Choose my NAS

[joen270]

Needs:

-4+ bays
-less than $500 (not including disks of course)
-DLNA supported
-Streaming to my iPhone (while I'm at the gym, for example) WITHOUT having to subscribe to DNS services. I think some NAS' have mobile apps that allow you to connect to your home NAS and stream over the internet.

That is pretty much it. I read tons or reviews that stated that the Qnap's were way under powered and have horrible read/write speeds. Is this true? I currently have an Iomega 3TB NAS media server, cloud edition. It goofed up somewhere and I can only access data via FTP. Quickly accessing it via windows shares and drag n drop is absolutely necessary and more convenient as many of you will agree. Thanks for your input. I am eager to find something.

 

[stevech]

Needs:

-4+ bays
-less than $500 (not including disks of course)
-DLNA supported
-Streaming to my iPhone (while I'm at the gym, for example) WITHOUT having to subscribe to DNS services. I think some NAS' have mobile apps that allow you to connect to your home NAS and stream over the internet.

That is pretty much it. I read tons or reviews that stated that the Qnap's were way under powered and have horrible read/write speeds. Is this true? I currently have an Iomega 3TB NAS media server, cloud edition. It goofed up somewhere and I can only access data via FTP. Quickly accessing it via windows shares and drag n drop is absolutely necessary and more convenient as many of you will agree. Thanks for your input. I am eager to find something.

Synology can do this stuff, and probably QNAP too.
I elected to use a 2 bay non-RAID NAS. Been very pleased with it. And low cost to purchase, with BYOD.

NOTE though: streaming from your NAS across the Internet to your handheld - software is there to do that, but often, your upstream ISP speed isn't good enough. I think you need 2-3Mbps at least. Lots of DSL is less than 1Mbps. Low cost cable modem plans are 1Mbps or less up, though 15+ Mbps down.
At home, your LAN/WiFi is more than fast enough.

 

[joen270]

Synology can do this stuff, and probably QNAP too.
I elected to use a 2 bay non-RAID NAS. Been very pleased with it. And low cost to purchase, with BYOD.

NOTE though: streaming from your NAS across the Internet to your handheld - software is there to do that, but often, your upstream ISP speed isn't good enough. I think you need 2-3Mbps at least. Lots of DSL is less than 1Mbps. Low cost cable modem plans are 1Mbps or less up, though 15+ Mbps down.
At home, your LAN/WiFi is more than fast enough.

Thanks for the tip. I am not worried about bandwidth. I have Verizon Fios at 50megs symmetrical. I would hope that would be enough.

Any suggestions on which NAS I should go for?

 

[stevech]

QNAP or Synology. I favor the latter for consumers. I recommend you avoid the highly retail marketed NASes like Drobo, ReadyNAS, IoMega, Seagate, WesternDigital, LG, Buffalo. For me, it's all about the NAS software features and support long term.

It's important to understand the storage size you need (net yield), 2TB? 4TB? more?
I've had 2TB for years and it's not half full. A second 2TB is the time/version backup for the first 2TB (non-RAID).
I have a million files on the NAS but only a few hundred MB of photos (lots), and maybe 75GB of videos. I don't 'rip' videos to the NAS. I did some for a while but we almost never went back to see them again.

So you can spend way too much on a 4 bay or more. Certainly don't 4 bay just to enable RAID 5. That's really dumb IMO. RAID is not a backup is the mantra. There are far more likely ways to lose data than the failure of both drives in a 2-bay that isn't RAID.

 

[mervincm]

Qnap about to be released x51 series look good

 

[joen270]

Qnap about to be released x51 series look good

reading up on it now. Release date?

I currently have 3 Tb of data that I need to have stored. I was thinking 4-bay so I can populate each slot with a 3tb drive. I believe i read on a different forum that anything over 3tb is more likely to crash. any truth to that?

I am thinking long term and 12tb should be where I want to be.

 

[mdgm]

I currently have 3 Tb of data that I need to have stored. I was thinking 4-bay so I can populate each slot with a 3tb drive. I believe i read on a different forum that anything over 3tb is more likely to crash. any truth to that?

I am thinking long term and 12tb should be where I want to be.

Note that with RAID-5 and 4x3TB disks you would get a volume capacity of about 8.1 TB. However how long is long term? Eventually higher capacity disks will be a lot cheaper and you may even want a newer NAS, at which point you could relegate the NAS you are looking to purchase now to backup duties.

The higher the capacity of disks you use the longer rebuild times. Personally I prefer RAID-6 for the dual-redundancy it provides but with 4x3TB disks, RAID-6 would give a volume capacity of about 5.4 TB.

If you are concerned about issues with using high capacity disks I would recommend getting a NAS with an Intel CPU. You are less likely to run into issues using high capacity disks with a NAS that has an Intel CPU and plenty of RAM.

Stick to using drives on the compatibility list for the NAS you choose. You may wish to look at reviews for the drive you choose before buying to see if it's regarded as a good drive or not. Definitely search the NAS manufacturer's forum to see if there have been complaints regarding the disk model there.

 

[mervincm]

Appears x51 are out now. At least in USA. Might be out of your original price range, but given the flexibility around transcoding and mobile access it might be worth it to you.

 

[mervincm]

Also I agree with the approach of having as many whole copies of your data in many different locations over having higher levels of raid protection. Raid offers me increased uptime when a drive fails. If you can live with the device down while you get a new drive and rebuild and restore, you don't need raid. To me, its worth the extra cost so I dedicate one slot /disk to it for my main NAS (raid5). My backup destination does not have any capacity lost to raid. I use cloud (onedrive for everyday non critical stuff and SpiderOak for stuff that I consider more confidential.).

If I were you I would factory reset the iomega and use it for a backup destination once you have everything on your new NAS.

 

[stevech]

IMO, the risks of data loss is higher due to several other causes, than with disk drives today. And RAID5 recovery is risky; also not an alternative to backups.

 

[joen270]

the 451 is running around $1000. That is a bit high for me. I am still leaning toward the 420. Are there any reviews of it on this forum?

 

[joen270]

Appears x51 are out now. At least in USA. Might be out of your original price range, but given the flexibility around transcoding and mobile access it might be worth it to you.

MAAAAAAAAAN! I am reading the PDF on the 451. I really want this thing. I am loving how it can host VMs. The software is amazing.