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10-16-2019, 09:25 AM
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#1
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Beach and Mountain
Posts: 1,087
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NAS recommendation
A while ago, I asked the forum about switching to the cloud vs NAS. You convinced me to go with a new NAS. You see, my current NAS is 5 1/2 years old and Lacie is not longer updating firmware. A few days ago the ability to access my NAS from outside my home network stopped. Tech support says they have asked the parent company if and when they are going to fix it.
So, here is what I see as a good new NAS: the Synology DS718+ with 2 drives configured as mirrored drives and upgraded memory. Total cost would be $700. This is about my max price. My storage is mainly photos and music. Maybe some PC backups. I only have 200 GB on my old NAS. You have convinced me that using my NAS as a Plex server is the way to go, so this will do the trick. I have a 1 TB external drive that I will use to backup the new NAS.
PC mag also likes the Asustor brand but I have not heard that name before. I like WD hard drives but had bad experience with their NAS products years ago. A few sources like the QNAP TS-251A NAS drive. What do you think?
What other suggestions do you have?
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10-16-2019, 10:04 AM
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#2
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Beach and Mountain
Posts: 1,087
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Wanted to add that camera recording is really good, but they charge for licenses. System comes with 2. Each 4 pack of additional licenses is $200. Apparently, you can use Blue Iris but the vendor program could/should integrate better.
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10-16-2019, 10:24 AM
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#3
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: City
Posts: 10,337
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I just added a second NAS: Synology DS218+ with a mirrored pair of 6tb drives. Total was about your $700 number. Amazon Warehouse and eBay. My first NAS was a Synology DS212+ with a pair of 3tb drives.
I wouldn't even think about buying another brand because the Synology software is so good. Minimal obsolescence, too; my 5YO box still gets updates with the latest stuff. The little tech support that I have needed was excellent as well.
Re backing up to a 1tb drive that implies that there are small drives on the NAS box. Don't do it! You will run out of space if you use the NAS for backups and a local Cloud Station. Which you will want to do. When I bought a month ago, 6tb seemed to be the sweet spot for price. IIRC my WD Gold Ultrastars (HUS726T6TALE6L4) were about $200 each.
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10-16-2019, 11:11 AM
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#4
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: City
Posts: 10,337
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Another thought: To back up the NAS you don't need that external drive on the network. If you plug a USB SATA USB dock into the Synology box and just plug in a bare drive, the Synology box plus a few mouse clicks will do the backup for you. That's what I do and the bare drive lives in my fire-resistant gun safe.
Docks on eBay look to be under $20.
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10-16-2019, 01:15 PM
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#5
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Mid-Atlantic
Posts: 2,654
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I have a QNAP TS-451 and I'm quite happy with it. Before that I had a TS-409. I upgraded because I wanted to run a Plex server, and to handle the streaming and transcoding I needed a faster processor and more RAM. I've heard good things about Synology, though.
__________________
-Looking to FIRE in the mid-2020s, which would be our mid-50s.
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10-24-2019, 01:51 PM
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#6
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Chicagoland
Posts: 1,127
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Very timely thread for me as I am just getting started down this path.
I've pretty much decided on the Synology DS218+ with two Seagate IronWolf 4TB drives.
Is there any other hardware or software I need to get started?
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10-24-2019, 01:53 PM
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#7
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Moderator
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Flyover country
Posts: 25,199
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CoolRich59
I've pretty much decided on the Synology DS218+ with two Seagate IronWolf 4TB drives.
Is there any other hardware or software I need to get started?
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No, that will take care of you. I also have the DS218+ and it has been great. You'll just pop the hard drives in the two bays, turn it on, and plug it into your router. IIRC, they even provide an Ethernet cable for that. Happy storage!
__________________
I thought growing old would take longer.
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10-24-2019, 02:15 PM
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#8
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: City
Posts: 10,337
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CoolRich59
Very timely thread for me as I am just getting started down this path.
I've pretty much decided on the Synology DS218+ with two Seagate IronWolf 4TB drives.
Is there any other hardware or software I need to get started?
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IMO you should be buying bigger drives. When I bought my second (DS218+) NAS a couple of months ago, the cost sweet spot was 6tb. Above that the cost started to rise sharply.
You will never regret having too much disk space the way you will regret finding that you have too little.
As @braumeister says, it's pretty much plug and play. Once you are on the air I'd encourage you to spend some time studying the various tools that Synology includes. IMO Cloud Station is particularly useful.
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10-24-2019, 02:51 PM
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#9
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Chicagoland
Posts: 1,127
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OldShooter
IMO you should be buying bigger drives. When I bought my second (DS218+) NAS a couple of months ago, the cost sweet spot was 6tb. Above that the cost started to rise sharply.
You will never regret having too much disk space the way you will regret finding that you have too little.
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Thanks. I agree with you but thought I was in good shape with the 4TB drives.
I checked all our devices and we have just less than 1TB in docs, photos and music (920GB). I read that a good rule of thumb for capacity is to double your current size then round up to the next size drive.
Based on that, I was looking at 3TB drives. They are $90 on Amazon and Newegg. But, the 4TB drive is only $10 more which I why I chose it even thought I think it's more space than I will need for the foreseeable future.
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10-24-2019, 03:10 PM
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#10
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 3,594
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I have been satisfied with my roll-my-own solution with open-source XigmaNAS (formerly NAS4free (formerly FreeNAS) ) system.
I have a compact Dell Optiplex GX270 serving as the hardware from ~15 years ago and I use two external portable (2.5") USB drives in a Raid 1 (mirroring) configuration. I upgrade the hard drives every couple of years or so.
