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It's the NAS (Network Attached Storage) Thread, yo.
- Thread starter Jill Sandwich
- Start date
Splash Wave
Member
Can someone explain to me what a NAS is, exactly? I'm looking for a box I can plug into my receiver and play all of my music and movies from. Would a NAS fit the bill? I'm basically trying to cut my laptop out of the equation, as I hate always keeping it by my TV.
Jezbollah
Member
NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. It's a device that contains storage that allows other devices to connect to it and access the storage based upon certain protocols. If your TV supports DNLA connectivity then you would be able to stream media directly from the NAS to your TV. A lot of us prefer a more elegant solution such as Plex though
Splash Wave
Member
NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. It's a device that contains storage that allows other devices to connect to it and access the storage based upon certain protocols. If your TV supports DNLA connectivity then you would be able to stream media directly from the NAS to your TV. A lot of us prefer a more elegant solution such as Plex though
Here's the dream setup: I have the NAS plugged in to my receiver via HDMI, and from there I can enjoy my entire music and video library. Having it plugged in to my router will allow me to add files to the NAS remotely--does that sound about right?
A QNAP NAS can probably do that due to HDMI out.
Otherwise, you're probably looking for an HTPC with Plex installed. You could store the media on the HTPC, or you could also have a separate NAS on the network that the HTPC pulls the media from.
Any one have a guide for enabling two factor authenication through SSH for synology? All I found was this guide on the synology forum http://blog.niemetz.it/synology-ds716-google-authenticator-fuer-ssh-einrichten/
Or go for a NAS and get an Raspberry Pi with kodi on it as your player. I run Plex on my DS916+ and it had been up for most transcoding jobs so far (do note that I don't have much media with very high bitrates). I keep my media in h.264 video and aac audio so it pretty much plays anywhere. For players I have a Samsung TV with the Plex app on it (plays pretty much everything), and my other TV has an rpi3 with kodi with the official plex plug-in, has been working like a charm.
Marty Chinn
Member
From what I understand, a Raspberry Pi isn't a good NAS device anyway since it's bandwidth constrained.
It basically made for a totally free NAS that didn't draw a lot of power. Also I wasn't doing anything intense with it. The only time the NAS would struggle in my case was when streaming 1080p video
This... Kodi is great, and it works really well. I tried different solutions, but a kernel-mounted sshfs for videos in my QNAP NAS did wonders for me, and I can keep the NAS in another room to avoid noise. I usually use an HTPC instead of a RasPi, though, but not because my RasPi doesn't do the job.
(For audio, QNAP have a package for squeezecenter, so I have Squeezebox devices all over the house. Love it, I wish they didn't drop the ball on the Squeezebox line :/ )
Hi! There's a lot of info in this thread and I've possibly posted in here before but ended up sticking with my current setup, which I think I'd like to replace.
I've got a dated Windows box that makes far too much noise that I'd like to replace with a NAS, doing the typical NAS things (sabnzb, plex media server, maybe also a shared backup drive). Generally if I'm using Plex/Kodi to load stuff that's on the Windows machine I'm just playing it off a FireTV on the same network - though opening up the options for transcoding to other devices is something I'm considering.
Given that I'm used to just stretching the limits of external USB drives until they break, it's time to finally move to a NAS setup for some redundancy. I think I don't want to go beyond a 4-drive setup looking at the cost of everything. I'm considering QNAP, Synology, and while I haven't really done much linux work, I do work in IT, so I'm not averse to building my own and spending a day to figure out how to get things setup with FreeNAS, if it's possible to build something small/quiet. Anyone have any advice?
I've got a dated Windows box that makes far too much noise that I'd like to replace with a NAS, doing the typical NAS things (sabnzb, plex media server, maybe also a shared backup drive). Generally if I'm using Plex/Kodi to load stuff that's on the Windows machine I'm just playing it off a FireTV on the same network - though opening up the options for transcoding to other devices is something I'm considering.
