Best network attached storage products according to redditors
We found 991 Reddit comments discussing the best network attached storage products. We ranked the 318 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 991 Reddit comments discussing the best network attached storage products. We ranked the 318 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Power drill set for sure - something I would never think of but oh so totally useful.
I make sure to recommend the Instant Pot every time this question pops up here. It's the most used gadget in my kitchen now.
We also put a NAS on the registry. If you don't have a good backup system, it's definitely worth figuring something out for all the wedding, honeymoon, etc. photos to come.
If you have a 5.25" bay you could put the ring inside one of those pop-out drawers.
https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Tower-Case-Storage-Drawer/dp/B000IZBIRG
Here's a nice 4-bay Synology for $320.
Keep that and your Apple gadget. A Synology doesn't have the CPU power to do real transcoding, which is needed for Plex. You set the Plex server to access the Synology over the network, Synology stores the data, Plex does the heavy lifting.
Fill this up with 4x 8TB drives (Seagate NAS or WD Red are the ones you want- avoid desktop class drives) and use Synology's SHR so you have 1x redundancy. That gives you 24TB of usable space, and if any of the drives fail you lose nothing.
You might also look at a backup system called CrashPlan. They are apparently unlimited and a user in another thread said (s)he's backing up 30TB to them under the $6/mo home user plan and they don't care...
Well...
Drives 48 @ $119 each https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00KIVMRWU
$5712 total
Enclosures 4 @ $197 each
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00LSQOY6G
$6500 total
Trays 48 @ $9.99 each
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00IF1DXR8
$6979.52 total
Controller card 1 @ $32.64
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B002QJZLCA
Total $7012.16
Then you could just use whatever cheap computer you have lying around that has a pcie slot.
This would give you 120tb in RAID1 (mirrored), so at least losing a drive wouldn't be catastrophic.
You could live dangerously and halve the price and just stripe the drives.
Obviously most of the cost here is in the drives and you just aren't going to find much cheaper than $119 for 5tb.
You say your budget is $7k before drives, but drives ARE the budget for something with this much space. Whatever you are going to use to house/control them honestly doesn't need to cost much more than $1000 if even that. The rest of it will be drive cost. There's probably a larger JBOD enclosure for cheaper instead of having 4 of them.
Edit: Formatting
StarTech.com 12U Open Frame Server Rack - Adjustable Depth - 4-Post Data Rack - w/ Casters/Levelers/Cable Management Hooks (4POSTRACK12U) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_DoMTCb9DXNQTC
I got one of these -> https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS218-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/ and then set it up with four 12 TB drives. The total cost was ~$2000 but I had a bunch of credit card points that I used so ended up being like $600 out of pocket.
Check out /r/PleX some of the builds on there are crazy.
If you want an actual camera system i'd recommend one of two options.
Run CAT5e for your camera wires. Once you've chosen the spots it's time to choose the cameras.
With CAT5e you have two options. You can use baluns (like these) and hook them up to analog cameras, or just terminate them with RJ45 connectors/keystones and you can use IP cameras.
Both options will work, but i'm a bigger fan of Network devices so I would choose to go IP. You don't need crazy expensive gear anymore with IP, but it is going to cost more than analog.
For NVR I would go with a Synology product, these are great prices and have a wonderful interface that anyone can understand. They carry many models so you can find something that suits your needs.
For Camera's i'd recommend Hikvision, something like these work great.
At the end of the day there are so many options, combinations and possibilities that it comes down to your research to figure something out that works best for you.
Without the click tracking referral link:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075N1BYWX/
Since OP posted twitter for some reason here's an actual link: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-NAS-DiskStation-Diskless/dp/B07CR8RZYY/
Just 250 GB of free space? This will give you a redundant TB.
$140 Synology DiskStation 2-Bay
$65 (x2) 1 TB Western Digital Red
Total: ~$270
If it's purely for backup, this might not matter as much, but like /u/comnam90 mentioned, I'd advise you to bump up to the $200 variant if you have the cash for better performance.
That would take the build up to ~$330
I was just in this position.. I've got an older i7 box with 24GB of ram, and had 8x3TB drives crammed into the tower forming a RAID-6 array that was ~97% full. I'm running openmediavault to manage the storage simply because I prefer Linux to something like FreeBSD. It also has a PLEX plugin as well, and I run PLEX on the storage box locally.
After a lot of research, I purchased the following.
LSI 9200-8e - SAS HBA - ~$40
Lenovo ThinkSever SA120 DAS - ~$200
12 drive caddies / trays for the DAS (optional, but suggested) - check eBay, ~$100 total. You can use the caddies that come with the SA120 but need to dremel them and drill screw holes.
I moved all of my drives to the DAS (Except OS drive) leaving 4 more bays for expansion. I added 2 more 3TB drives and grew the array (actually still waiting on that to finish...).
So for ~$350 I moved to a much more flexible setup (you can actually daisy chain the DAS's, so you can buy another one for 12 more bays when you're ready) and extended the life of the setup by quite a bit.
You said where, not cheap.
This isn't priced too bad
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Adjustable-Levelers-Management-4POSTRACK12U/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1427124570&sr=8-12&keywords=12u+rack
That is entry level price.
You might be thinking of the DS218j which is currently going for $170 on Amazon. The DS218+ is $300
Absolutely this.
If it's for business and your $$$ depends on it then the general rule is "3-2-1": 3 total copies of your data, 2 of which are local but on different mediums (read: devices), and at least 1 copy off-site. Get a NAS or an external hard drive.
Synology makes decent stuff and you can find something in your price range. This is a good start: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=nas&qid=1570326553&sr=8-3
With a limit of $150 OP isn't getting anything "professional" grade, but a basic Synology box should be fine.
One alternative to even a free option like Zoho is to get yourself a small Synology NAS. You can install a CRM on there that employees can access, just like any other CRM website. It's not completely free, but it's a one time cost versus a monthly subscription. Plus, you have a very useful NAS for sharing files, backups, and there are other apps available as well (like a human resources app). You can get a 2 bay NAS for about $167 and add 2 small harddrives if you don't need much storage. Or if you really want to be frugal, get the 1 bay version for $114.
Self hosting. One of the easiest ways is probably with a synology nas or similar product.
Has pretty much everything you need. You can install gitlab on it, or you can install individual components you need (apache, php, git, mantis bug tracker, etc)
The upfront costs are a bit high and disks are sold separately.
I assume you have to search for a local seller though if there's a trade embargo going on.
I say the benefits outweigh the costs though:
The only real downside of self hosting is that it depends on your internet connection. You have to forward ports and if your internet is down, your collaborators can't reach your service. This is less important for git but other things they might want (issue tracker, files, automatic builds) will be inaccessible.
These will serve you MUCH, MUCH better than an eSATA enclosure:
And for about $230... would cost you close to what a 6-8 bay eSATA enclosure would cost you anyways.
For 80 more you can get a way nicer 4 post StarTech one with free shipping from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Adjustable-Levelers-Management-4POSTRACK12U/dp/B00P1RJ9LS
Not the exact model I have under my desk, but I have a similar one from them and love it.
Not my blog, I came across this when searching for options for my own lab. At $99, it's not in the same ubercheap league as the $9 LACK, but with all the time and materials I see some people put into LACK mods, perhaps it's not that much more after all. Looks like it could manage about 10-12U, though limited to 50kg.
Also at that price, the BROR is approaching this $185 StarTech 12U, which lacks a top surface.
Thinking about pulling the trigger on this one. What are your thoughts?
Hello! A small NAS should be a good solution for your company. If you want to increase the level of security you could always buy another NAS which replicates the first one. Another option would be a daily backup which you carry home with you after a work day. If your server gets destroyed the data is still save.
I don't know what exactly you mean with your question but some companies allow thier users to use addons or other services to download stuff directly on you NAS-Server (e.g. Synology, QNAP). For your local network the speeds should be sufficent but they won't be really good. Consumer NAS servers usually have a gigabit connection and can therefore transfere at a speed of ~100 MBps. For normal office work the speed should be enough and you won't notice any slowdowns.
​
If you haven't bought a device yet you should consider buying an used industiral server with a good RAID controller and sufficent RAM. You can find these all over eBay and other platforms.
​
Synology and QNAP are known for reasonable prices, easy installation and good speeds.
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=nas+server+2+bay&qid=1563207524&s=gateway&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&sr=8-4
​
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS218-Diskless/dp/B075N1BYWX/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=nas+server+2+bay&qid=1563207533&s=gateway&sr=8-3
You don't have to do top tier everything for a homelab.
Most people will never need managed switches, much less Cisco branded stuff. TP-Link makes competent and reasonably priced dumb switches.
For the router, I used to run pfSense on a custom PC build (~$300 about 6 years ago) but I'm already familiar with enterprise router settings and found all the features I could want in a consumer grade Asus router. At the end of the day, port forwarding, WiFi and OpenVPN are everything I'd ever want it to do. I can offload any heavy lifting or advanced features to my server.
If you're not looking to be super fancy, here's a simple homelab setup:
You can swap up or down based on needs but the router does all the basic stuff most people will need it to do. The 24 port switch should be more than enough as the primary switch for most people. The 8 port switch is great for secondary locations. The diskstation can handle your backups and cloud storage and is a nice balance of convenience and price. The R710 server can handle Plex, NAS duties and probably some light duty VMs.
The big add-on expense will be the hard drives, of course. You could probably get by shucking the 10TB easystore drives to save a bit.
I use a custom built server (Xeon E3-1231 v3 @ 3.4GHz, 16 GB RAM, built around 2012 and upgraded the CPU a few years ago) and have never owned a R710 myself, so I can't say much on the actual limits of what you can do with it. That said, I'm suddenly really tempted to grab a R710 to use as network storage because I've reached the limit of my current server. The biggest weakness I see in the R710 is the CPU isn't too beefy but its still decent given the sheer number of (8)cores/(16)threads. Plex and less demanding game servers are probably the limit of what it can handle but it should easily handle a number of less demanding VMs.
Anyways, as a starter setup, this should more than satisfy most people.
Hows that rack? Ive been thinking about getting it. Is that the 12u one on amazon? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I1JAYHJ4JB7V1Y&colid=AWG4AGG39ESQ&th=1
I had a similar thread a few weeks ago with some tweaks/settings that I've stumbled across.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeServer/comments/5hhk8o/windows_10_settings_for_home_server/
As for your specific question about redundancy, modern versions of Windows do have some options built in, search for "Windows Storage Spaces" for more info on that- it comes with mixed reviews.
I personally use some awesome software from a company called StableBit to accomplish this. It's called StableBit DrivePool https://stablebit.com/DrivePool
I also like their StableBit Scanner product, basically a disk health surveillance tool that will send me emails if there are issues with any of my disks. I think it was about $50 for DrivePool+Scanner.
EDIT: seeing what you'd be using the server for- I don't think a server is the right choice for you. A NAS (network attached storage) would be best for your situation. It's going to use significantly less power, cost less, meet your storage needs, excellent reliability, low maintenance, and high redundancy.
For example:
-This Synology NAS: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BNPT1EG/
-Two 4tb Western Digital Red drives: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00EHBERSE/
Thats $170 for the NAS and 2x$146 for the drives = $432
You will set the drives to mirror eachother for redundancy leaving you with 4tb of storage for your wife's photos. And if you don't have an off- site backup solution already there are plenty of Synology plugins to help you with that as well.
Do you have redundancy? I would host your first website on something inexpensive, such as a Synology NAS. 2 disk should suffice using a RAID 1 mirror. Here’s the one I use for hosting my family website:
Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218+ (Diskless) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075N1BYWX/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_nCawDbW5YYM1H
No need to wait for net neutrality to die, get one of these and start downloading before data caps kick in.
Synology DS218+ NAS DiskStation, Diskless, 2-bay; 2GB DDR3L https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075N1BYWX/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_xhlfAbNZEWS2T
Up to 24 TB capacity depending on the drives you put in it, setting up RAID protocols on it is super easy so your backup is covered. I think it even has built in plex support so a wizard will walk you through getting the streaming side of stuff configured.
A NAS is "network attached storage". They are essentially computers largely dedicated to being a hard drive you can access from other computers. They aren't attached via USB, they are attached to your router using an ethernet cable.
