The Nas Owners Thread - A Place For All Things Nas Related

[Guest]

Okay time to jump on board and get myself a NAS, had a good chat with Matt today and he said Synology is pretty good, just wanting to start simple with maybe something that with take a couple of drives up to 6 to 8tb.......

will use the Oppo as my media player and just looking for something simplistic that I can copy my BR's to and playback without hassle along with some music about the only other thing it will be used for is to store some RAW photo images, no TV and I pretty much don't use the torrent sites.........

look forward to some suggestions please but once again let's use the K.I.S.S. theory..........

[Guest]

I bought one of these last month to add to the pile of nas's I run

http://www.estore.com.au/product/ntg000620

Will go up to 16 TB and is rock solid.

I have heard of synologies losing drive slots ... But never owned one.

Edited July 20, 2013 by Guest

[buddhamus]

Okay time to jump on board and get myself a NAS, had a good chat with Matt today and he said Synology is pretty good, just wanting to start simple with maybe something that with take a couple of drives up to 6 to 8tb.......

will use the Oppo as my media player and just looking for something simplistic that I can copy my BR's to and playback without hassle along with some music about the only other thing it will be used for is to store some RAW photo images, no TV and I pretty much don't use the torrent sites.........

look forward to some suggestions please but once again let's use the K.I.S.S. theory..........

Hey mate,

Macca350 and Kill3m got me onto a Synology...and I ****ing love it!...**** easy to setup and soooo bloody easy to use . Probably one of the best investments I have ever made going with digital media storage wise. Model is the DS2411+ it has 12 bays...but pretty sure it's discontinued. Im sure they have a newer model out for it.

You using your Oppo for media player?...Hmmm...I would of said look for a media player that doesn't have that dreaded cinavia protection crap enabled...but not sure if there are any available atm...since it's pretty wide spread. The Dune's are pretty popular....I use my Popcorn hour c200 and it's been a dream to setup and plays everything I throw at it without any issues....or even build a HTPC.........which when done right can be freaking bloody awesome!!!...considering doing one myself since Ive seen a few guys here wanting to tackle projects of thier own.....nudge nudge Minty/Blade hahaha

Either way, going a NAS for your setup will be awesome..........so freaking easy to navigate from movie to movie and have all full DTS HDMA/True HD tracks on them. Made my life **** easy lol.

Edited July 20, 2013 by buddhamus

[buddhamus]

I bought one of these last month to add to the pile of nas's I run

http://www.estore.co...oduct/ntg000620

Will go up to 16 TB and is rock solid.

I have heard of synologies losing drive slots ... But never owned one.

I have had mine for 2 years now running 24/7...and it hasn't missed a beat

Edited July 20, 2013 by buddhamus

[GETREAL]

Subscribed. Ready to jump on board aswell and have very little clue on how it all works.....

[figjam]

I have been running a Netgear ReadyNAS RND2000 Duo with a couple of 2TB drives striped for about 6 months now. Has been rock solid. A good unit if you just want to start with a simple setup.

http://www.shoppingexpress.com.au/buy/netgear-readynas-rnd2000-duo-diskless-network-attached-storage-nas/RND2000-200AJS

[lonewolf1503560131]

If you are serious about NAS drives and dont want to build your own (its pretty cheap to build your ownbut involves a lot more work and know how..you can use free software like FreeNAS for the Raid OS part of the build). Then go get a Thecus or a Qnap NAS box. I wouldnt really get a Dlink, Netgear etc. Dont get me wrong, they are good for the price...and work and everything but are more of a lower end / cheaper solution. And judging by your spend on AV equipment, i figured you would be after a more trustworthy and more higher end brand?

I would get at least a 4 bay one and run it in Raid 5. But it depends what you wanted out of your NAS box?

Edited July 20, 2013 by lonewolf

[lonewolf1503560131]

If you were looking for a cheaper alternative, i would look at Buffalo, they make goo dhardware and have excellent firmware support. The amount of updates released is the best i have seen on any IT gear thus far and I work in IT.

[icker.p]

I am currently investigating a NAS set-up for my new house. I am thinking pretty well along the same lines as Yorac. I currently have an old WD mybook world edition, which does the job, but is pretty slow.

I have been looking at a number of NAS drives currently on the market and am currently think of going the Netgear RN314. It looks to have the features I want including a PLEX server, and a bit more RAM than the equivalent QNAP or Synology units. And the performance looks similar for about 80% the cost.

http://www.estore.co...product/ntg0022

Edited July 20, 2013 by icker.p

[Guest]

I have a couple of WD Live drives (6tb duo and 3tb) they are also a quick and easy out of the box solution but are limited when it comes to upgrading.