Given that I'm used to just stretching the limits of external USB drives until they break, it's time to finally move to a NAS setup for some redundancy. I think I don't want to go beyond a 4-drive setup looking at the cost of everything. I'm considering QNAP, Synology, and while I haven't really done much linux work, I do work in IT, so I'm not averse to building my own and spending a day to figure out how to get things setup with FreeNAS, if it's possible to build something small/quiet. Anyone have any advice?
Yup, unless you want to build a collection with 4K video and have a lot of HVEC-encoded media, the RPI3 with libreelec+kodi will work wonders. Just mount your NAS and youre set. Plex is only 'necessary' if you want to watch and/or share your media on a multitude of devices.
Every time I need to do any kind of maintenance to my unraid box it makes me wish I'd just bought a synology or other premade system. I powered down as I was having some work done on the electricity supply, and when I powered up, Sabnzbd was gone. I tried reinstalling the plugin but apparantly it isn't supported any more. I'm on version 5 and now they're on version 6. Even if I do upgrade (not a fan - if its working its working), I still have to use 'dockers' which don't sound super simple to manage.
I bought a separate micro PC to run plex server so if I can't get it working I'll just put Sabnzbd on that - but then I'll have to figure out how to recreate all the post-processing stuff..meh
I bought a separate micro PC to run plex server so if I can't get it working I'll just put Sabnzbd on that - but then I'll have to figure out how to recreate all the post-processing stuff..meh
I long considered building something myself. It's not really the 'cheapest' option but odds are you can build a more powerful NAS for the same money you would spend on a prebuild Qnap/Syno. You might want to take that in account if you really want to do a lot of transcoding; you`ll probably want to invest in system with an i5; or something similar. Also take power-draw in account. A simple NAS for storage only + a NUC-like system is also a very solid option.
That said, I ended up with the Synology DS916+ with 8gb of RAM. My arguments were that it's a relatively powerful NAS, the Syno community is great, and to be honest, I just couldnt be bothered to invest a lot of time in researching things. I use it with Plex Media Server. The NAS has a Celeron, it's not that powerful but its transcoding capabilities is good enough for my needs (an occasional 1080p stream). Most important part is that your media is in a format that works well with your clients (or vice-versa). Also, Plex is working on hardware-transcoding, but this is still in an early beta so I wouldnt count on that too much, if they push through with it it will probably take another 6 months to a year to get it working everywhere.
Yeah, pretty much. Ss of now; the hardware transcoding is only supported by Synology's own software (DS Video); which is a bit of a Plex-ripoff. Plex, if they push through their hardware transcoding efforts, will only support Haswell era and later regarding CPUs on Linux. The DS916+ is from the Brasswell era (and is confirmed to work in the current beta), the 1515+'s Atom doesnt have any integrated graphics I believe and will not support any hardware transcoding at all.
Also, you can expand the DS916+ with the DX513 expansion; you can expand the DS1515+ with two DX513 expansions (That's what the first number is with Synology's model numbers; the total amount of supported drives, followed by release year, and + means 'performance').
Dang I guess I'll forgo the hardware encoding then. I'd like both, but having 5 drive slots is much better with SMR2.
This is all very helpful, thanks for the response. I'm not entirely sure if I want to go with the 916+ considering I'd have to use Synology's software to make use of the transcoding, and if I don't care about transcoding then is it really worth getting the 916+... Hmm...
Is it necessary to get NAS-ready storage (WD Reds?) these days? Trying to calculate how much the total cost for this is going to be. I'd probably start with just two drives but I still would want a four-bay for future expansion.
Hello NASGaf!
I'm in the market for a Flex ATX PSU. I wonder if you guys have any experience in regards to noise that these units make from its fan. From my experience, those 40mm fans which are normally used in 1U rackmounts are screamers.
Here's a couple of options from a quick newegg browse:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...=flex_atx_power_supply-_-17-104-195-_-Product
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...x_atx_power_supply-_-1HU-008G-00021-_-Product
I'm in the market for a Flex ATX PSU. I wonder if you guys have any experience in regards to noise that these units make from its fan. From my experience, those 40mm fans which are normally used in 1U rackmounts are screamers.