The basic idea is that you buy a 4 bay NAS ($500) and put in 4 8TB hard drives (4 x $150 = 600). The NAS does some special hard drive combining magic (RAID) that ultimately gives you 24TB of space (3x8TB). The 4th hard drive is used for redundancy, so if one of the drives fails you just pull it out and put in a new one with no downtime.
There are plenty of options and configurations I didn't mention, but this is basically the gist of it.
https://smile.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/
The shield can then access this hard drive space.
Have fun.
Since you're already using DrivePool: You can swap drive letters to mount points super easily, even if a drive is already in a pool.
If you want to just add a shitload of drive bays to your existing computer, without going the NAS/server route, get a DAS.
At 15gb per month of photos it would take 22 years to fill 4TB. I know you'll use it for other things too, but a 4TB raid 1 NAS setup sounds like a great start for you.
One of these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00OZ0CTAU/ref=psd_mlt_bc_B00OZ0CTAU
Two of these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00EHBERSE/
Setup as a mirror/RAID 1, put all your data on there, do something about backups (will crashplan cloud backups run on one of these?) and you're good to go.
You may start with local disk backups but there's something nice about paying $5/mo for worry free backups to the cloud.
P.S. A backup isn't a backup until you've tested it. Check every once in a while to make sure it's working and that you can actually restore files.
I apologize, but I'm not seeing the model of the actual case housing everything. I like that it's mobile for a smaller installation. Could you share that info please? 😁
More searching... Is this it? StarTech.com 12U Open Frame Server Rack - Adjustable Depth - 4-Post Data Rack - w/ Casters/Levelers/Cable Management Hooks (4POSTRACK12U) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_MkfmDbWHYXAQZ
While almost all rackmount stuff is 19” wide, it’s the depth and weight you have to worry about. The r610 is almost 30” deep with cables and I think the HP isn’t much shorter.
The rack you linked to is designed for network gear and even some audio equipment. What you want is a 4-post rack like this 12u - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P1RJ9LS.
You can use a 2-post rack, but you’ll need to get the static rails instead of the ready rails. Which is your next question, rackmount servers normally need rails to be mounted to the rack and then the server sits down into them and are secured at the front of the rails with the rack ears that are on the rails and the server. The r610 uses these - Dell P223J 1U Ready Rails for PowerEdge R610 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00686MBE8.
There are some smaller racks, just make sure you’re getting one deep enough or adjustable enough to account for your servers and cables.
Now, without all the tracking BS!
That said, unless space is an issue, I wouldn't get one that small... You can get that rack's big bro (25U) for $50 more
If you're really planning for the future, and have the vertical space (beware basements!) you can get the biggest bro (42U) for $300.
Sure, one could argue that "I don't need 25U", but the real bite in the ass comes from when you need that 13th U, and it will suddenly cost you a damn decent chunk of change.
I deluded myself that "Oh, this will be enough space" (got the 24U, actually).... Yeah.... ran out of room... got a 32U (42U won't fit), and almost immediately I filled that up too.... wound up making my 24U into my UPS Battery rack....
My girlfriend bought me this one for Christmas and it's worked great so far. Really sturdy and adjustable to be deep enough for my Dell R710 without an issue.
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Adjustable-Levelers-Management-4POSTRACK12U/dp/B00P1RJ9LS
Edit: There's also a 25U version of this rack for $248 w/ free shipping
Second this. I have the 12U open frame rack and it's extremely study.
Either way I think OP is going to have a hard time meeting 27" unless the casters get removed.
>https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS218-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/
Once got an iPad Pro 512GB fully paid from less than ~7 months of spending.
Just use a card for everything, especially travel, and the points will rack up like crazy.
ExFAT is fine for file sharing in between systems, but I would not work off of it, you might lose data.
​
A better alternative imo would be a NAS via Gigabit. A dual drive RAID 1 NAS would be nice and you can plug it into your router and mount it either in Windows or macOS. I've used this "workaround" for ages and always avoid sharing drives in between systems.
Yes you can read NTFS in macOS and get drivers to write on it, but I don't trust them.
​
If you need REALLY fast storage, maybe a 10GbE NAS would be better, which will cost you a bit more since you have to get a bigger NAS and PCIe cards for both the NAS and the Hackintosh
​
To save costs, you can try to see if your wireless router has a USB 3.0 port because modern routers have the ability to share external hard drives on the network. All you have to do is plug your choice of external USB 3.0 drive to it and format it and share it from the routers menu.
​
Just make sure your Hackintosh is wired via Gigabit and you should be saturating the network at around ~100-120MB/sec (depending how fast the CPUs on the router is)
​
You can the network drive automount with a drive letter in Windows in This PC and also have it auto mount on macOS via a Apple script or something like Mountain.
I use a NAS that has a private "cloud" program. It's like my own personal dropbox. The NAS is a RAID array so if a harddrive fails, I have a mirror, and it can also back up the entire thing to Amazon S3 which is dirt cheap "cloud" storage. I highly reccomend a NAS setup... This one is great on a budget. (Keep in mind you'll have to get two drives to go in this thing too).
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1524775406&sr=1-3&keywords=synology+2+bay+nas+diskstation
It doubles as a DNS server, FTP server, Web server, Virtual Machine host, Surveillance Camera station and will even host a podcast RSS feed for you!
Sure. Here's what I could pull from my orders and searching around. This is most of my gear. Not really "homelab" stuff. Have a crap ton of ethernet running around the house.
I would lean toward a Raid 5, as it is a more efficient use of redundancy space. You'll have to buy more drives but they can be smaller size, net working out to a similar price. A barebones DAS option might be this one: https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TR-004-Enclosure-Attached-hardware/dp/B07K4RC7X9.
G raid and Promise also make excellent enclosures but youll pay a premium. OWC is a middle option if you have a Mac.
>I cannot justify 300€+
The prices on StarTech's website are always a lot higher than elsewhere.
Amazon's UK website has the rack for the equivalent of €215 (£189): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00P1RJ9LS
On Amazon.es it's €229.87 and on Amazon.de it's €232.57.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492786812&sr=8-1-spons&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=server+rack&psc=1
He just put in a blank text object so the link was there, just...unusable.
Get a NAS. You can access you files from any computer on your network.
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-3-5-Inches-1xGigabit-DS216J/dp/B01BNPT1EG/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1505507181&sr=8-5&keywords=nas
I have a qNap NAS 2bay. I love it. I use it as my time machine as well as my plex server and cloud storage. They are decent price and expandable, with super easy setup. You can even format the drives to mac formats. Best part is a NAS is 100% hassle free cross-platform. We use macbooks, and android's, and I used to have a PC for work, no issues accessing or syncing.
QNAP TS-231P-US Personal Cloud NAS with DLNA, Mobile Apps and Airplay support. Arm Cortex A15 1.7GHz Dual Core, 1GB Ram https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01N78FRVZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_d35VCbZXNRDVB
He's talking about just a easy to set up file server - they make hardware that you shove a bunch of hard drives into and it comes with its own OS that's easy to connect to with your PC. Something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218-Diskless/dp/B075N1BYWX
Personally, I think it's easier to use streaming sites if you have a good internet connection. You just have to know how to find them.
Cheapest Synology unit that can handle transcoding comfortably would be the 218+: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS218-Diskless/dp/B075N1BYWX/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542135271&sr=8-1&keywords=218+synology
Look over the "Celeron" units on this page for their other units that scale up in features: https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/General/What_kind_of_CPU_does_my_NAS_have
Based on the descriptions for the QNAP TS-251+, which indicates an unnamed Celeron at 2.0ghz burst up to 2.42, I am guessing the CPU is the Celeron J1900. That CPU is from 2013, so the hardware encoding in it might not be nearly as good as more current CPU's, even with the higher Passmark score it appears to be sporting compared to the J3355 in the 218+ I linked above.
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/
I'd go Synology on this one,
2 x DS918+ at $550 Each
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/ref=sr_1_2?crid=374AI59A8H6J7&keywords=ds918%2B&qid=1568938492&sprefix=ds918%2Caps%2C194&sr=8-2
8 x WD Red 4TB at $116 Each
https://www.cdw.com/product/western-digital-red-4-tb-internal-hdd/3123305?pfm=srh
- OR
8 x Samsung Pro at $875 Each
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Inch-SATA-Internal-MZ-76P4T0BW/dp/B0786ZQ1PJ/ref=sr_1_3?crid=17S7QFJCHXW50&keywords=samsung+4tb+ssd&qid=1568939113&sprefix=samsung+4TB%2Caps%2C202&sr=8-3
SSDs are more expensive, but the performance is phenomenally better than platter. I'd heavily recommend them if there's room in the budget.
So with hard drives, cost is about 2K. With ssds, cost is about 8k.
​
You'll get SHA --> so both units can present as one to the network. If one fails, the other will keep trucking. Users wouldn't see a difference.
Set them up with shr-2, and each can tolerate two drives failing without a problem. Throw in easy AD integration and file sync (like dropbox) it's almost a no-brainer.
​
That's pretty dang resilient on a budget, easy to administrate too.
u/Smote20XX if i could give you some advice, it would be to spend $2k on a 3d modeling/gaming/vr machine, $500 on a Synology 4 bay nas, and $500 on a Dell S2716DG gaming monitor. You're trying to do too much, with a single point of failure for everything. Motherboard dies? So does everything you're doing. By getting a dedicated NAS like a Synology, you can still RAID your existing drives in the bay, store a ton of data, and use it as a Plex server with transcoding (and so much more actually). I would also suggest getting a legitimate gaming monitor, as TV's do not provide the same gaming experience as a 1440p 144hz monitor will. Presuming you buy a 2080 Ti for your gaming desktop build (which I would suggest), you'll be able to use VR and the monitor to play basically any and all games the way they were meant to be played. Trust me when I say, your TV's are holding you back.
As for desktop build? Something like this:
Desktop Total roughly $2100
Something like a Synology DS918+ NAS = $550
Dell Monitor will be on sale for $350 (incredible price) on black friday at Best Buy
Yes
A drawer
A little storage tray is always good.
http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Tower-Case-Storage-Drawer/sim/B000IZBIRG/2
Hypothetical question, and forgive me for my naivety:
Would Videostream work if I would to purchase a NAS?...Llet's say this one? I recently started using plex and my laptop is my server. I was looking into network attached storage devices and found that many are incompatible with plex. What I am hoping is this would open up the door on more options for clouds that I could access remotely AND cast with Chromecast. Thoughts?
My daughter has a youtube channel and I shoot in 4k for that and fill my memory card really fast as well. I got a WD mycloud and can upload everything to it wirelessly from anywhere. Its really nice and better than any other cloud service as I still have physical access to it!
Something like this would work fine. Very easy to setup
You didn't ask me, but you could get a Lenovo SA120, LSI 9200-8e, and the appropriate cable for under $300 – leaving some cash for Lenovo drive trays.
(Note also that none of these parts are necessarily ideal for you; for example, the MSA60 costs less and includes trays but has its own drawbacks. It's hard to say without knowing requirements.)
Jesus Christ, is there a reason that these start at $3000? You're not going to be running a whole lot of VMs on an i3. Why not an E5 Xeon setup with a DAS or two?
Edit: if you don't want a beefy CPU build something and go with a couple of these
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00LSQOY6G/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1466224279&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=sa120&dpPl=1&dpID=41AYVHtwgRL&ref=plSrch
Along with this
https://www.amazon.com/SAS9200-8E-8PORT-Ext-Sata-Pcie/dp/B002QJZLCA
That leaves you a ton of money for drives and the system
I bought two of these. They come with the cable.
Lenovo 70F10000UX THINKSERVER SA120 DIRECT ATTACHED STORAGE,1 I/O MODULE,12 X 3.5IN ... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LSQOY6G/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_Sq9gzbXQAX3A8
I picked mine up from Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LSQOY6G
Be advised, it only comes with airflow blanks, so you'll need to pickup drive caddies for each drive you plan to install (up to 12).
Drive caddy: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T4SZ720/
Mine also only came with one PSU, so if you want the redundant PSU, will need to find one separately (I have not found a decently priced one yet) if your seller does not include both. There are several seller options when I purchased...I went with one that was new in box.
My rack depth is 30.25" using the Dell Rapid Rails. I could probably make it ~1-2" smaller but that would put the back of the servers basically touching the rear posts. I have a 25U StarTech, you should take a look at the 12U rack they make.