[Guest]

Netgear etc. Dont get me wrong, they are good for the price...and work and everything but are more of a lower end / cheaper solution.

That's curious ... I would have described them as more of a home office solution ... I have a 4 bay Nv+ and the new 4 bay 10400 and they are built like tanks .... They are great value, but I would never describe them as cheap ... Have you had any actual experience with one Lonewolf?

[Guest]

That's curious ... I would have described them as more of a home office solution ... I have a 4 bay Nv+ and the new 4 bay 10400 and they are built like tanks .... They are great value, but I would never describe them as cheap ... Have you had any actual experience with one Lonewolf?

I nearly went Buffalo or synology with the last one but after reading a lot of online reviews opted with netgear as a known, reliable quantity for me.

I suspect those complaining about lost drive slots have been too rough when changing drives ... Something I have never needed to do as I max them out capacity wise when I build them.

Edited July 20, 2013 by Guest

[icker.p]

Hey Chopsus, How do you find the 10400. I was originally looking at this model but read a few reviews that stated it was a bit slow when writing a large number of files to it. (which I do a bit when downloading photos). So this is what made me look at the 31400, it looks like it almost doubles the performance of the 10400.

[Guest]

Thanks guys, pretty much as stated first up I want to keep it as simple, basic and user friendly as possible, I imagine me being me that will change not so far into the future once I get a better handle on it.......

[icker.p]

You probably can't go too far wrong with any of the QNAP, Synology, Netgear or even Lacie NAS drives for your first NAS. But I would steer away from the smaller "Home" NAS drives like the WD live, as they are a bit clunky.

My WD is about 5-6 years old now and the administration page of it drives me nuts, it is so slow. I'm sure all the newer ones are much more responsive now. Even so, it was very easy to setup and configure. So I don't think you will have any problems.

Edited July 21, 2013 by icker.p

[pmunger]

I reccomend Synology also. Have been running a 10 bay DS1511+ (5 bay + 5 bay expansion) for a year or so without any issues. Web based user interface is really good, and no problems streaming to my Oppo 93. I stream video and FLAC audio.

Be careful of the drives that you use in the NAS (any brand) - some hard drives can have issues with RAID arrays. I have used he Western Digital RED drives that are designed for NAS application.

The Synology devices has a LOT of other functionalitiy as well.

I have just set up a DS412+ 4 bay unit for a customer and it works well - Cost with 4 WD RED 2TB drives (for 6GB protected storage) is about $1300

[MACCA350]

Yeah, love my Synology 2411+. Running 24/7 with hibernation active.

Would definitely suggest at least one drive redundancy. My older Seagate 2TB Greens seem to get kicked earlier than they should. Actually had a problem with the board(replaced under warranty) which seemed to be the cause of kicked drives. Since then only had one of them kicked during a Plex processing task. The WD 3TB Red drives have been perfect, they run quieter and have never been kicked. Iirc the reds have some kind of error detection and correction built into the drives firmware, the Nas software should be oblivious to this so should reduce kicks on any Nas.

SHR(Synology Hybrid Raid) works well and allows full use of additional drives which are larger than the initial drives(installed in pairs). Standard raid ignores the higher capacity of larger added drives, ie start with 2TB and you're limited to it unless you backup and restart from scratch with larger drives. SHR has allowed me to start off with 2TB drives and add 3TB drives along the way, will likely add 5TB drives next year as drives fill up. When all 12 bays are full I'll start replacing the 2TB drives with larger ones(maybe 6 or 8TB by then).

Setup is simple, load your drives and connect it to your network. Install the Assistant on a computer, run it and follow the onscreen step by step instructions. There's a few great apps including a surveillance app when paired with ip cameras, cloud service, Plex, antivirus, audio/video/photo station (great apps for streaming audio/video/photo to mobile devices) and various backup apps to name a few.

Our DS2411+ serves a Dune HD Smart, WD Live, 3x MacBooks, 3x PC's, 2x iPads, 4x iPhones, an iPod touch and 2x SONOS devices. Quite often it's streaming video/audio to multiple devices and it's never skipped a beat.

Synology are always updating the software adding features and compatibility with new hardware(drives etc) and updating and adding new apps.

Tried a Thecus prior to the Synology but didn't like it, clunky software and continually kicked drives.

