as my HTPC box. However, about 2 weeks ago I started getting curious and did some testing on it with a kill a watt meter. I left it on there for about a week. This thing is costing me about $45.00 per month!

 

So, my new search for a NAS box for the purpose of finding something with lower power consumption has continued. I am finding that the boxes that I would be able to install Emby onto and possibly need transcoding are a bit out of the range of money I want to put into this.

 

My next thought and this is the question that I have for anyone that may know: If I install Emby on my Shield Pro device and just use the NAS box literally for storage only can't I get away with one of the lower powered devices? The Shield would do any transcoding as needed, although about 90% of my usage wouldn't require it.

 

My only concern that I haven't been able to find an easy answer to is by having a lower powered NAS device, does that also affect the network file transfer speed? In other words, let's say I rip a bluray disc on my desktop with Makemkv. Now I have to move that file over to the NAS via my network (wired). Currently I am hitting about 80-90 mb/ s speeds doing this which is pretty good from what I understand. It only takes a few minutes to move that file. Moving documents and such is even quicker since the file itself is so much smaller.

 

Anyone have any insight on this?

If you can live without the ability to transcode what so ever, just get a Pi3 and throw emby server on that, or like you said just use your Shield.  A lower cost NAS won't mess w/ your network speed, it's the NIC doing the heavy lifting, not the CPU.  All you want is something to run a bunch of disks, presumably in RAID.  So find something that fits your budget.  I have a case w/ a 10 year old Celeron and 6GB of ECC ram and a bunch of WD Reds (I use zfs), and it works perfectly.

 

Not knowing how much you pay for electricity, what are the specs of your HTPC?  That seems absurdly high, considering an HTPC by default should be idling a good portion of the day (for most people.... unless you have kids... nevermind)

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jasonmcroy

Awesome, thanks for your reply!

 

I do want to be able to transcode if needed, that is why I think the Shield would be sufficient for that. Although, now that I am writing this, the Shield server beta can't transcode yet, unless that has changed since I last checked. I believe that was an issue at one point. Anyway, if that gets implemented then that will work fine for me. Funny enough I do have 2 RPI 3s laying around not doing anything yet...

 

That is good to know regarding the size of the NAS won't affect the transfer speeds. I thought that may be the case but I wanted some confirmation. I really just need an easy, low power setup to hold files and be able to easily move files to and from on occasion. 

 

Yes, the power usage of my current HTPC seems ridiculous to me as well. I double checked several times over the week that I had it running with the meter on it. During the testing I had openmediavault installed with Emby Server and the Channnels DVR service and that is all. 

 

My usage is maybe 2-3 hours of TV watching per night of recordings or the occasional movie. It is just one stream over the local network at a time. No kids - just my wife and me. 

 

The PC specs are a AMD FX-8350 cpu, Gigabyte Motherboard - ga-970a-ds3p-rev-1 and 8 gb ram. I have a small video card in there that was only used to do initial setup of OMV - after that I unplugged the monitor and it just runs headless. Per the user interface of OMV the cpu runs from 0-9% and the RAM usage anywhere from 7-17% depending on whether or not the Channels DVR is doing it's commercial cutting cycle of recordings.

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jasonmcroy

I have been looking at the TerraMaster F2-420. It seems to have mixed reviews. It's on a good sale right now on Amazon. Anyone have experience with this device?

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From the Emby standpoint, right now Qnap, Synology and Asustor are the best options. Terramaster takes a very long time to review and approve new releases. There is a manual install process that can be done without the app store, but it's a bit more difficult than doing it on the other manufacturers.

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mastrmind11

I have been looking at the TerraMaster F2-420. It seems to have mixed reviews. It's on a good sale right now on Amazon. Anyone have experience with this device?

If you want to save money, build your own.

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mastrmind11

Jason, I just ran some numbers and there's no way your HTPC can cost that much.  What do you pay per kWh?  Even here in NY where I pay around $.25 / kWh, I would have to run a 600 Watt computer 12 hours a day for a month to hit $45.  That's like a mid grade gaming rig playing Crysis 3 for half the day.  

Edited by mastrmind11
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jasonmcroy

From the Emby standpoint, right now Qnap, Synology and Asustor are the best options. Terramaster takes a very long time to review and approve new releases. There is a manual install process that can be done without the app store, but it's a bit more difficult than doing it on the other manufacturers.