That rack you linked too at amazon is only 17 inches deep... the dell r710 has a mounting depth of about 30" if I remember correctly... so it wouldn't really fit in that rack, in fact, more than half of it would be out of the rack! A rack like that is more well suited for smaller things like switches and the like.
a rack that would work that's in that price range is something like this although it's completely open.
Also, I don't know what's so appealing about the server you posted on ebay, but you can find some that you'll find just as useful for much much
less money I don't know where you're located (other than you're in canada based on your links) but you might be able to find a used rack for much less.
now to answer your question more directly
yeah, you get a rack. then you have rails that connect to the rack and the server, that's what lets you pull servers in and out (usually) like these guys which are rails for an r710
Your rack will not come with rails. each server typically will use different rails (there are universal ones though, but they aren't as nice) sometimes your server will come with rails however! basically, the rails will clip in, or screw into the rack, then it the server will sit on, clip on, or screw onto the rails. you can see here, the rails holding up these servers and allowing you to nicely slide the servers in and out of the rack for serving or whatever
I picked up one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Adjustable-Levelers-Management-4POSTRACK12U/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1463290503&sr=8-6&keywords=12u+startech
12u on wheels; can vary how long it is. Has square holes and adapters.
Not OP, but it's a 12U Startech 4 post rack, you can see the brand name on almost every photo. ;)
The UPS is an APC SMT1500RM2U, and the rack is a StarTech 12U Open Frame. Here's a link to the rack: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P1RJ9LS?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
You do understand that server is going to be hair dryer loud, right?
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Adjustable-Levelers-Management-4POSTRACK12U/dp/B00P1RJ9LS
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019SXSH2C
This is the rack I use currently for my lab.
It's light, it's compact, it's 4 post, and it has wheels!!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=twister_B06XKZGX5J?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
The 25U seems to be on sale for the same price.
I'm curious why you didn't just go with something like this 12U 4 post?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P1RJ9LS/
Unless you needed it to be enclosed, but I think it would be less work to enclose this than it was to create all that contraption you made.
> What rotation?
Any properly managed Tape Library requires Tape Rotation.
>A library with onedrive goes for 1500 euro and a second drive will be another 800.
You will not have a Multi-tape drive for drive for $1500 in the US, looking at ebay the used market is running $1000-1200 for single drive LTO-6, you might find a LTO-4 muti-tape drive for that price.
>That is def affordable, and as much as a QNAS.
Base 4 Drive USB qNAP $199 + $140 ea for consumer 8TB Drives and you have 16-24 Usable TB for under $800, Add $150 if you want a NAS unit which still comes in under your tape drive with no cassettes
Hi!
I am very new to Plex and am currently running some videos from an external HDD by using an old MBP. My fear is that if the disk fails, I lose everything so I was wondering what to do and someone I talked with suggested I got a QNAP like this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015VNLGF8/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
I, however, have never used anything like that so I'm not sure what would happen. If I get something like that, I understand that I need to buy HD to put in and it offers some redundancy but can I connect the one I already have? And then, how do I run Plex on that? It seems to be more of a device to serve media to a tv than to stream.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Losing an external shouldn't be a heartbreak. Remember, it's not a backup if it's the only copy.
USB 3.0 is great and fast. If your data is important enough that you want it to survive a one disc failure, look at a cloud solution, or a NAS. Something like this is pretty affordable. You buy it as well as two standard SATA drives, and put them in, and it keeps them mirrored. If one drive dies, it tells you, you swap it, and it rebuilds the mirror. This way two drives need to die before you get a replacement to lose your stuff. Well...or it could get destroyed in a fire or something. That's when cloud wins. But not everyone is up for paying a subscription.
or a NAS?
Synology is a good choice. QNAP is another vendor that a lot of people like. Regardless of vendor, I would get something with Ethernet connectivity so you can stream media from it, back up your computers, etc. I would also set it up with mirrored drives, so that if one drive fails you don't lose your stuff.
The Synology DS218+ looks pretty reasonable. That and a couple of big cheap Black Friday NAS drives and you could be up and running for $600-$900 depending on the size of drives you get. I don't know if this sounds like a little or a lot to you because I don't know your budget.
I do have a preschooler though, so I know how kids can impact disposable income. I have $2.5k in my 8-bay e3 xeon freenas box, luckily completed before my son was born. It's powerful and it does everything I need it to do. I highly recommend this solution if you like to tinker and spend money.
A lot of folks on the datahoarder subreddit buy western digital easystore external usb drives for bulk storage. I believe the last DAT sale had 8tb easystores going for $160 or so. They are just normal sata drives inside.
No, what I am saying is that usb enclosure is good for now. But be sure to get drives that can be removed, that way if you ever upgrade to something like this the drives are still useable.
Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218+ (Diskless) for $254.99 (Reg: $299.99) on Amazon
According to camelx3, this sale price is close to it's recorded low pricing for this unit. Camel has a small window of a couple of days when this unit was at $249, so this sale is just $5 higher. If you look at camel's historical price, this unit very rarely goes on any kind of sale.
Again, does a Synology fan want to comment on the quality of this deal?
For that amount you're going to be looking at a NAS like: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=psdc_13436301_t1_B075N1BYWX#nav-top
As long as you're not doing heavy transcoding you should be fine.
​
If you're looking for a PC that you can build yourself head over to r/buildapc for component lists.
Over your budget, but you may be able to find something similar in that price range.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076CTK55W/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_YpsmDbBAENGXW
I feel like this price is a bit too much, its 169 brand new on amazon without the drives. I promise I am not trying to shit in your cereal - most people interested in NAS technologies would be buying 4tb drives minimum. Maybe you can get rid of the 1tb drive pair, but I know that I would prefer just the chassis.
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ
DS1019+ for $552. All time low https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS1019-Diskless/dp/B07NF9XDWG
Is $119 a good deal to get a synology 2 bay DS218j NAS? I've been wanting to get a dedicated plex server for movies and tv running and this seems like a decent pricepoint. Anyone have one of these?
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-NAS-DiskStation-Diskless/dp/B07CR8RZYY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526877597&sr=8-1&keywords=synology+diskstation+ds1618%2B
Direct link: https://smile.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-NAS-DiskStation-Diskless/dp/B07CR8RZYY/
It's dead. Price is showing $797.60
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ
That's what I have. I don't know if there's an updated model (or if this is the updated model). It has its own web portal where you can add plugins/apps and transfer files etc.
It's a bit pricey though, and if I was as technically savvy then as I am now, I would have just built a PC like the others are suggesting.
But if you want hassle-free, this is as easy as it gets.
And a note, upgrading is a bitch (this is for all NAS's though). I went with one disk first and tried to add a second, but you need format the whole thing together as one LVM...
I've lost 2 WD reds in the past 6 months on my mediasonic. I'm going to replace with a QNAP Raid Enclosure that seems to have higher reviews. Once caveat is that you can't move the drives from the mediasonic to the QNAP so I need to buy new drives so I'll probably upgrade from 4x6TB running in raid 5 to 4x10TB running in raid 5.
Thanks for your help, everyone. I've determined that I need a 4-bay DAS to run in RAID 5. I'm looking at this guy for the hardware RAID. As I mentioned, I already have 2 external 8 TB Seagate drives. One of them failed after about 2 years, which I plan on replacing. It was never dropped, but it was unsafely ejected a few times by accident, which seemed to cause it to take significantly longer (over an hour) to mount and become usable on my Mac when it would happen. Should I take them out of their enclosures and put them in the new enclosure or should I look at better quality drives? Thanks again
You can always go for THIS and just add your own drives.
Just a thought. This way you can get cheaper larger 4tb drives in a small form factor.
Sorry for terrible formatting, on mobile.
Ok so here’s the deal. There are about a million options out there, and each of them has its ups and downs.
This is gonna get a little technical but let’s start by breaking things down into 2 categories: hard drive vs solid state, and offline vs online.
The most common solution here would be to get an external hard drive. They are generally designed to ‘plug and play’ directly into a computer and store whatever you put on them. They’re fairly cheap but they are mechanical so you have to handle them carefully and not move them when in use or you risk physical damage and data corruption. They usually come at two different speeds: 5400 or 7200 RPM (rotations per minute). The higher the number the faster data can be accessed.
Solid state is the newer, more expensive cousin of the hard drive. Whereas HDDs are mechanical, SSDs are digital. Without the moving parts, SSDs are more robust, and significantly faster. They’re also way more expensive.
Now on to where things get interesting. Most external storage is offline, but some newer options exist that can be connected to the internet and allow you remote access to your data.
The cheaper devices in this category are usually called something along the lines of a ‘personal cloud’, and they’re a 1 - 10 TB HDD with software that lets you access them over the internet.
Higher end devices are usually called a NAS which stands for Network Attached Storage. These are basically servers to allow you high capacity data storage, and can be made to store hard drives in a variety of sizes and configurations.
Ok, so where do you fit in to all of this? What you need really just depends on what you want to use it for. How much space do you need? How fast do you need to access it? Do you want remote access to your data, or shared access with family and friends?
The truth is most people are gonna be fine with a simple external hard drive like the one already linked in the comments. I usually recommend a western digital like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LQQH86A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_XeoYDb7V1HT0A
They’ve worked well for me. If you want something more interesting, look into WD’s personal cloud option:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076CTK55W/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_dhoYDbH3X5XBF
Or if you get curious about the higher end stuff, you can always check out names like Synology, Asustor, and Qnap. I have an Asustor and love it.
Where did you read that you can only get 4TB with raid 1? But if you're going for more than 2 drives, it's irrelevant anyway.
Also I have this running on my wife's computer (she's the photographer, I'm just the computer guy):
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K4RC7X9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
With 4x10tb shucked easystore drives in Raid 5. Good performance, not too much lost to overhead.
I don't know how big of a cache you need for video. Maybe someone else can help with that part.
For the price I do not believe this is what you are looking for. Some routers have the functionality to use any hard drive as a time machine backup. Most new asus routers do this.
This device is more designed for on the go use by creating it's own wifi network to use. If you plan to plug it into your router and leave it than it is a waste of money.
You may be looking more toward this.
It would fit your needs a little better and should allow for time machine backup on your network.
Here is an article I found that gives a list of drives you are looking for. here
Edit: added link and removes wrong information.
>ds1019+
On Amazon right now for $552.49
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS1019-Diskless/dp/B07NF9XDWG
Dropping idle power usage is tough, and dropping max-speed power usage isn't really beneficial since it won't save much money (unless you plan on having your CPU crunching for long periods of time).
Honestly, your best bet is to get a system meant for lower power usage. You can sometimes shave off a few watts from idle on a "big" computer, but you risk stability issues, and an unstable NAS is a pointless NAS.
My recommendation is to look into Synology units. I have an old DS216j that uses something like 15-25 watts on load, far less on idle. Most of the power usage is by the disks, which are set to hibernate when not being used.
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ
Here's an example of a unit that might be good. These aren't good as media streaming servers, but if you're looking for a place to dump some drives and storage that can manage itself well and do stuff like automatic backups, then they're awesome. They make more powerful units, too, but those of course use more power on idle (especially if they're x86 units with i3s and stuff).
I have a Home Lab situation with 2 server with above 20TB storage in one of them. I can install VMs & Dockers & on the Server's OS.
I have a nextcloud docker <-best software for self hosted cloud where I can expand my cloud as I desire not as much as my wallet has.
This is off course is a small portion of what my home lab does. I also stream movies to my family and friends from Plex, also have a music streaming service I use for listening to music on the go from my home library.
in your case if you have no idea about any of this you can get a home NAS witha a single drive or 2 for redundancy. https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1550568800&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=nas
the onboard software will help you configure your own cloud and more.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NF9XDWG/ Its $635usd ;\ is it because of conversion rate or do they just jack the price up for you guys?
I only found this one. You may have to paint the front to match your case, but if you can only buy from amazon, I guess it would be a good choice.
Says only one available.
I just have a Synology DS212j. Threw a 2TB harddrive in there and configured everything through the software on the NAS itself. In retrospect, I'd probably go for the DS214Play model because the CPU is better and could probably run Plex pretty well. Mine can't handle Plex, but that's ok because it supports DLNA without it.