Here's a couple of options from a quick newegg browse:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...=flex_atx_power_supply-_-17-104-195-_-Product
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...x_atx_power_supply-_-1HU-008G-00021-_-Product
j_k_redtail
Member
Synology supports Time Machine. You can get one of the low end models (*J series) and toss a few drives in it. DS416j or DS216j will suit you nicely.
Great thanks. Type of drives what you recommend? When I was a PC gamer many years ago I used to always buy Western Digital.
Last time I checked (half a year ago), Hitachi were still top-tier (but rare), Samsung were great, WD were quite good, Seagate a bit less reliable.
Though it depends on the series, the capacity...
If you want the NAS to be on 24/7, it can be useful to look into "pro" discs, designed for 24/7 (discs sold as "NAS" discs aren't always the best idea, btw)
Also, should you want run a RAID array with redondancy to avoid data loss, it's interesting to have similar discs for performances, but try avoid buying two discs that have been produced close from each other... Buying them in two different shops can be a good idea, even if it's annoying.
And remember: RAID 1 IS NOT RELIABLE. Often, you'll be able to repair the second disc when the first fail, and it's handy with NAS (remove broken disc, insert new one, wait a couple hours, and you're ready to go, you don't even have to reboot). But quite often, both will fail at about the same time (for different reasons, including strange choice of configuration for virtually all NAS, including pro ones) Still do backups if you value your data.
Well, if you're talking about Time Machine, the NAS is possibly your backup...
That's interesting. Why wouldn't you want to buy a pair of the same drives from the same shop? Incase there is a manufacturer defect in the same batch?
D
Deleted member 12837
Unconfirmed Member
Do you know if it supports encrypted Time Machine backups? If so, would I have to encrypt everything on the Synology, or could I just restrict it to the space reserved for Time Machine?
j_k_redtail
Member
I use 4xWD Reds and have never had an issue. The oldest drive in the array is almost three years old.
That said -- I'd concur with Koren. The brand doesn't matter so much, but the key is having the right type of redundancy set up. Get 2+ drives and use Synology Hybrid Raid to combine them as a disk group, which you can then subdivide into volumes. SHR is software RAID - it can tolerate the failure of one drive without losing data. Even better, I'd suggest a four-bay model. Just try to avoid low power drives (like WD Greens) because apparently the frequent spinning-up / spinning-down can cause wear.
Sorry I can't help with that - I'm not super-familiar with the mac ecosystem and with Time Machine. But I'm sure someone has tried it online.
Sir Abacus
Member
I actually had one break on me once. It was in a RAID 5 so no biggie.
Western Digital advance shipped me the drive overnight, generated a prepaid UPS shipping label for me to send the old drive back with and they didn't charge me a cent.
Even if the drives break the RMA process is painless.
I know WD Reds have been recommended, but I also love HGST NAS drives. They have been super reliable for me.
I recently bought a Synology 1817+ and a bunch of WD Red 8TB drives. I currently have 6 of the Red drives, plus a pair of old Intel 180GB SSD's as cache. The spinners are setup with SHR2.
Now I'm on the slippery slope of wishing I had better network performance, so I'm looking at adding a 10G NIC to the NAS and upgrading my switch, plus associated NICs in my 2 desktop machines. Ouch.
Going with SFP+ is a lot cheaper it looks, but can't help but think that Ethernet will win out in the end.
Now I'm on the slippery slope of wishing I had better network performance, so I'm looking at adding a 10G NIC to the NAS and upgrading my switch, plus associated NICs in my 2 desktop machines. Ouch.
Going with SFP+ is a lot cheaper it looks, but can't help but think that Ethernet will win out in the end.
Marty Chinn
Member
How much did you get the Red 8TB drives for? I'm about to do a major expansion on my Synology, but I'm having a hard time trying to justify using 8TB drives because it's going to take me four 8TB drives before I see any gains from those drives and once I go to 8TB drives, I can never put something smaller than 8TB in the system again. The cost of four 8TB drives just seems overwhelming right now.
