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NAS recommendations?


crusher11

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crusher11

At the moment I'm just using external USB drives. Which...is getting unwieldy, to say the least.

 

Not sure what to go for though. I have about 14TB of material already and I've barely made a dent in my collection, so I'm guessing I'm going to need a lot of bays. But I can't afford to buy a million drives all at once so I'll need something where I can add drives as I go without disrupting anything.

 

I don't really know anything about this, so...suggestions? Preferably in the $200-300 ballpark.

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FrostByte

Not in that price range :) 

 

Seriously if you want a Synology I would go either DS718+ ($400 with 2 bays) or DS918+ ($547 with 4 bays).  Both those models accept the Synology expansion system which can add another 5 bays at a later date which sounds like you may need.  Remember you will lose one drive for recovery so if you went with 2 bays then you would need two very large drives in order to get everything you have on one drive.  You can also add two M.2 drives which speeds up reading/writing and upgrade the RAM to 8gb (even though the website says 6gb, Intel website says the processors can address 8gb).

 

 

When looking at a Synology I would also recommend one with an Intel processor.  Reason is that you will want to use vaapi for transcoding as the Synology transcoding engine is only available when using their apps and vaapi wants an Intel processor.

 

https://www.synology.com/en-uk/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Compatibility_Peripherals/What_kind_of_CPU_does_my_NAS_have

 

Also, when reading the capabilities of the Synology and it says something like it can transcode 4K H265, that means it can transcode 4K H265 input and then output to something up to 1080p so that you can view it on another device.  Transcoding 4K to 4K on one of these will be slow and buffer even with vaapi.

 

https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Multimedia/Can_my_Synology_NAS_transcode_4K_videos_for_my_device

 

The trick is to create files which don't need to be transcoded.  All my 4K can be direct played to my Samsung TV or Xbox with no issues.  So, when creating your files keep in mind what device you're going to view them on.

 

For my use I'm very happy with my decision to use a Synology NAS.  I'm also using Synology  surveillance station which automatically feeds my IP camera recordings to Emby and the Synology OS is top-notch.  If you need something really beefy for transcoding though you may want to consider a PC

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crusher11

I have the server itself on my PC and yeah, looking at what decent transcoding will cost me it's going to have to stay there. So it's really just about storage.

 

They don't make hard drives big enough to hold my current library, so a two-bay solution would leave me worse off than I am now.

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darkassassin07

I somewhat recently moved all my media to a Drobo 5C. (this is a DAS - Direct attach storage, not a NAS)

 

5 bays of storage entirely self-managing, the option to use one or two drives for protection leaving the other 3-4 for data, simple usb connection to the host pc. It has a battery in it to safely shutdown on power loss. Drives are hot-swapable and data is still accessible while new drives are being integrated.

 

I only have 2 drives in it so far and things have gone pretty well. Cost me around 460$ CAD for just the drobo.

 

You will need to use decent quality drives and preferably matching ones for good performance though. When I originally got it I tossed in whatever drives I happened to have around and ended up with some pretty abysmal R/W speeds.

 

Currently using a pair of 12tb Seagate ironwolf drives and I plan on filling all 5 bays with the same drives as needed. Speeds improved dramatically when I put these in.

Edited by darkassassin07
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crusher11

I'd really like to free up USB ports TBH. I currently have zero free, with only one of my Emby drives plugged in to this machine.

 

Do these things get any bigger than four or five bays? My 14TB collection thus far is such a tiny, tiny percentage of what I own. I have about 800 Blu-ray movies still sitting here. Plus probably that again in DVDs.

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darkassassin07

They also sell 8-bay versions and versions with ethernet (ie NAS), I only have limited experience with the 5C though. I can't really give you more info than just visiting their site.

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rbjtech

Have you thought about direct attached storage for your current PC/server ?

 

Depending on the size of your chassis and number of available 5.25" bay slots, you can add 5 hot swap 3.5" HDD's for each one of these :-

 

https://www.xcase.co.uk/collections/storage-caddy/products/fatcage-mb155sp-b-5-bay-ez-tray-3-5-sata-hard-drive-hot-swap-backplane-cage-in-3x-external-5-25-bay

 

I have 6 of them, making a maximum of 30 x 3.5" HDD's...  :)

 

The only downside is you then need the same number of SATA ports, but controllers with 6 ports on ebay are pretty cheap.

 

Yes direct attached has pitfalls and you need to think redundancy (another topic) and they are nowhere near as 'one stop shop' as a NAS - but a 15 bay NAS is going to cost you a LOT of money !

 

Just another idea to think about.

Edited by rbjtech
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Jdiesel

An IBM ServeRAID M1015 storage controller (flashed to IT mode) and a Rosewill RSV-L4500 case would fix your capacity needs on the cheap.

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rbjtech

I have one free 5.25" bay and a shortage of hard drive connections already.

 

ok - as I said, options - with a $300 budget, you probably could get a new larger case, 5 maybe even 10 bays (including the controllers) - with a NAS, you'll be lucky to get a 2 bay.

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Fratopolis

An IBM ServeRAID M1015 storage controller (flashed to IT mode) and a Rosewill RSV-L4500 case would fix your capacity needs on the cheap.

I have a Node 804 case with serveraid m5015. You can get both those for under $200 total actually closer to $150 and just add drives as you need them.

 

Just put your existing computer in that case so long as you are using micro atx.

 

It'll hold up to 10 3.5" but 8 comfortable. If you do 8 you can add up to 4 SSDs as well like I did. And even got me a slot loading blueray burner.

Edited by Fratopolis
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