I believe it's the DS212j- http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-Diskless-Network-Attached/dp/B005YW7OLM.
I've got two.. either 2.5 or 3tb drives in it (Raid 1). It's incredibly set and forget.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004HO58SO
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005YW7OLM
Your are best off building a little server using a low powered $35 CPU like this..
http://www.microcenter.com/product/408967/Celeron_G1610_26GHz_LGA_1155_Boxed_Processor
It will transcode anything you need it to Plex Clients, and it can also serve up files over a windows share for any XBMC Clients.
Raspberry Pi is not really much of a NAS like it seems you are looking for it to be. If you want a low cost/power NAS check out a Synology like this one. http://amzn.com/B005YW7OLM
Synology's use ARM procs like the RPi does but has very mature NAS software that can run torrents, and even Plex Media Server, but... It doesn't have enough CPU to transcode.
https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Personal-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B00EVVGAD0/
This might work for you but I haven't messed with one to see how customizatable it'll be. On top of that, there isn't any redundancy if you are worried about longevity.
Currently running Serviio and connecting with DLNA. But I want to buy a new WD drive that's supposed to have streaming capabilities integrated. I'm due to upgrade my drive for videos to a 4TB anyway and I want to have this accessible without the extra power consumption of leaving a PC running.
For something like that, just straight file storage, no Plex transcoding or anything, and in that price range, I'd look for something cheap and cheerful like the WD My Cloud NAS:
https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Personal-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B00EVVGAD0/
I have the 3 TB version doing basically the same thing - no issues so far. Consider also getting a cheap USB 3 drive so you can make backups of your backups too :)
We mourn together. I ended up switching back to an external harddrive and then some scallywag broke into my house and stole it along with my laptop. Now I have one of these and I keep it stored away. I've never heard of what.cd before, though.
Saving up for this.
The main reason is I am currently using a rack mount server as NAS and it produces a TON of heat. This little thing creates like none. Also it has more drive space than I currently have.
Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis When I was dead broke, man I couldn't picture this!
Perhaps a compromise and just buy a nas? Wouldn't need to worry about it "playing nice" with both systems...
Check out this deal 4tb, works wirelessly and with pc mac phones and tablets, and tbh 219 for 4tb is a hell of a deal, but you can lower the tv and save some cash
If you decide to get a nas just remember to "map" the drive
Please not though this not a high end nas but essentially an external hdd with networking abilities
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00EVVGAD0/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1394735987&amp;sr=8-2&amp;pi=SY200_QL40
I'll save it. Honestly I don't know if I'll get around to it. I was bored during Christmas break so that's why I decided to start styling my subs at all. Now I'm back to school and work I have the opposite problem. /r/SunnyFlare still isn't styled. And even though it's Spring Break right now, a) one of my classes assigned me a ton of reading, and b) I've had to deal with not one, but two hard drive failures this week. First the one in my laptop, and then last night the ext4 journal of the drive (it only has one partition) housing my /home folder got corrupted and it seems like that drive is about to physically fail as well.
The laptop drive was completely unrecoverable (I heard clicking sounds in the couple minutes before it completely died so I think it was a head crash but I'd need to open it up to be sure). The /home might still be recoverable, but I'm not sure yet. I fortunately had a spare drive I was planning to use to upgrade my storage but looks I'm having to press it into service now and conveniently it's the same size as the drive I already had (1TB) I booted into a live session and attempted to
# dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=64K conv=noerror,syncbut the problem was# blkidwas having trouble with the drive that was failing and refused to give me any output, other tools had the same problem. So I was forced to essentially put drive letters in blind. I guessed "if" correctly (for some reason reddit doesn't want to be consistent with it's code block formatting) but for "of" the drive I guessed was...the USB my live session was on. I lost no data doing that but the drive was already premade and the files were stored on the /home folder, so I am now redownloading them on the laptop (which is already up and running again).Speaking of which, do you have any experience or suggestions for a NAS? In order to prevent this from ever happening again I'm planning on getting one that's about 6TB, which will be able to back up my 1TB laptop drive, my 128GB SSD on my desktop (responsible for booting both Arch and Windows and holds some games and commonly used programs and games on Windows), my 2TB drive (responsible for other Windows files and some files I share between both OSes) and my 1TB /home drive, plus some extra space for Plex. Is a 2-drive configuration really necessary for something that's essentially a backup of a backup? I'm looking at the 6TB version of this.
If you do find yourself wanting to watch movies, burn all of them to a NAS, network attached storage, like this one and attach it to your router.
Most smart TVs have that availably to browse for network attached storage so a few clicks of a button and you have a movie on.
If you need to upgrade your router the Asus RT87u has great range especially for multi story houses and more features than most people will know what to do with.
It's not the only way. You just have to upload the file to a location that isn't going to re-encode it; usually a device on your local network. Or a cloud service that you know doesn't re-encode files either by default or option.
For example, my Wd Mycloud has a great iPhone app that will upload my files, no conversion at all. Then I can get use them on a Mac, windows, whatever I'd like.
western digital myclouds have gigabit ethernet and usb ports for adding more drives.
like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Cloud-WDBCTL0020HWT-2TB-Personal-Storage/dp/B00EVVGAFI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1422046393&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=western+digital+mycloud
What it sounds like you're trying to do just isn't possible. The TV is not going to be able to share USB-attached storage to other devices that are hooked up to it over HDMI cables. HDMI cables and hardware are not designed to transmit a USB signal. It's a bit like expecting a laptop to be able to read a USB drive plugged into a desktop computer just because they happen to be attached to different inputs on the same monitor.
Now, there may be a way to kind of do what you want by turning the "smart" part of the TV into a media/file server. There are even apps out there that will turn Android devices into little file servers, and you might even be able get some standard stuff like Apache, Samba, or NFS working with a little jiggery-pokery — if the Android version Sony shipped weren't locked down.
But none of those is really a good solution. You don't want your entertainment center doing double-duty like that. You'd be much better off getting a NAS of some kind and setting up your shares on that.
Actually, if you don't want to spend the money to buy a networked hard drive and your router has a USB port, it might already support creating network shares. I have my Asus RT-N66U running DD-WRT with a drive plugged into each of the USB ports on it, and it works great for this purpose.
Alternately, if you have an old laptop or desktop that you don't really use any more, you could easily tuck that away somewhere and have it act as file server for you, too. Even a fairly old one will do the job.
If you don't have any of those things, but you do have the USB hub and spare USB drive(s), you could always consider getting a Raspberry Pi, instead. Those make a more than passable file server for light to moderate use, and they're only $35 apiece.
Actually, in that image I linked in my router comment, you can see examples of each of my latter three suggestions within about a foot of each other in my house. They're all feasible and within the technical reach of even a novice at this sort of thing, particularly the latter two. I threw together a quick and ugly graphic pointing each of them them out.
It's a very niche market - no major vendor bothers to build such systems. If you want a pre-built brandname you might be better off getting a DAS enclosure like Lenovo SA120 instead.
Lenovo ThinkServer SA120. 6 Gigabit. I got one and it works awesome. Pretty cheap brand new too.
https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-70F10000UX-THINKSERVER-ATTACHED-HOT-SWAP/dp/B00LSQOY6G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1496014402&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=lenovo+sa120
Thanks everyone, I ended up going for this one https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00OZ0CTAU/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;smid=A2OAJ7377F756P I think It'll do.
gotcha. I got a mid-length rack at first thinking it would be enough. It doesn't even fit the "dell sliding rails", though it fits those rails I linked, it just means a full-depth server is longer than the rack.
So, TLDR, get a full length/adjustable rack like this.
Or put it on a shelf or the floor, it's homelab :)
Looks like it's the StarTech 12U
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Open-Frame-Server-Rack/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=startech+12u&qid=1568679406&s=gateway&sr=8-3
Are those full depth or just switch depth?
This is a comparable Trip Lite enclosure for 12U 32inch depth(which is mid depth and not the full 36 like this one) I can't find any full enclosure new for under $450. Even the open 4 post ones are $200 range normally.
Amazon Rack 4 post, Comes in a flat pack and worth every $ent ! https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Open-Frame-Server-Rack/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=sxin_3_ac_d_pm?ac_md=4-0-VW5kZXIgJDMwMA%3D%3D-ac_d_pm&keywords=Server+rack&pd_rd_i=B00P1RJ9LS&pd_rd_r=c9575c95-0ec3-4981-8fe7-62c414e7fbc5&pd_rd_w=T51LV&pd_rd_wg=01wPv&pf_rd_p=24d053a8-30a1-4822-a2ff-4d1ab2b984fc&pf_rd_r=D1EJ7W126SPPQ742TCYF&psc=1&qid=1572889682
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/
at that size you are very limited.
At your price range you are looking for the Startech 12u
And it looks like you get a black friday deal at Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Open-Frame-Server-Rack/dp/B00P1RJ9LS
Here you go
Here's the one I bought.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=yo_ii_img?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
I was trying to buy something local for cheaper but I couldn't find anything this small. I was getting sick of taking up space on the shelves so I just bit the bullet. It was more than I wanted to spend but I'm glad I did. Things are so much cleaner.
We have that functionality. Our video files are stored on a Synology DiskStation. We use the Android app, but you would want the iPhone/iPad version, to cast the videos to a Chromecast plugged into the TV. All of the artwork and info is by the server automatically and displayed on your phone/tablet in the app.
The Synology DiskStation has a bunch of additional functionality, but the most relevant to this discussion is the Download Station which can be used to manually or automatically download video files using FTP, HTTP, BitTorrent, NZB, etc.
If you're planning to have a Roku connected to the TV, you can also add the DS Video channel to your Roku and access the server directly from there.
You can do very similar things by using your own server to run Kodi or other software packages. I've been there and done that, and it's a complete pain in the rear compared to the Synology. If you want something for you to tinker around with, go for the roll-your-own solution. If you want something that's going to just work every time your wife wants to watch a show or movie, then get the Synology.
I want to clarify in case you were looking in the wrong place that a NAS is not a "prebuilt" as much as it's a purpose-built appliance. Something like the Synology DS216play. It's more like akin to an external HDD enclosure with a network card and a bit of software.
Synology will provide the best apps, qnap second best. If you can swing it, the ds216play will provide much better performance and 4K transcode.
http://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS216play/dp/B015JQAWW0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1453874135&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=synology+ds216
https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/compare/DS216play/DS215j
The one i set up recently was similar to this: https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-451-Personal-Quad-Core-Transcoding/dp/B015VNLGF8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1493601922&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=qnap+ts-451
if you want a rackmount with a little more power take a look at this: https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-453U-2-0GHz-Hot-swappable-Single/dp/B00S0XU2HK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1493602058&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=qnap+rackmount
As far as opening files, when you're on the LAN you really won't notice any difference at all. Accessing files via WAN you may notice a minor difference but it really should be negligible. Obviously this is dependent on the file type and size, i was mainly working with excel files and pdf's. Hope this helps
EDIT: Keep in mind both of those are diskless, so you still have to purchase drives. You can change the config like with the first one they have an option with 8 GB of RAM and some options with drives. So price can get up there but should still be under like 1500 even fully loaded
I'm running a QNAP TS-451+ and it runs Plex natively with hardware transcoding quite well. $500 on Amazon.
Ah, that version of that plan. I actually had the same idea -- a cabinet with vertical 1/4" plywood "blades", each with the SBC and disk stuck to it. The best I could find (i.e. cheapest thing with a SATA port) was something based on the Allwinner A10. The issue I had with this solution is that I would need an additional (more powerful) machine that can act as a gateway for anything that doesn't use the cephfs directly.
I've been considering a slightly less extra extreme solution: grabbing three of something like this, dropping a little memory upgrade and a linux install on them, and getting my three independent OSD hosts. This gives them much higher specs (even on a per-disk basis), although it's moderately more expensive. Also, it's a lot less work to put together.
Many USB housings have a controller inside the housing which limits the max size of the drive, so make sure you get housings which support the drive size you want.
The Linux kernel itself has limits far in excess of this, it can handle block devices in exabytes and probably beyond.
As others have said, the limitation will be bus speed on the Pi as it shares Ethernet and USB. The max throughput you'll get is 20MiB/sec, probably worse.
You'll need to power the drives externally obviously.