I haven't tried any other major brand but don't think I ever will. Synology just keep improving this model with software updates and added features even though it's a 2 years old and discontinued product.

Try and work out how much space your after then double it at least, it's always better to go bigger if you can afford it. When I bought the 2411+ it was about half the price of other Nas's with similar capacity.

Also Synology have expansion units. If I ran out of space I could double the 2411+ capacity with the DX1211 and go from 12 to 24 bays. The expansion units can also be used as a backup for the Nas.

Something like the 5 bay DS1513+ can scale up to 15 bay with 2x DX513 expansion units. Although the cost of the DS1513+ and just one DX513 for 10 bays is on par with the DS2411+ with 12 bays. If you think you wouldn't need more than 5 bays go the 1513+ knowing that if the unexpected happens you can always expand.

Also remember that you'll have one less drive of usable space if you use one drive redundancy. And 3TB drives have 2.73TB usable space when loaded. So a 5 bay will will have just under 11TB usable space.

Also you can have a hot spare, which means you can have one of the drives as a backup incase one drive gets kicked. This is useful because the volume(your data) is vulnerable when a drive is kicked and swapping it will start a rebuild of the data. Data rebuilding can take a long time(a day or so) and in this time if another drive(assuming one drive redundancy) is kicked you've lost all your data. The hot spare basically becomes a second redundancy in the unlikely event that a second drive is kicked while the swapped drive is being rebuilt. Though I'm not sure how much a hot spare differs from selecting two disc redundancy in the SHR setup.

But you have to weigh up your risk vs how much storage space you're willing to sacrifice for redundancy. It's unlikely two drives will be kicked so one drive redundancy is a good compromise.

Just remember that redundancy is no replacement for having a backup of your data. In the event of total system failure, redundancy won't help. Though depending on the failure you can pull the drives, replace the Nas, plug your drives into the replacement and (following instructions) have your data available again without restoring from backups. The best form of backup is off site to insure against house fire or other data loss disaster.

Cheers

Edited July 21, 2013 by MACCA350

[minty]

Hmmmmmm, with my eyes glazed over, a new respect for my wife and her coping mechanisms when I try to explain tech stuff to her, and Yorac's KISS request blown to smitherines, I reckon now is a good time to go and smash a bucket full of Titleists. Lol.

Edited July 21, 2013 by minty

[Guest]

Hey Chopsus, How do you find the 10400. I was originally looking at this model but read a few reviews that stated it was a bit slow when writing a large number of files to it. (which I do a bit when downloading photos). So this is what made me look at the 31400, it looks like it almost doubles the performance of the 10400.

It took about 36 hours to transfer 6 TB when I set it up. It does have two Gb ethernet sockets and I haven't explored if these are able to be purposed to increase transfer speed ... I was in no hurry as this is really a redundancy/back mechanism for all the others (NV+ and 2 WD Live Drives) .. as for streaming media use I've had it streaming to two ipads, the Dune HD and a laptop simultaneously without any problems.

If you are moving HUGE files it might be a PIA, but anything 12 gig or smaller (ie: unpacking downloaded material to) it isn't a drama.

[Guest]

You probably can't go too far wrong with any of the QNAP, Synology, Netgear or even Lacie NAS drives for your first NAS. But I would steer away from the smaller "Home" NAS drives like the WD live, as they are a bit clunky.

My WD is about 5-6 years old now and the administration page of it drives me nuts, it is so slow. I'm sure all the newer ones are much more responsive now. Even so, it was very easy to setup and configure. So I don't think you will have any problems.

Agree 100% but if yorac simply wants to setup a share, dump files on it and watch from there, the the WD Live drives are about as simple as you can get ... it;s when you want to upgrade or fiddle that their interface and abortive linux becomes a bloody black science!

I agree with Macca's approach ... but there is a big difference between a 4 bay netgear ($325 + 4 x 3tb drives $600) and a 5 bay synology @ $960 without any drives in it yet.

Having said that ... if I was starting down this path now that is exactly how I would go as these things simply keep filling up!

Edited July 21, 2013 by Guest

[Serentity]

We have the Synology DS412+ Four bay unit runs 24/7 Nill issues.

Whatever NAS you get I recommend WD Red HDD's great warranty and they last.

[Guest]

Yeah, love my Synology 2411+. Running 24/7 with hibernation active.