Best Buy has been running a sale on an external WD unit that has been shown to contain 8TB WD Reds 100%. Initially they were 128MB cache units, and recently a few with 256MB cache have shown up. The process of shucking the cases is pretty well documented, so it's not too tough. I broke clips on my first unit but they were easy after that. The thought being if you have a warranty issue down the road, you should keep the casing. I kept the outer shell for 3 and the inner piece with the serial number info for all. I just tossed it into my Synology box.
You'll get a 2 year warranty on the externals at $180 per drive this way.
This is the drive: Linky
It's been going on/off sale for weeks. I'm sending you a PM with additional info.
Valkyr Junkie
Member
If you're adventurous, you can do some research and find out which of the 8TB WD external drives are likely to carry red drives inside if you tear them down. They've recently been going on sale for $180 which is obviously a massive savings compared to purchasing them outright. The downside is that it's a gamble on if you get a red drive or not (even though the odds seem to be pretty good), and you won't have a warranty on the one PC component you're most likely to need a warranty on.
edit: beaten
Marty Chinn
Member
Oh wow, I had no idea they were putting Red drives in external cases. I'm going to have to keep my eye out for that. $180 is way easier to stomach.
Right now I'm looking at $460 for a Synology expansion bay before I can even add more storage, and then looking at four drives at $130, or $520 to add 16TB more storage seemed a much more appealing price point than having to dish out $280 per 8TB drive, or another $1120. At $180 per drive, that seems like a no brainer to go with 8TB.
Yes, it's not uncommon that discs from the same batch suffer similar failures, apparently (I'll trust people that uses a lot of discs for business on this, though)
I've read bad things about Reds... I wish I could find HGST NAS drives (or any HGST drives, for that matter), but they're definitively not common, even online.
I've used Constellation ES drives from Seagate back in 2011, I've switched for Western Digital RE (RAID Edition), used in business for servers/recording, and I'm really happy with those...
Now, if I could get a 4-discs RAID array of 8TB discs, I would be really happy. Still far too expensive for me :/ (even the 4-slots NAS)
That's interesting... Maybe I should stop being paranoïd and stop using RE discs... A 8To RE is about $500 here, I believe.
It's pretty painful to have mass storage sometimes. I had a many years old server with 9 2TB drives in it. I just swapped to the Synology NAS with the 6 Reds. The NAS was around $850 or so... not going to even total everything up with drives.
I almost just decided to blow a bunch of stuff away but it's all such a time investment.
I don't doubt that you'll find some debate somewhere, but I believe that the current WD Red 8TB drives are essentially HGST Helium drives.
I ordered a DS216J and WD Red 3TB drives. Looking forward to setting this all up on my home LAN with Time Machine on the clients. Seems as if SHR is a better choice than Raid1 if a drive fails in the future and I decide to replace it with a different size drive. Neat stuff.
I started experiencing this on all of my Macbooks on the LAN so I applied this 'hack' and TM has been backing up on all of them flawlessly ever since.
https://superuser.com/questions/300...nect-to-network-share-after-nas-was-turned-of
AFP seemed to work at first try and never tried SMB. Not sure of any pro's or con's of using either.
https://superuser.com/questions/300...nect-to-network-share-after-nas-was-turned-of
AFP seemed to work at first try and never tried SMB. Not sure of any pro's or con's of using either.
Zepp Twofist
Member
I don't think there are any benefits to using smb other than Windows compatibility.
NekoFever
Member
Probably long-term support, if that matters. Macs have defaulted to SMB since Mavericks in 2013 and it's officially depreciated with AFPS (i.e. you can't share an APFS-formatted drive over AFP), which is the default file system in High Sierra. So I doubt the protocol is long for this world.
Anton Sugar
Member
Okay, I'm new to this, so let me know if this sounds bad.
I do video editing and really need to up my total redundant storage. I was going to do this:
4x3tb drive in enclosure using RAID 10, which is backed up to another 4x3tb enclosure via CrashPlan.