If you're dropping like $1000+ on 4x 8Tb hard drives, just spend an extra few hundred bucks and get a good actual NAS like Synology or QNAP. A Synology DS-416j is $289 on Amazon. These run Linux with a web frontend. They have an small "app store" so you can install a DLNA server or whatever. They're really quite good.
I went with this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
I wish I could say that the solution you seek is easy. I wish I could say that you have everything you need. Sadly, I do not believe you have a good platform from which to launch into all of the above points.
While your Seagate Storage Server does have quite a few capabilities of its own, it will be limited to the version of Windows that it was custom built to run. I have used other Windows Storage Server devices during my IT career ("dime a dozen Windows IT guy here") and I can pretty much tell you that Storage Servers have all been tailored to be fancy file servers that exist within a Windows Active Directory environment. Can they be tailored to do other things? Sure. But it's going to take quite a bit more than just some tinkering to get it right. Even then, the ease of use that you've identified in your goals will likely be sacrificed to a great extent.
All that being said, not all hope is lost. Your Storage Server can still be used as storage. But what you need now is to augment your daughter's "lab" with a laptop or desktop computer that can do all or as many of the other things as possible. As you've probably learned with the RPi, linux has many things to offer your little one. You have the storage. You just need something with a bit more flexibility to add the missing pieces.
Alternatively, if you were looking for a system that had most of the bells and whistles out of the box but could be tailored to your liking, a base level Synology NAS might fit your needs. A Synology NAS can actually act as a Wiki, A Blog, A file server for your daughter's art, a code repository (if programming is her thing), a media center with mobile app functionality (maybe for your husband?), and much, much more. A Synology DS 216 with at least one hard drive (depending on your budget) may be all you need and could really tick off all of those boxes.
These are just a couple of options and I'm certain others will have different suggestions. But I do believe you'll need to augment your current hardware to achieve your stated goals. Good luck! Your daughter is lucky to have a mom as caring and as interested in her growth as you.
That's exactly what I'm planning to do. Thinking of getting Synology DS216J NAS DiskStation enclosing two 4TB WD Reds.
Have to mention that the RAID1 array was made like 4 years ago and had no hiccups with it what so ever, you guys have augmented my concerns of both drives failing anytime now given they have made it this far.
I've not worked for a truly small company, smallest is where I am right now with probably around 100 users on site and 50 or so more offsite, so my answers are more geared toward an actual enterprise setting, but I'd say that it really depends on need as for when the system should be reimaged. Can they make it without that computer until those parts come in or is it a huge burden where people will be taking 2 or 3 times longer to get things done?
Windows should do fine with the built-in things. If you're feeling motivated you could try linux as it usually has better functionality and is free, but you'll have a learning curve and they'll probably be fucked if you leave without teaching someone there how to do it. If they want to throw money at an easy solution, a NAS is only a couple hundred dollars. https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS216J-NAS-DiskStation-DS216j/dp/B01BNPT1EG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1500340380&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=NAS
I'd recommend one with at least 2 drives so you can set them up in RAID for data redundancy in case 1 drive fails. And alot of them allow for accessing files over the internet if they need something while away from the shop.
Depending on how secure you want the admin accounts to be, you can disable them so nosy people who shouldersurf still can't get into it and fuck things up. Then pop in a Hirens BootCD and enable the account when you need it. In fact, I'd recommend Hirens for anyone working in IT because it's just super fucking useful.
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
I'm looking to buy a NAS, and looking at a synology DS216j. For PC Parts I use PC park picker to find the best deal, but they don't have NAS encolures listed there. Does anyone know of a site which lists these types of deals?
What I'm currently looking at Synology NAS DiskStation (DS216j) https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01BNPT1EG/
How about;
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BNPT1EG/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1496069850&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=synology&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=31d8-qntl9L&amp;ref=plSrch
Actually Qnap starts with the TS-231P-US 2 bay setups with an arm processor, same a Sinology. Just a tad cheaper than Sinology. But you can't go wrong with either brand though. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N78FRVZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_iL2RCb26P4TTJ
For 2 - 4 terrabytes, this Nas would be more than enough. Shameless plug: I've been running mine 24/7 with 16tbs and it's purring quietly for media storage for my Plex server on an Intel nuc, so it gets my recommendation.
id probalby look at something like this https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS418-Diskless/dp/B075N17DM6/ref=pd_sbs_147_2?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=B075N17DM6&amp;pd_rd_r=V838D2919EHSSNB2H18H&amp;pd_rd_w=Iu0wi&amp;pd_rd_wg=yIIEW&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=V838D2919EHSSNB2H18H
You connect them to your switch with etherned. If you want wireless, just connect to your wifi router, which will connect to your nas.
There normally pretty quiet.
And they have apps to make most of your wants easy.
A NAS by definition is network-attached. Take a look at this unit from Synology. We have a few of these in our NOC. It has 4 drive bays, supports many flavors of RAID for redundancy, and only costs around $400. You'll need to buy the drives themselves separately, but they're relatively cheap. If you use RAID 6 and 2TB drives, you'll get 4TB of storage with enough redundancy to cover 2 concurrent drive failures. You could also use RAID 5 with 2TB drives which will give you 6TB of storage and allow for one drive failure.
I personally chose the NAS route instead of multiple easystore units. You can grow as you need to and yes using 2x 4TB drives with 2x 8TB drives will absolutely work. It depends on how much you want pay up front. If you’re not looking to build it yourself you can buy a Synology DS418 and connect your current easystore units through USB until you can buy more drives. Eventually you can shuck them and add it to your pool of storage.
It’s a little more than $300 dollars but it’s a great option to set it and forget it. And you can run Plex from the NAS itself.
Synology DS418 NAS Disk station, 4-Bay, 2GB DDR4 (Diskless) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075N17DM6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_O9JeAbRVAJG3D
Higher end
Lower end
Both support what you're looking for, and management is very starter friendly.
I probably could have written that better instead of making assumptions. If I were to be in the mood for entertainment and a kindle was my only source I'd more than likely have porn for that, outside of entertainment of course I'd have books for when I needed them. I don't read books for entertainment now, if I'm reading a book it's going to be I.T based.
You don't need a few laptops just get an external enclosure like the one I have and stockpile hard drives and write on the drive label what's on it. Or you can setup a NAS or just build a computer with a case that could hold 16 hard drives and load them up.
It really depends on what you want to do now and potentially later. You can buy...
Since you are familiar with Ubuntu, which is based on Debian, you should look into Proxmox VE, which is a Debian server with custom tools and a web UI for creating and managing Linux containers (LXCs) and kernel-based virtual machines (KVMs) and storage management. LXCs are similar to Docker containers except they behave more like virtual machines. Pre-built LXC containers including tons of web development frameworks like LAMP, Node.js, Drupal, Django etc. are available from TurnKey Linux for downloading and installing in minutes. Great fun!
can you review if the parts(in the table) good for Synology DSM xpenology or did you mean to buy Snology
like Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218+ ?
Will I be able to use Calibre server, Ubooquity, plex and encryption(like linux LUKS) on it and access from multiple devices(laptop, raspberry pi) etc like I mentioned in the original post?
here ya go
DS218+ is $45 off
A network attached storage like this.
But any usb drive connected to your router or a folder on your pc that is shared in your network as a media server works as well for media streaming. It will show up in Oculus Gallery on Quest and in other media apps like Skybox.
For that, id suggest a synology model, you get webui access, even over the internet. Just grab a newer 4 bay model, and itd be fine. Just dont cheap out and get a very low spec model. And for the none smart TV situation, id just suggest you to grab a cheap raspberry pi 4 and call it a day. Itd even be useful for other things beside plex streaming.
Or a terra master model will work too.
Synology:
Synology 4 bay NAS DiskStation DS918+ (Diskless) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075N1Z9LT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_4gDFDb3P0DF0C
Terra master:
TerraMaster F4-210 4-Bay NAS Quad Core 4K Transcoding Media Server Personal Cloud Storage (Diskless) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R3QT5W3/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_igDFDb80WC3H8
The CPU in DS918+ is Intel Celeron J3455 which is far from decent. It is an Atom CPU equivalent. The RAM in DS918+ is 4GB DDR3L upgradable to 8GB is also far from decent. Not only this is insanely low, but it also does not appear to be ECC.
Power consumption is pretty good, but that's only because it uses weak Atom CPU and low voltage none ECC memory. Like the project management triangle, here you'd have to pick only two from Hardware quality, Power consumption, and Cost.
Comparing DS918+ against NAS Killer 2.0, you'd come out on top only in terms of Power consumption, whereas NAS Killer 2.0 or PowerEdge R510 will give you way better performance for a much lower cost.
Hardware performance comparison:
Power draw comparison:
Cost:
If we look at Power draw comparison for DS918+ Heavy load (43W) vs NAS Killer 2.0 Dual L5640 build peak usage (218W), you're looking at 175W difference. 175W/hr 24hr/day 365day/yr / 1000W/KW * $0.12/KW = $183.96 power bill over 1 year. I am sure neither systems are actually going to be drawing that much power 24/7/365, so the real power price difference over the course of the year is going to be much much lesser. I'd imagine over course of 5 years life cycle of the system, you're going to be looking at very similar TCO, and you'd come out way on top with the better performance systems.
I've used drives like this one connected to my ISP's router. Open the Time Machine prefs and select the drive.
a drawer to put cables, thermal paste, etc. in
https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Tower-Case-Storage-Drawer/dp/B000IZBIRG
monitor, bunch of ram, plenty of hd space, drawer
I have a drawer stuck in mine. Comes in very handy. http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Tower-Case-Storage-Drawer/dp/B000IZBIRG/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt
something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Tower-Case-Storage-Drawer/dp/B000IZBIRG
handy spot to put shit like flash drives and not lose them.
Not the same one I have but it has a flat face just like mine
http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Tower-Case-Storage-Drawer/dp/B000IZBIRG
These are almost always snap-shut, so don't slam it shut, or you'll break it. It fits completely flush otherwise, though.
Actually, I think I might skip the WD NAS and upgrade to the Synology DS212j. Looking through a few reviews from both experts and customers, this NAS seems to be VERY highly rated and decently priced on Amazon for what it's capable of.
There are some specs on it here and it seems like it is capable of fulfilling all of my needs. What do you think?
Anyway, if I went this route, I guess my main concern would be finding cheap-ish 1Tb or 2Tb HDD's. The most I've seen are around $100 + tax, but are there any that would be cheaper?
Thanks!!!
$199 Synology 2-bay NAS and a 2TB HDD.
It's not the cheapest option, but I use a synology NAS with two HDD's in it. They're mirrored so if one fails, then I'll still have all of my data backed up. Synology products have a web interface for your media, which is how I access my stuff on my Chromebook. (It's wireless bc it's plugged into my wireless router)
Wow.
Honestly that's a lot more than I was looking for. I know I can build a full blown machine to do everything I need, but I was kind of thinking about something like this...
Western Digital My Book Live 2 TB Personal Cloud Storage Drive
or
D-Link DNS-320 ShareCenter 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure
or
Synology DiskStation 2-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS212j (White)
Any thoughts concerning stuff like this? Low budget and low maintenance.
Get an external hard drive to plug into the xbox for games then get a NAS for movies and other media. Thats what im going to be doing when they expand the dlna functions.
NAS that I'm getting: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EVVGAD0/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;colid=3G0CIQ9JHSRVK&amp;coliid=I396POMJBIJ0XY&amp;psc=1
External Hard Drive for games:
http://www.amazon.com/Book-USB-Hard-Drive-Backup/dp/B00E3RH61W/ref=pd_tcs_compl_pc_9?ie=UTF8&amp;refRID=0C1K2TN2RGWYK3Y7PQ6C
I have this: Amazon.
Many versions & configurations available -
https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Home-Personal-Storage-WDBVXC0040HWT-NESN/dp/B076CTK55W
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EVVGAD0/
Ok, then ignore me haha. For some reason I assumed you had Plex on a home server rather than your laptop. Any networked hard drive like this one will work fine.
I got BB to price match amazon for a 2 TB @ $119. they usually float around 140 or so everyday price, just watch for a sale. you could probably save some money doing it on your own, but i am speculating. i didn't even research. i saw cheap reliable NAS w/ Gbit port with low power consumption so i bought it.