 

Thanks @@Luke - I appreciate that input as it made my decision for me on the TerraMaster. One of the biggest issues on reviews I read was the lack of apps for the device so it sounds like that could be an issue with other apps as well. It gets really mixed reviews, but all of them pretty say stay away from it if possible! lol

 

If you want to save money, build your own.

 

Yeah, I thought about that and even went over to pcpartspicker to put together some stuff to see what it came to. I could build it for about $160.00 if I re-use my existing RAM. I am just worried about the power consumption aspect for the most part.

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jasonmcroy

Jason, I just ran some numbers and there's no way your HTPC can cost that much.  What do you pay per kWh?  Even here in NY where I pay around $.25 / kWh, I would have to run a 600 Watt computer 12 hours a day for a month to hit $45.  That's like a mid grade gaming rig playing Crysis 3 for half the day.  

 

ha ha! Thanks.

 

Maybe I am doing something wrong here then. I am paying about .08 per kWh per my electric bill (it's less up to the 1st 1,000 and then it goes up by .02 when you go over that amount so I rounded it off to make the math easier.

 

I think I will put the meter back on and try again. I put it on my other desktop computer to test that out and the numbers came down to only about $7.00 per month on that computer. I had some videos transcoding on it with VideoRedo so it was under some load during my testing as well.

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mastrmind11

Thanks @@Luke - I appreciate that input as it made my decision for me on the TerraMaster. One of the biggest issues on reviews I read was the lack of apps for the device so it sounds like that could be an issue with other apps as well. It gets really mixed reviews, but all of them pretty say stay away from it if possible! lol

 

 

Yeah, I thought about that and even went over to pcpartspicker to put together some stuff to see what it came to. I could build it for about $160.00 if I re-use my existing RAM. I am just worried about the power consumption aspect for the most part.

See my post above.  Power consumption comes from beefy video cards, overspec'd CPUs and/or lots of sustained simultaneous disk access.  Since you won't be using any of that, it will be minimal.  Just because a PSU is rated at 500W (or whatever) doesn't mean that's what it uses 24/7.  I have my Celeron NAS w/ 8 drives, a headless XEON server, and a Unifi USG & switch hooked up to a UPS and when they're all screaming I barely hit 150W *combined*

Edited by mastrmind11
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mastrmind11

ha ha! Thanks.

 

Maybe I am doing something wrong here then. I am paying about .08 per kWh per my electric bill (it's less up to the 1st 1,000 and then it goes up by .02 when you go over that amount so I rounded it off to make the math easier.

 

I think I will put the meter back on and try again. I put it on my other desktop computer to test that out and the numbers came down to only about $7.00 per month on that computer. I had some videos transcoding on it with VideoRedo so it was under some load during my testing as well.

yeah, you're doing something wrong.  my scenario above using your $.08 per kWh comes to $17 / mo.  You should be in the single digits at most.

Edited by mastrmind11
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jasonmcroy

yeah, you're doing something wrong.  my scenario above using your $.08 per kWh comes to $17 / mo.  You should be in the single digits at most.

 

lol - I wouldn't be surprised that I am doing something wrong. I am going to put it back on now to check it again. 

 

Thanks for your input on this. Maybe I am over thinking this whole thing!

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mastrmind11

lol - I wouldn't be surprised that I am doing something wrong. I am going to put it back on now to check it again. 

 

Thanks for your input on this. Maybe I am over thinking this whole thing!

Nah, I'd be thinking the same thing too if I thought my rarely-on barebones PC was costing me that much per month!

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jasonmcroy

Well, I am a complete idiot when it comes to math apparently or hopefully something was not reading correctly on that meter before. 

 

I put it back onto my computer earlier and I just went to check on it. During this time I was also moving a lot of files from one of the internal drives to an external drive and two recordings are happening as well. Still not a lot of cpu or RAM activity but at least it's doing something.

 

It has been on for 3:30 and has used .35 kWh. So, based on this so far it's only costing me around 5-6 $ per month. I am going to leave it on there a few more days just to get a longer term usage.

 

However, I realized what I did incorrectly before with the math - I had a decimal in the wrong place! 

 

Thanks for catching this mastrmind11. 

 

I still may end up purchasing a cheap NAS if they go on sale again, but for a different reason. 

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