-gauss
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10-24-2019, 03:56 PM
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#11
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Mid-Atlantic
Posts: 2,654
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CoolRich59
Thanks. I agree with you but thought I was in good shape with the 4TB drives.
I checked all our devices and we have just less than 1TB in docs, photos and music (920GB). I read that a good rule of thumb for capacity is to double your current size then round up to the next size drive.
Based on that, I was looking at 3TB drives. They are $90 on Amazon and Newegg. But, the 4TB drive is only $10 more which I why I chose it even thought I think it's more space than I will need for the foreseeable future.
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If you're ever going to use it as a media server, you'll need more space. I currently have about 3TB of video on mine, and I didn't even rip all my movies; most of that is SD TV shows. And I use RAID 10, because I've already had one failure where I had to re-rip everything.
__________________
-Looking to FIRE in the mid-2020s, which would be our mid-50s.
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10-24-2019, 04:18 PM
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#12
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: City
Posts: 10,337
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All I can say is that my rule of thumb for drives is to buy as much space as I reasonably can. My DS212+ spec said its max was 2x3tb, so that's what I bought. They filled in about three years, hence my second NAS.
This is one of those decisions where the consequences of a mistake are very asymmetric. Buy too much and you've unnecessarily spent a small amount of money. Buy too little and eventually there will be a day or more of grief plus spending of much more money.
One thing to know: Cloud Station keeps older versions of files as backups when the file is updated. IIRC the default is 24 revisions. This nifty feature eats disk space. I have revised my setup to save only 2 files but that's still 3x file storage space. Cloud Station Backup does more or less the same.
Good luck! You're going to like your new box.
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10-24-2019, 07:51 PM
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#14
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Chicagoland
Posts: 1,127
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Thanks everyone. I really appreciate your insights. I'm looking forward to moving forward with this.
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11-01-2019, 07:51 PM
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#15
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: On a hill in the Pine Barrens
Posts: 9,686
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Many QNAP NAS have been hit with significant malware.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/thousa...natch-malware/
ANother device to watch and protect...
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11-02-2019, 06:17 AM
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#16
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Beach and Mountain
Posts: 1,087
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OP here. About a week ago, I bought the Synology DS718+ with 2 Iron Wolf Pro 4TB drives (mirror) and upgraded 4GB memory. Why DS718+ vs DS218+? The CPU is a quad core. Total of about $700.
Have transferred all data from old Lacie NAS to new Synology NAS. Have added and begun playing with: DS Cloud, DS Photo, DS Audio, and Plex. All 3 DS's were easy to install and get working on cell phones. DW is happy. Plex was not so easy. It doesn't see the libraries. Have done a few searches. Also the Surveillance thing doesn't work with all of my cameras. I only have 2 licenses, anyhow. Will put those aside until my patience is built back up. I am sidetracked trying to get some old ipods, fitbits and the like to working.
As far as space, my old NAS had 2 TB, but I used 200 GB or 10%. Doubling that with the new NAS is more than enough. If I ripped movies, that would be different.
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12-27-2019, 09:03 AM
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#17
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Beach and Mountain
Posts: 1,087
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Reviving this old thread to give an update. Have worked on Plex and it seems to do the trick. Understanding how the libraries work was quite a learning curve. Getting used to different layouts on the Windows 10 app, vs the android app vs the Roku Channel took some time. Also, getting Alexa to play with Plex was easy but after a few songs, the music stops, even though the playlist is 200 songs.
Cameras not so much. The Surveillance thing will do many, many cameras, except 2 of my 4. I believe my oldest cameras are only about 4 years old - I have a Foscam, a D-link and 2 Phylinks. Newest ones are 1 to 2 years. The add camera manually thing didn't seem to work. I am kind of hazy as I tried this a month ago and gave up.
Have not done backup as most of my data is on my still functioning Lacie.
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12-27-2019, 09:16 AM
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#18
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Recycles dryer sheets
Join Date: Jan 2018
Posts: 186
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Plex is awesome
I really don't like the clutter of DVDs & CDs not to mention the ones you like always seem to get lost or damaged.
So Plex, to me, is awesome. I rip all the content to my NAS then donate the disc to Library or Senior Centers.
Also possible to purchase on-line but those tend to be more rental like Netflix or Amazon that can be not available later so I prefer to have my own Electronic library.
__________________
3 ish years to FIRE, mentally ready now!
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12-27-2019, 09:31 AM
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#19
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Mid-Atlantic
Posts: 2,654
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KenZ71
I really don't like the clutter of DVDs & CDs not to mention the ones you like always seem to get lost or damaged.
So Plex, to me, is awesome. I rip all the content to my NAS then donate the disc to Library or Senior Centers.
Also possible to purchase on-line but those tend to be more rental like Netflix or Amazon that can be not available later so I prefer to have my own Electronic library.
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I only ripped my TV shows on DVD/Blu-ray because the Netflix-like experience is so much better than switching discs multiple times per season when binge-watching. But we also have a 300-disc player that is big enough for all my movies that I don't own the streaming rights to, although maybe I should work on the movies, too. Thing is, I have trouble getting the extras to show up properly, and I like the movie extras. TV shows don't come with them as often, and when they do, I usually care less about those anyway.
__________________
-Looking to FIRE in the mid-2020s, which would be our mid-50s.
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12-27-2019, 12:05 PM
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#20
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Full time employment: Posting here.
Join Date: Jun 2017
Posts: 504
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Plex is ok, has some bugs that I’ve found. I just use my NAS like a hard drive and open the video like a file. Easier when running computer to computer but I didn’t want to deal with a handicapped mobile system running my media.
No issues with search or transcoding. Plex is nice for mobile devices though.
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