2TB WD My cloud for $143. 4TB $219
Thank you very much. I had not known about either option. After a few searches, finding this product has caught my attention.
Is this what you were talking about, because it’s not that expensive, and if I could run it with my windows desktop or my macbook, I would absolutely buy this.
Do you know of another product that is superior, or one that you would recommend? And thanks again.This thing
There are plenty of other ways to get wireless Time Machine without shelling out for Apple's router. For instance, this WD MyCloud + the router I recommended is about the same price as the 3TB Time Capsule, but you get an extra TB of storage, and when the drive dies, you can get another without replacing the router as well.
> Why not just run Plex server on the NAS?
Because it's just a networked drive appliance, not an actual server.
And then at each TV you just need a ~ $50 Raspberry PI running KODI.
.
Edit: downvotes why??
This drive looks to only has a USB 3.0 on it.
You need a new router or a NAS Drive with an ethernet port on it.
I been looking up Network Attached Storage drives recently and my Archer c7 has a USB port on it and from what I gather, attaching a drive to the router is a clunky and slow alternative to just hooking up a device through ethernet.
No problem, glad you've read it.
When you go to RAID5/6 you lose less storage capacity, but rebuilding a RAID5.. takes forever with on-board RAID controllers.
Even rebuilding a RAID1 takes a pretty long time.
It's obviously up to OP, but I don't see the cost justified by going for on-board RAID when you can get an external HDD or NAS for relatively cheap prices.
I personally own the WD My Cloud and it's really good for the price and my use case. Absolutely not a fast beast, but certainly adequate for my use. I only store videos, photos and a bit of work files on it.
That is certainly worth it way more compared to adding a second HDD with RAID1. Of course, those two above can both die.. but anything can.
You can however sync a certain folder or a whole HDD on your PC with the WD My Cloud daily. Thus making a copy of files that are on your PC, then if the NAS dies, you should have most files still on your PC. If your PC HDD dies, you got it all on the NAS.
I actually didn't look at it much at all, but you seem to be right. When I look at my own stores here in Europe at least, the R7-1700X & 1800X ship without a cooler where the R7-1700 comes with the Wraith Spire. Interesting!
Regardless, I still stand on my point about noise. I haven't seen much about the stock cooler aside from some dB numbers that mean absolutely nothing.
Sooo.. I am just going to assume that they're not very quiet. Which is something I highly prefer and many people do as well. At least, in my experience.
Very confusing!
---
Thanks for your feedback!
This all the way. I only use portable drives for time machine backups. But for system images, I just go with the NAS solution. I"m sitting on about 2TB of worth of HDD's now, with the option to go up to 8TB....I think. I have a home grown solution. /u/borngamr try this one: WD NAS I've had them in the past. The read/write speeds were ok. If you have an old computer sitting around, I would just grab a few empty TB drives and a Linux server image, and build your own nas. It'll be more fun, and probably cheaper.
I´ve a Acer Revo One with a i3 and i can handle 1080p. It´s also available with two hardrive slots and a i5 so you can stack it up to 4TB in that. But its 2,5 inch harddrive so i added a simple My Cloud 4TB NAS. Turned off all the BS from WD, so its i can Write with about 70Mbit/s.
So, my Setup
Revo One i3 368$
2TB WD Red 89$
With this Setup for 457$ you have 3TB plus you have a Windows PC.
So, for me that was not enough so i bought a
My Cloud 4TB NAS for 168$, so i´ve a bit more Space, and that is more than enough for me.
The Windows was for the most important thing, because i can easily run everything on that i need like JDownloader etc..
Plus, that PC is connected directly to my Router, nothing else. So i can connect via Remote Desktop from MacBook or any other Windows PC and just administrate everything there. That for me was a big plus.
If i3 is not enough for you, there is a i5 as well, and you can insert there 2 harddrives instead of just one. But it cost 545$.
Also, instead of and old PC, that little things just consumes 16W in idle. I have a meter on it to check.
I am looking for a NAS at the moment as a home media server of some sort and some backups. Probably around 4-8tb while i can upgrade it in the future.
I never had a NAS before and at the moment i would buy this one. Is that okay?
I have a TV that is connected to the network on its own and i hope it can read from a NAS without help while the other TVs would need a Raspberrypi right? Or is there an easyer version?
Price is unknown, if it is worth it to get a 2 bay NAS because of futureproof up to 5 years it would be okay. Otherwise i think 1 drive is enough because i save my backups in 2 other locations too.
Thank you very much and probably a happy new year. :)
How fast do you want access to be? You're probably going to be best served with a USB drive, but you could also use a network attached device.
I use a WD My Cloud 4TB NAS to backup seamlessly via WiFi. It is a customizable wired network drive that you can connect and place next to your router and forget about it. It has a nice Time Machine compatibility and you can configure the allowed space for backups. This is my main backup solution for 2 MacBooks. WD My Cloud - (Amazon)
Also, I have a wired WD My Passport 1TB USB 2.0 that I have used a couple times to backup my back. My Passport - Simiar (Amazon)
I'm interested in getting a really basic NAS mostly for storing videos on my network and being able to access them from all my computers and possibly from my phone while out of the house. I was looking at the WD My Cloud and it seems like a pretty good deal for 4TB at about $150. I realize it doesn't have the speed or features of the more expensive NAS's, but it seems like it would be enough for me. I also know they have a 'mirrored' version with RAID but I don't even think I need that (I have a separate USB backup drive and also backup to cloud). Is there any reason I shouldn't go with the My Cloud or are there any better alternatives in the same price range?
Fair enough but honestly one of these plugged into your router is easy as pie: https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Personal-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B00EVVGAFI?th=1&amp;psc=1. I'm not sure about hapless playback but I think so.
By the time you're into the TB's it seems better to just to buy a personal network attached storage drive, and plug it into your router. You get alot of storage. for an unlimited amount of time. its on location, so you can use it for video streaming to multiple computers, and free up space. I'd even go so far as to install Plex on a computer and get a super pretty, easy to use interface that is awesome for offsite use. Actually, I think I may need to buy this setup.
Edit:
Or, if you want security, use a shared drive and Bittorent sync, and share your file with an encryption and security scheme that the NSA couldnt crack! ^Let's ^be ^honest, ^they ^already ^have.
https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Personal-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B00EVVGAFI/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1466048697&amp;sr=1-4&amp;keywords=NAS
This what you're looking for basically?
Honestly, a WD Mycloud will suffice for that amount of data.
I know this is the US site but I'm sure you can find the exact same from the UK site.
Well you could probably use both as externals, though you'd need two USB ports on the EeePC. At a basic level you could just share them both out as separate drives. If you want to combine them into one I'm not sure of a way to merge two drives (JBOD array) over two separate USB ports.
Alternatively, you could buy an empty NAS box and use your existing drives for not too much money. Or go with something like the Western Digital MyCloud. 2TB NAS with internet access for $150.
Are there any reasons not to use one of these as opposed to other drives available to purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Personal-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B00EVVGAFI
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBFJK0030HBK-NESN/dp/B00E3RH63A
I have unopened packages of these lying around but didn't know.
I use an older 2 TB version of this Western Digital NAS drive. Been using it for about 2.5 years now without any issues so far. Come configured Raid 1. My fiancee has been using the non-RAID version for about 3 years without any issues as well.
RAID version: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ITI054G/ref=emc_b_5_i
non-RAID: https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Personal-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B00EVVGAFI/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1525704853&sr=8-7&keywords=wd+nas
Nice! Problem is it's plum full... Got 5 drives in there and can't fit another... Thinking I'll get an SA120 to attach
Why not get a Lenovo SA120 for $200 with a 3 year warranty?
https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-70F10000UX-THINKSERVER-ATTACHED-HOT-SWAP/dp/B00LSQOY6G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468287683&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=sa120
Get this Lenovo SA120
and this [SAS9200-8E](
https://www.amazon.com/SAS9200-8E-8PORT-Ext-Sata-Pcie/dp/B002QJZLCA)
Then you're set for an ESXi server with FreeNAS (SAS9200-8E passthrough) with 12 drives; only if you're up for spending a bit more.
I was/am looking into Lenovo SA120s and LSI SAS9200-8E for my expansion. My only concern with the SE3016 is the backplane & max drive capacity.
Would love to see a rack mounted case that could accomplish this. Found this but I don't want to use SAS hard drives.
https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-70F10000UX-THINKSERVER-ATTACHED-HOT-SWAP/dp/B00LSQOY6G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1495432354&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=lenovo+das
> https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-70F10000UX-THINKSERVER-ATTACHED-HOT-SWAP/dp/B00LSQOY6G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1495432354&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=lenovo+das
You can use that with SATA drives.
If this helps at all, I bought one of these and it works perfectly.
Lenovo 70F10000UX THINKSERVER SA120 DIRECT ATTACHED STORAGE
I'm not sure you'll find a better deal.
Ah so you want to use some kinda physical enclosure then! Something like a Lenovo SA120 to put harddrives in and then connect to a HW RAID card and create your array , that makes sense now.
I see people using the Dell H200 card outside of Dell hardware for FreeNAS , however if you're using a HDD enclosure for the array how do you plan to interface with it? Do you plan to use SFF-8087 (internal) to SFF 8088 (external) cables (which do exist, just messy)? Or do you plan to get another RAID card with SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 (external SAS).
It really should just work, as long as its supported by the host OS or guest OS if its being passed to a VM it should work without a hitch, now depending on the RAID card you may have a second menu at POST/Boot to select the onboard RAID card + the new one to configure the array(s) in.
So this ?
HBA for $24, and then the SA120, Currently $240 with Prime, but the price on the JBOD's changes seemingly daily
Here are the trays/caddies, but watch out for a good deal as I have seen them for as low as $4
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00LSQOY6G/ref=dp_olp_new_mbc?ie=UTF8&amp;condition=new
$230 shipped seems pretty reasonable
To be honest, today's the first day I'm hearing about the DS215j too from an earlier post in this subreddit. Amazon's already pre-selling it here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DiskStation-DS215j-Attached-Storage_Parent/dp/B00OZ0CTAU/ although it isn't on Synology's News page https://www.synology.com/en-uk/company/news
Weird. It's available in Spain.
http://www.amazon.es/Synology-DS215J/dp/B00OZ0CTAU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1422062382&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=ds215j
Definitely recommend a Synology - cost me £130 for the 2 bay enclosure, and got 2x 3TB drives.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00OZ0CTAU?keywords=synology&amp;qid=1450343996&amp;ref_=sr_1_1&amp;sr=8-1
Streams all my media content to the PS4, Amazon Fire TV stick and phone (plex can also sync to devices for offline viewing) - probably my best purchase of the year. Also incredibly easy to set up and user friendly thanks to the web interface.
the newer, 215j, is only $199 :) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OZ0CTAU?keywords=215j&amp;qid=1452886717&amp;ref_=sr_1_1&amp;sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00OZ0CTAU?keywords=215j&amp;qid=1452886717&amp;ref_=sr_1_1&amp;sr=8-1 ...not for me
Not the cheapest ever as is new but I have the following rack at home. Really happy with it and it was delivered straight to the house
https://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-Adjustable-Casters-Levelers-Management/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1519208441&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=startech+rack
Here you go: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_zPcmDb3AQEHPF
I bought mine from ebuyer for £200, but amazon is the same price.
Hey! Small world lol. Congrats on the purchase, the R710 is a really great server to start with. I mounted everything on a Startech 12U rack and I mounted the R710 with these rails. Happy homelabbing!
I was tempted to use metal frame for the build but i wouldnt have a clue when it comes to metal work but if you can do it, go for it! or get a good kit: My mate just bought this :https://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-Adjustable-Casters-Levelers-Management/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1511427208&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=startech+12u
Its expensive but super adjustable.
I have this one and it's great. Easy to setup, very solid & sturdy.
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Adjustable-Levelers-Management-4POSTRACK12U/dp/B00P1RJ9LS
I have this one work great
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_yt0pDbCFVTSX2
Depending on budget, you could take a rack like this, pick up an Ikea table/counter top. Bolt the counter top to the top of the rack to create your idea. Then you can just look into getting some plywood or whatever to attach to the side to hide everything like in your design.
This might be better for a full post, if so, I can fill out the post and will make one.
For server building, what all exactly do I need? From what I have seen so far, this is what I need:
Is there anything else I need? Would the components I listed all above work well for a media server?