Does this make sense? I assume I should also put the other enclosure in a RAID 10 but I've never really done anything like this. I mean, it's a simple backup from one "drive" to another, I guess, but I've never done it at this capacity.
CrashPlan will also back these drives up online, as well. I'm not sure which one to point it at to upload/backup, either.
EDIT: Well, read this: http://wolfcrow.com/blog/which-is-t...oduction-part-three-number-soup-for-the-soul/
I respect this guy's opinions on other stuff, so I may go with one enclosure in RAID0 backed up to another RAID0 enclosure via CrashPlan. Also have that first drive being backed up to CrashPlan Central online.
I do video editing and really need to up my total redundant storage. I was going to do this:
4x3tb drive in enclosure using RAID 10, which is backed up to another 4x3tb enclosure via CrashPlan.
Does this make sense? I assume I should also put the other enclosure in a RAID 10 but I've never really done anything like this. I mean, it's a simple backup from one "drive" to another, I guess, but I've never done it at this capacity.
CrashPlan will also back these drives up online, as well. I'm not sure which one to point it at to upload/backup, either.
EDIT: Well, read this: http://wolfcrow.com/blog/which-is-t...oduction-part-three-number-soup-for-the-soul/
I respect this guy's opinions on other stuff, so I may go with one enclosure in RAID0 backed up to another RAID0 enclosure via CrashPlan. Also have that first drive being backed up to CrashPlan Central online.
Looking for some guidance as I'm new to this.
I had purchase 2 of the WD 8tb Easystore that I am planning to schuck. Looking for a NAS solution that I am planning to buy 2 more of the 8tb (total of 4 8tb drives) but would like redundancy if one of the drives fail. Also as well, planning to setup a NAS to use Plex with the Nvidia Shield in the near future.
Any suggestions on how to go about?
I had purchase 2 of the WD 8tb Easystore that I am planning to schuck. Looking for a NAS solution that I am planning to buy 2 more of the 8tb (total of 4 8tb drives) but would like redundancy if one of the drives fail. Also as well, planning to setup a NAS to use Plex with the Nvidia Shield in the near future.
Any suggestions on how to go about?
CPU.. I think it's only supported on their Intel CPU models.
Marty Chinn
Member
Do you want to build your own or have something robust and ready to go? Budget? Plans for future expansion?
If their is a build I can follow, I wouldn't going mind going that route, as this will be my first time getting into this.
Budget is $400-$500 and plans for future expansion, just have the 2 8tb, looking to add 2 more 8tb for the time being and probably a couple years from now, adding a couple more 8tb if needs be.
I definitely would like to make sure I have some redundancy just in case one drives fail.
If you are going beyond 4 drives, you are probably going to have to build your own with that budget. I built mine for about 350 (i3+mobo+8g ram+case) for 6 drives support, before the cost of HDDs. FreeNAS is popular but I went with Drivepool+SnapRaid since I'm serving just a handful devices, not to 20 people.
How easy is it (or a tutorial) to setup FreeNas or Drivepool+SnapRaid?
I'm not an expert on FreeNAS. I'm sure others here can provide more help or look for tutorials online. My main problem with FreeNAS was the memory requirement seemed rather high.
As far as Drivepool goes (windows only), you just install the software, and add all your data drives (I don't include the boot drive) into the pool and voila you have a virtual drive that is a combination of all drives you included. And you should use this path for media sharing, etc.
Setting up SnapRaid is pretty quick. You dedicate X number of drives to store parity data depending on how many drive failure you want to protect against. These drives shouldn't be part of the data pool. Modify the example config file that comes with SnapRaid and run sync command. I had it up and running in 10 minutes. The main difference between this setup and real raid setup is that this isn't real time protection. It simply takes a snapshot whenever it runs. I have mine running every 8 hours or so, which to me is enough.
A quick overview of the steps: https://sourceforge.net/p/snapraid/discussion/1677233/thread/a223522f/#b72e