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expirediconian | Staff posted Jun 21, 2021 04:02 AM
Item 1 of 6
Item 1 of 6
expirediconian | Staff posted Jun 21, 2021 04:02 AM
Synology DiskStation NAS Enclosures: DS920+ 4-Bay $440 or DS220+ 2-Bay
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$300
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Synology 2 Bay NAS DiskStation DS220+ [amazon.com]
Synology 4 bay NAS DiskStation DS920+ [amazon.com]
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https://nascompares.com/2018/09/2...built-nas/
https://xpenology.org/
I'm asking myself the same question as you. I was gonna switch to a NAS for the ECC RAM. But I see now they're not using ECC RAM on the consumer grade NASes anymore. Which makes me wonder what's the point? The only remaining advantage over a DIY server is that the NAS is lower power since it uses laptop components. But my home's average electricity use is 400 Watts (half the U.S. average). Adding a NAS which draws 10 watts idle vs a desktop which idles at 25 Watts isn't gonna make that big a difference. (About $15/yr in extra electricity.)
The other option if you roll your own NAS is FreeNAS (well I guess they renamed themselves TrueNAS so they can start charging money for their commercial version). The main attraction being that it runs ZFS as its filesystem, which is basically a block-level version of RAID. (So the redundancy is per block of data, rather than per drive. You can put together a SSD, HDD, network drive, and a file on another disk to create a ZFS array if you want - it doesn't care about type of device.) It's got some really nice features built into it like snapshotting, copy-on-write (new versions of files are written without overwriting the old version), automatic file integrity checking and healing, deduplication (I highly recommend turning this off unless you absolutely need it - huge memory and performance hog). BTRFS (which Synology supports) is basically Linux's attempt to replicate ZFS.
https://www.freenas.org/
I've been running FreeNAS for the last 8 years and really like its features (ended up returning a Synology after comparing them). But running FreeNAS is like owning a Ford pickup which you take apart on your driveway to tinker with and maintain. It's fun when you're first starting out and want to learn all about this stuff. But eventually you get to a point where you just want it to run without having to spend any more time on it. I was thinking of getting a Synology because they focus on making their stuff easy to use.
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I have 3 Terramaster NAS units (Best bang for the buck with Intel J1800 CPUs at the time):
- 1 x F2-220 @ $129 Newegg Flashsale 2017
- 2 x F4-220 @ $179 Newegg Flashsale 2017
I wanted to setup a Plex Server. I had several External USB3 HDDs with movies that I played with a Media Streamer (Patriot Box Office ~2011), and the 3.5" Desktop versions always needed a fan blowing on them to keep them under 50°C. Plus they needed a PC to access them to load / unload files.The F2-220, with 1 WD30EFRX 3TB HDD, has been running a Plex Server and feeding my old media streamers (via DLNA), tablets, new streamers, etc... ~3½ years now with no problems. It can't transcode in real time though - if you plan ahead and use 'Optimize', you can have a movie ready for viewing. I only have 720p and 1080i mpgs and televisions so everything is direct. If you need 4K transcoded, you'll need to do a LOT of research. Most of what I've read recommends using a NAS as just a file repository and running the Plex Server on a powerful PC. I have no current need, so I don't do any more than skim that information.
Terramaster also struggled / struggles with software. A Synology / QNAP 'polished' experience it is not. They're trying. They have an active forum (finally), they've updated the TOS *many* times, they have quite a few apps available but nothing like Synology / QNAP (Synology is / was having problems with DSM 7 and QNAP is / was having problems with security).
I'm still running TOS 3.x (if it ain't broke don't fix it) but it won't upgrade to the latest Plex Server so I'm going to upgrade 1 F4-220 to TOS 4.x soon.
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I have 3 Terramaster NAS units (Best bang for the buck with Intel J1800 CPUs at the time):
- 1 x F2-220 @ $129 Newegg Flashsale 2017
- 2 x F4-220 @ $179 Newegg Flashsale 2017
I wanted to setup a Plex Server. I had several External USB3 HDDs with movies that I played with a Media Streamer (Patriot Box Office ~2011), and the 3.5" Desktop versions always needed a fan blowing on them to keep them under 50°C. Plus they needed a PC to access them to load / unload files.The F2-220, with 1 WD30EFRX 3TB HDD, has been running a Plex Server and feeding my old media streamers (via DLNA), tablets, new streamers, etc... ~3½ years now with no problems. It can't transcode in real time though - if you plan ahead and use 'Optimize', you can have a movie ready for viewing. I only have 720p and 1080i mpgs and televisions so everything is direct. If you need 4K transcoded, you'll need to do a LOT of research. Most of what I've read recommends using a NAS as just a file repository and running the Plex Server on a powerful PC. I have no current need, so I don't do any more than skim that information.
Terramaster also struggled / struggles with software. A Synology / QNAP 'polished' experience it is not. They're trying. They have an active forum (finally), they've updated the TOS *many* times, they have quite a few apps available but nothing like Synology / QNAP (Synology is / was having problems with DSM 7 and QNAP is / was having problems with security).
I'm still running TOS 3.x (if it ain't broke don't fix it) but it won't upgrade to the latest Plex Server so I'm going to upgrade 1 F4-220 to TOS 4.x soon.
Synology 2 Bay NAS DiskStation DS220+ [amazon.com]
Synology 4 bay NAS DiskStation DS920+ [amazon.com]
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