For the components inside of each rackmount, what do I need to look for? If I am not doing transcoding and the server is just for serving large media files, do I need anything more than a cheap CPU (say a Ryzen 3)? What about RAM? should 8GB each be enough, or should I look to get more? For the PSU, is there sometype of calculator I can use to figure out how big of one I will need based on a full rack mount with all of the storage HDDs in it?
Well, here's the StarTech rack although not 6U, which is comparable and I've actually used it before. It was a pain to setup because the instructions and labeling were terrible plus there were incorrect numbers of screws and extras that we didn't need. The casters don't work well and with the addition of a Tripp-Lite PDU it's still more expensive.
I'm not in the business of shilling for Ubiquiti but every product I've used so far from them has been outstanding in terms of build quality. Their EdgeMax, AirMax, Unifi, and accessories have proven to be high quality while not going overboard.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Open-Frame-Server-Rack/dp/B00O6GNLQE/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=startech+25u&qid=1567623107&s=gateway&sr=8-3
&#x200B;
or
&#x200B;
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Open-Frame-Server-Rack/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=startech+12u&qid=1567623209&s=gateway&sr=8-3
I believe it to be This one.
Startech has a 12U open rack on Amazon that would probably work. here is the link to it.
Here is the specific one I bought.
Buying locally from CL or something can be more advantages as you don't have to assemble it or try to manage shipping. Its probably easier to get a 42U rack that way. And likely the cost will be less.
I can report that these ones are pretty solid and work well. They don't have much in the way of cable management and are fairly bare and open. But they are new, are solid, and hold up well.
I came across this while I was searching for that 710 mounting depth, but it’s not much cheaper StarTech
Um, yes they do. I have one. It's made by StarTech, an adjustable open rack.
I have both their 12U and 25U models and can vouch for their quality.
I've got a StarTech.com 12U open frame rack. On the one hand I don't have to worry about an enclosed rack getting super hot, but on the other hand I have to manage the airflow in that room well so the hot air doesn't pool near the rack.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Adjustable-Levelers-Management-4POSTRACK12U/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/
I had hoped to find a cheaper one, but this one sure is sturdy! (I did find cheaper options, but none with square holes for some reason)
check your local craigslist equivalent, otherwise you're looking at the startech open racks off amazon. http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Adjustable-Levelers-Management-4POSTRACK12U/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1451066647&amp;sr=1-4&amp;keywords=4+post+rack
For R710 you need mounting depth of approximately 28-29 inches.
Startech 12U sounds like what you need. Or if you plan on expanding your homelab significantly you might want to order a 25U.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-4POSTRACK25U-Adjustable-Server-Cabinet/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1522219129&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=startech%2B25U&amp;th=1
That looks a lot like the rack I've been looking at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-Adjustable-Casters-Levelers-Management/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=startech+rack&qid=1569960952&sr=8-3
Thanks for the input. Your right: I am overthinking it. Other replies, too, have reassured me that there's more flexibility available than I was thinking. I feel much better about firing off the orders now!
/u/stilettoblade is correct. Neither the R610, nor the R710 would fit in this rack.
I measured the spare rails I have for an R610ii, the mount size is listed below. Too lazy to pull out one of the R710's to check those rails, but the R610ii physical server is 2in longer than the R710; so I'd think the rail mount depth would be similar if not exactly the same.
R610ii rails:
p/n: R144J
27.25in - 30.25in
These are the two racks I've found; similar in Usize that would fit these servers. I'm also looking to down grade my rack size, so if anyone has any suggestions for a 12-18U open rack on casters that is at least 27in deep; lets hear it.
*edit forgot the links. ha
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P1RJ9LS/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M9DQAMS/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1485650737&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=startech+12u+rack&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=41oNhwTrzyL&amp;ref=plSrch
Sorry for the long link, I'm on mobile. It's pretty pricey but I couldn't find any good deals locally after searching Craigslist for 2 months or so. Definitely worth it though. It's adjustable and really sturdy, especially once you have everything racked.
Thanks, I've been eyeing this rack, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;psc=1
I've been waiting for a deal to come up on the used market for a nice closed rack or cheaper open rack before purchasing a rack new.
This is what I have my r710 in for the apartment living: Amazon
It's an adjustable StarTech 12U rack. Bought it on Amazon for around $212.
Looks like it's gotten cheaper since then:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P1RJ9LS?psc=1&amp;redirect=true&amp;ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P1RJ9LS?psc=1&amp;redirect=true&amp;ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00
Mounting is 28", it's adjustable from 22" to 40"
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P1RJ9LS/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
That's the actual rack itself.
Just make sure you have enough space for future growth lol, it's addictive. Little more expensive with reviews:
https://amzn.com/B00P1RJ9LS
The one you linked looks like it uses the shelves or rails+server to add rigidity since it's missing the two cross-bars... not personally crazy about that.
Why not just buy one?
Look into synology... You will probably have to buy the drives separately though. AND It isn't the cheapest solution, but I think its a good, but cheaper than it could be, solution.
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Network-Attached-Storage-DS216play/dp/B015JQAWW0
or even this - https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS216J-NAS-DiskStation-DS216j/dp/B01BNPT1EG
If you won't mind me asking, what's wrong with this? It's $150 less than the one you linked to... in my mind it shouldn't take a very powerful system to provide dumb RAID1 and some configuration options. I'll be limited by the gbe connection so performance shouldn't be critical.
When I build a NAS for myself it'll definitely build something higher end and will likely get something with 10gbe in mind, ssd caching and RAID10, etc.... I just don't see a good reason for that in this case.
Yeah you can go that route as well, just wanted to give you an option which can be automated relatively easily.
I use my Synology to host all my content (6-7TB worth), and run Sickrage on the NAS itself. Synology has free applications which allow me to manage the download manager (torrents) and file browsing, and even their own version of PleX that you can install on iOS/Android/Samsung Smart TVs/Roku.
It also uses very minimal power on idle, and can handle hardware transcoding for files that won't play back natively. For example, I'm at work now, and can access the UI for the NAS from here, manage all my downloads, move files around, even watch my content through my web browser.
The DS216Play is $271 on Amazon, just need to add hard drives: http://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS216play/dp/B015JQAWW0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1458740967&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=ds214play
I'm using the older DS214Play with Western Digital RED NAS hard drives.
Let me tell you about this fun story... I had a setup similar to yours, spent 100s of hours ripping all of my music, and all of my DVDs. Eventually the drive failed, and lost everything.
I now have a 4 drive Synology NAS that stores everything. (music, video, backups, etc)
It supports DLNA, iTunes Music Sharing, and a number of other services. It's cheaper than a Mac Mini, and gives more storage options.
I'd go with the "play" versions, as they support 4k streaming:
2 bay - http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B015JQAWW0
4 bay - http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00LO3KW7S (I have an older version of this)
If you're just worried about music, it might be worth considering iTunes Match. It's pretty handy, but limits to 100,000 songs and 256kbps AAC.
Hope you don't mind the dark humored names but these are 5 of the drives connected (C & D are partitioned of course). There's a few more that I either use docks or as networked drives and I'm afraid to even look through them. There may be some organization, i.e. Videos>Movies, Videos>ShadowPlay, etc but... everything is scattered in all the drives except C:. I want it to be 'one for pics/videos', 'one for games', one for programs/setups & related files and so on.
I have been looking at this Synology NAS system but I'm not sure if an extra 16TB is what I'm going for. Maybe more like 40TB. Hard drives are a bit expensive right now and it seems they've raised in price last time I checked. 8TB WD Red for $300 but I'd prefer getting an 8TB WD Gold for $455. I don't have that kind of money.
camel camel camel
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015JQAWW0/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
Powerful dual-core CPU, 32-bit with H.265 (HEVC), MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-2, VC-1, Maximum resolution: 4K (3840 x 2160), Maximum FPS: 30
Am I misunderstanding that?
Just saw your post on /r/homeserver - sorry I've confused you. You will probably find what you need over there. If all you want us some always-on network storage, the device you linked on Amazon will probably do the trick.
If you want more options, something like this will give you a bit more flexibility - https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B015JQAWW0/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1483343638&amp;sr=8-2&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=2+bay+nas&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=31GaiS0ZjFL&amp;ref=plSrch
Bear in mind you will need to buy 2 disks to put in it.
> 2 - 3 users at most, 1080p content
are you transcoding for them? If you're doing transcode for 3 streams (or even 2, honestly) you will likely want a better processor...but that one will probably be fine.
The Synology/Qnap/etc have a worse processor but have hardware accelerated transcode which you wont. At about the same price point you're looking at the TS-451+, DS418play.
Even the DS918+ you mentioned has hardware accelerated transcode, so I suspect you'd see better results from it [though, it's more expensive] if you have plex-pass to allow for it.
Edit:
the 9100 supports hardware accelerated transcode, but the 9100f does not.
You could look at something like a 4-bay Qnap or Synology:
https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-451-Personal-Quad-Core-Transcoding/dp/B015VNLGF8/ref=sr_1_31?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1551036590&amp;sr=8-31&amp;keywords=synology
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS418-Diskless/dp/B075N17DM6/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1551036686&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=synology
I have a synology (not this one in particular) and I love it but as far as I am aware Qnap makes damn fine products as well.
In terms of consumer NASes, the only two choices IMO are QNAP and Synology. Others will get the job done, but they just don't have the features and polish nor can you expect support because they're made by companies who make other things as well. QNAP and Synology primary products are NASes.
The difference between the two. QNAP has slightly more powerful hardware and even higher end hardware if you want to pay a premium. Synology's strength is their software which is very very polished and easy to use. QNAP however is constantly updating their software and it's constantly getting better to. I have an old QNAP TS-439p running off an og Intel Atom from 2009 and it's still getting all the latest updates and features and is a different machine then when I got it, for the better though. It's not my primary NAS anymore but it's still kicking.
Unfortunately, in terms of hardware you'd be comfortable running Plex on, consumer NASes are kind of in no mans land at the moment. And even if you only direct stream, Plex can still hit lowend hardware hard, especially if the NAS is doing other things.
The QNAP TS-451 @ $530 has a quadcore Celeron, but it's passmark is about 1100, when 2000 is recommended for a single 1080p transcode. This is the NAS for you IMO if price is your main concern. You might run into a problem occasionally but it'll get the job done.
The QNAP TVS-471 @ $990-1090 for the Pentium and Core i3 respectively, will give you peace of mind but is very expensive as you can see. The Pentium has a passmark score of 3330 enough for 1-2 simultaneous transcodes, and the Core i3 has a passmark of about 4900, enough overhead for 2-3 simultaneous transcodes.
That's what I mean by no mans land, there's not an inbetween option at the moment, or sweetspot IMO for consumer made NAS's and Plex yet.
In terms of hard drives. Stick with WD Reds and HGST Deskstar NAS drives. Avoid Seagates, especially their 3TB models.
I'm confused, wouldn't something like the QNAP TS-251 be a stand alone system? Or are you wanting a NAS storage that is located remotely and streams to a media player that is connected to your home theater, thus requiring you to build a new machine?
&nbsp;
Its not something I'm super familiar with, but your post did intrigue me. Wouldn't you just need the QNAP and blank drives?
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
Storage | Western Digital Red 8TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive | $319.99 @ B&H
Storage | Western Digital Red 8TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive | $319.99 @ B&H
Storage | Western Digital Red 8TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive | $319.99 @ B&H
Other| QNAP TS-451| $479.00
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | $1438.97
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-11-14 16:00 EST-0500 |
Thanks for the reply. I wasn't really super familiar with DAS's (I guess Drobo is a DAS though?) so I hadn't considered it. It seems like from my (quick) research there wouldn't be a cost savings over a NAS, though. This 4-bay Synology NAS is $290 - https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS416j/dp/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=sr_1_6?s=pc&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474670435&amp;sr=1-6&amp;keywords=synology and I think the QNAP equivalent is like $10 or $20 cheaper.
Oh, and yes, I do only have 1 host (and it will likely always be that way), so if there were a DAS option that was cheaper than a NAS, I'd definitely be open to it.
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS416j/dp/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468174616&amp;sr=1-4&amp;keywords=synology&amp;refinements=p_72%3A1248879011
Would that be appropriate?