Would definitely suggest at least one drive redundancy. My older Seagate 2TB Greens seem to get kicked earlier than they should. Actually had a problem with the board(replaced under warranty) which seemed to be the cause of kicked drives. Since then only had one of them kicked during a Plex processing task. The WD 3TB Red drives have been perfect, they run quieter and have never been kicked. Iirc the reds have some kind of error detection and correction built into the drives firmware, the Nas software should be oblivious to this so should reduce kicks on any Nas.

SHR(Synology Hybrid Raid) works well and allows full use of additional drives which are larger than the initial drives(installed in pairs). Standard raid ignores the higher capacity of larger added drives, ie start with 2TB and you're limited to it unless you backup and restart from scratch with larger drives. SHR has allowed me to start off with 2TB drives and add 3TB drives along the way, will likely add 5TB drives next year as drives fill up. When all 12 bays are full I'll start replacing the 2TB drives with larger ones(maybe 6 or 8TB by then).

Setup is simple, load your drives and connect it to your network. Install the Assistant on a computer, run it and follow the onscreen step by step instructions. There's a few great apps including a surveillance app when paired with ip cameras, cloud service, Plex, antivirus, audio/video/photo station (great apps for streaming audio/video/photo to mobile devices) and various backup apps to name a few.

Our DS2411+ serves a Dune HD Smart, WD Live, 3x MacBooks, 3x PC's, 2x iPads, 4x iPhones, an iPod touch and 2x SONOS devices. Quite often it's streaming video/audio to multiple devices and it's never skipped a beat.

Synology are always updating the software adding features and compatibility with new hardware(drives etc) and updating and adding new apps.

Tried a Thecus prior to the Synology but didn't like it, clunky software and continually kicked drives.

I haven't tried any other major brand but don't think I ever will. Synology just keep improving this model with software updates and added features even though it's a 2 years old and discontinued product.

Try and work out how much space your after then double it at least, it's always better to go bigger if you can afford it. When I bought the 2411+ it was about half the price of other Nas's with similar capacity.

Also Synology have expansion units. If I ran out of space I could double the 2411+ capacity with the DX1211 and go from 12 to 24 bays. The expansion units can also be used as a backup for the Nas.

Something like the 5 bay DS1513+ can scale up to 15 bay with 2x DX513 expansion units. Although the cost of the DS1513+ and just one DX513 for 10 bays is on par with the DS2411+ with 12 bays. If you think you wouldn't need more than 5 bays go the 1513+ knowing that if the unexpected happens you can always expand.

Also remember that you'll have one less drive of usable space if you use one drive redundancy. And 3TB drives have 2.73TB usable space when loaded. So a 5 bay will will have just under 11TB usable space.

Also you can have a hot spare, which means you can have one of the drives as a backup incase one drive gets kicked. This is useful because the volume(your data) is vulnerable when a drive is kicked and swapping it will start a rebuild of the data. Data rebuilding can take a long time(a day or so) and in this time if another drive(assuming one drive redundancy) is kicked you've lost all your data. The hot spare basically becomes a second redundancy in the unlikely event that a second drive is kicked while the swapped drive is being rebuilt. Though I'm not sure how much a hot spare differs from selecting two disc redundancy in the SHR setup.

But you have to weigh up your risk vs how much storage space you're willing to sacrifice for redundancy. It's unlikely two drives will be kicked so one drive redundancy is a good compromise.

Just remember that redundancy is no replacement for having a backup of your data. In the event of total system failure, redundancy won't help. Though depending on the failure you can pull the drives, replace the Nas, plug your drives into the replacement and (following instructions) have your data available again without restoring from backups. The best form of backup is off site to insure against house fire or other data loss disaster.

Cheers

English dude, English...........

[Guest]

Actually the DS1813 (8 Bay) isn;t that much more expensive and is expandable with the same 5 bay add ons ....

[com59841503560232]

Qnap for me, no issues at all

[buddhamus]

English dude, English...........

We will talk to you in person at the GTG lol, your not going to buy this in the next week are you?....Can explain stuff better in person I think. If you ever need a hand setting it up me and Macca can come around and give you a hand mate. I love doing that stuff

AND PLEASE FOR GODS SAKE....WHATEVER NAS YOU USE....Do not get the WD Green drives, they are riddled with problems and the most unstable pieces of **** I have ever used, period!!!........had 3 of them die within one year on my computer....I never even thought about putting them in my NAS!. So many people had problems with them. I use Hitachi drives which are rated for 24/7 use and build quality is fantastic *they are more expensive tho*...Kill3m uses them in his setup.

Edited July 21, 2013 by buddhamus