Looking to downsize hTPC, take a look and give some pointers?
Currently have a nzxt h440 with 3x 4tb drives in it. Its too big. I want to put all my stuff in a ncase m1 eventually. So since the shield can be the plex server itself now can I throw my drives into this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=psdc_13436301_t1_B016EWTC7E
hook that up to the shield and run plex from there? I don't care about redundancy at all for my movies and tv shows so is this thing overkill? All I need is access to the hdd space over my network to drop newly downloaded movies onto it. Is there a cheaper option (don't feel like building a nas right now)
thanks for the help!
Ya I was definitely trying to hit a lower price point than Synology. I was pretty tempted on the DS416J for only $289
http://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS416j/dp/B019ZUR5WQ
I know these look expensive, but it's a one-time cost, and you'll get plenty of storage. You are protected from single-drive failures. But keep in mind that it's not a replacement of backups. Depends on how far you want to take things, right. I'd recommend using a NAS array for your main storage, and some cheaper single drives for backup -- if you really really really want to protect your stuff.
So I'm planning on buying a few more 4TB hard drives and putting them in this thing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
I was planning on putting all my media content on there and pointing my media server to there.
This should work fine correct? I'm not planning on having the server run off of it. Just a raid with the media hosted there.
I'm looking into getting this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_1?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
I'm happy not running Plex off it, I just need a NAS and a place to store hard drives. Have a few questions if you don't mind:
First, I currently use two Seagate 5tb externals. A trusted source said I can connect externals on this with an easy fix? True?
Second, I heard my hard drives should stay the same size? Like I can't later add a 8tb hard drive as the third? That's fine if so, just curious.
Ty. I'm new to the NAS idea so I'm lost and any info would be appreciated! :)
Network attached (some say addressed) storage. They work great, and there is free software out there like FreeNAS and NAS4Free, just add a buch of matching(ish) hard drives and install your NAS OS
For ReadyNAS, the entry-level RN212 will fit most people just fine. If you want something cheaper, Synology makes the Diskstation DS216J, which has basically the same features minus the protection against data corruption (which may or may not be worth it for your uses).
For the setup I am about to outline, my client has the following devices:
I have allocated 500GB per camera (five in total), which takes up 2.5TB. Three are set to record at 1280x960 and the others are in a smaller area, so they're set to record 640x480. I can usually get 3-4 weeks by setting each camera to record for 500GB each, which is plenty of time. I could easily add another 3TB or bigger HDD to get a total of two months record time as well.
Another one of my clients has 4MP, 1080p Cameras with basically the same setup (different cameras, same NAS) and he gets 3 weeks of record time.
To clarify, I think you mean RAID-1, not 0.
I'd look at Synology. I love my DS216Play. The DS216j is pretty cheap too.
Not particularly. You're looking at building a cheap NAS, which generally isn't that cheap.
Especially when you're dealing with that many drives of smaller size. If you really want to do something like this, you'll be much better off consolidating to something like a 4tb drive. You could still keep the 500gigs around though, never know when you'll need them. You may be able to save some friends ass when their drive goes out.
Nah, I'm using an off-the-shelf solution, a rather low tier one at that, the Synology DS216J.
I was going to build a mini-ITX system around the Pentium G4560 or repurpose a used Dell OptiPlex or PowerEdge tower (T-series) since those are plentiful off of eBay and CL but I was wary of the size and power consumption. If size and power consumption aren't issues any of those would do wonders for a NAS and or home server.
I did just buy a used Intel NUC, one of the weaker dual-core Celeron ones but that has regular laptop RAM not ECC. It's just for cloud storage, it won't be syncing/backing up anything nor will there be any redundancy for it, I might just plug in some external hard drives and share them via SMB and have it function as a non-RAID NAS of sorts. A low power (7.5W TDP), small headless baby home server of sorts, but probably not enough for streaming/PLEX/transcoding type stuff.
> I can't download music outside iTunes.
Sure you can. You can download music with 3rd-party apps over WiFi pretty easily.
If you don't want to fill up the iPad you can save music to cloud services or to a local wireless storage device (like the Western Digital MyCloud), or to a home network-attached storage (NAS) unit like the $250 dual-drive QNAP TS-251 2-Bay Personal Cloud NAS (which you need to add drives to) or the $170 (also empty of drives) Synology DiskStation DS216j.
i ended up buying this stuff:
NAS:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BNPT1EG/ref=psdc_13436301_t1_B014YN6IK4
harddisk 2x 4 TB:
https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-WD4002FFWX-128MB-Cache/dp/B01CK5UBHE/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1505392774&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=WD+Red+Pro+WD4002FFWX
This should be enough for quite some time for me - there arent so many 4k movies out there yet ;).
i hear that i will not be able to use Plex, to connect to my NAS and flawless play 4K movies (40-50Gigs), because plex will always try to transcode the 4k movies, for that they have to be stored locally.
but i should stick to using Kodi and just play the files on the NAS directly from there.
That would be ideal if I could run Plex on the NAS but my needs are pretty simple so I can't justify buying an overly expensive NAS.
If I was to get a NAS like the Synology one in the link below, which is more of a lower end NAS would I be able to install Plex on it without any need for transcoding since I will only ever be streaming locally to my Android TV device?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BNPT1EG/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468320659&amp;sr=8-3&amp;pi=SY200_QL40&amp;keywords=synology+nas+2+bay&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=31d8-qntl9L&amp;ref=plSrch
If I wouldn't be able to do that I'd probably go with something cheaper like a WD my cloud + ES File Explorer & MX Player/VLC.
Yep, ok then you'll be just fine with a NAS. I'd highly recommend Synology as they're super easy to setup permissions for sharing files over a network.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BNPT1EG/
Keep in mind you still need to buy the hard drives to store all of your data, but if you setup the share correctly you should see the share on all of your computers over the network. It's as simple as dragging and dropping on your main computer. Then you just point Kodi to the network share and it will see the files.
If its for important stuff family related 1 copy on the 1tb drive (ext) off site and on a nas like https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BNPT1EG/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1491200099&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&amp;keywords=synology
Then run rclone on it automatically and sendit to acd
/u/Get_Back_To_Work_Now is correct. Use one drive for your OS and programs and put the other two in a NAS as RAID 0.
Get yourself a QNAP TS-231P for $180, put both drives in, set it for RAID 0, and call it a day. If you plan on expanding, get the 4 bay version for $80 more. If you plan on doing any kind of transcoding, you would benefit from the extra RAM, but I recommend doing this yourself as the price difference is huge.
Qnap TS-231P-US Personal Cloud NAS with DLNA, mobile apps and Airplay support. ARM Cortex A15 1.7GHz Dual Core, 1GB RAM https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N78FRVZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_7yo2AbWTVW6QJ
I recommend you backup your data on the WD MyCloud drives before using them on a different NAS device. I'm pretty sure they will get reformatted and you will lose your data.
If you are looking at a really low budget NAS, the QNAP TS-231P is pretty cheap on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/TS-231P-US-Personal-mobile-Airplay-support/dp/B01N78FRVZ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1511289696&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=qnap+ts231p)
There are USB drive bays, but I'm guessing that's not really what you're looking for.
The next step up is using a small NAS, but they don't come cheap.
If you are looking to keep it standalone from your PC, you are looking for a NAS solution. Honestly with that many drives its not very power effective and if you really want to utilize them, you should stick them in your PC. Otherwise, you need a external NAS enclosure such as the one below to use them, and they are not cheap.
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS418-Diskless/dp/B075N17DM6/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=5+disk+nas&qid=1565629034&s=gateway&sr=8-3
Hoping I'm not too late to the thread for this week! If not I'll repost on Friday.
I want to make a standalone Plex server, which I might end up using for some other pet projects but for the purposes of this thread assume it's just a Plex server. My server peaks at 5 simultaneous streams, currently running on my main desktop PC. I want something very small to handle this, and with unlimited potential to expand storage.
Here is what I'm thinking.
I wouldn't mind paying a bit less for everything, but I specced out a $1000 mini-ITX machine, and this basically costs the same, but in a much nicer form factor.
Thanks in advance!
what made you buy a prebuilt over building your own?
i mean this looks like the model you got which is $350 without even getting into drives.
https://www.serverbuilds.net/145-nas-killer-v20/
passmark score of almost 10k, 24gb of ram, 15 hard drive bays, a way to upgrade beyond even that and you get to run your own os/programs.
I have a desktop set up as my Plex server now, but I'm looking into a Synology NAS to increase storage capacity. If my PC streams everything fine at the moment is there any reason to get the Synology Play over the regular version?
Some of the backplanes are flaky in the QNAP models (like the TS-563), but I’ve not heard of any issues with Synology devices. I run servers for storage, Dell or SuperMicro, so I’m out of the NAS game a bit.
Maybe start here and see what you think: Synology 4 bay NAS DiskStation DS418 (Diskless) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075N17DM6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_smpwCbQB42EJD
I have a Synology ds 418 and a hikvision camera. You can record with the synology software for free (no cloud) for 2 cameras i think
Well im not familiar with that model, from the specs it show using 1.4 GHz Realtek RTD1296 Quad-Core, which would be worst.
From amazon reviews of the Synology 4 bay NAS DiskStation DS418 (Diskless)
&#x200B;
>the DS418 uses a Realtek ARM CPU which won’t run Plex
&#x200B;
>Bad News: If you are a fan of Plex you may be out of luck. Synology seems to have discontinued support for Plex for all model NAS servers aside from those using an intel processor. According to the Plex forums, some of the older DS418 models do have the intel chips but almost all of the new ones have the Realtek quad cores in them.
&#x200B;
>My only complaint, which is my fault, is that the device is not strong enough to support Plex Media Server on its own.
&#x200B;
>I docked it a star for not being able to transcode plex
&#x200B;
But crosscheck on synology forums and on plex forums.
Hey JDM! I'm literally 5 minutes into my NAS server research. Looking to stream mostly music but movies/plex is absolutely something I'm looking at. Anyways I'm just curious why you call your build the NAS Killer? How is it better than say if I just went on amazon and bought something like this:
&#x200B;
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218-Diskless/dp/B075N1BYWX?ref_=Oct_BSellerC_13436301_2&pf_rd_p=2028c04d-42d7-5f82-a3ec-2aaeb0d7bb30&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-6&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=13436301&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=RBXMZ9ZBTG36MNNW4N28&pf_rd_r=RBXMZ9ZBTG36MNNW4N28&pf_rd_p=2028c04d-42d7-5f82-a3ec-2aaeb0d7bb30
&#x200B;
or this:
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ?ref_=Oct_BSellerC_13436301_1&pf_rd_p=2028c04d-42d7-5f82-a3ec-2aaeb0d7bb30&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-6&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=13436301&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=RBXMZ9ZBTG36MNNW4N28&pf_rd_r=RBXMZ9ZBTG36MNNW4N28&pf_rd_p=2028c04d-42d7-5f82-a3ec-2aaeb0d7bb30
&#x200B;
Also your website looks like an amazing resource, I'm looking forward to digging through it!
I'd probably not do a Raspberry Pi for that. The Pi 4 is robust enough but I think it would run out of steam rather quickly. There isn't a dedicated PLEX app for it either.
I'd probably go with a Synology all-in-one NAS file server which will also have packages available to integrate backup services, run PLEX, etc.
On a Synology DS218+ you could run two concurrent h.265 4k streams via PLEX. Since you aren't planning to do redundancy you could just run two 8TB or 10TB drives in RAID0 for stripping to give the best performance. Synology integrates into BackBlaze B2 very easily.
If you want more space, you can go to a 4 or 5 bay Synology. The bigger units have SSD cache options (likely not needed) and more RAM expandability options. They also support expansion bays to add more storage or on-prem backups. The costs go up rather quickly on those units though, without disks I believe the 5 bay is $500.
Personally, I run my entire system off a Mac mini connected headless to my network and just screen share it. It runs a 8TB RAID1 for me that all backs up to back blaze. Down the line I'll go with a 5 Bay Synology with RAID5 that will act as my entire file server and media streaming server.
The Synology runs their own distro of Linux and is extremely user friendly. It can also run home surveillance systems and a bunch of other packages for various uses. We love them.
Hi friend - here's what I use for cloud storage/backups
And for battery organizing
Would you recommend this + this ?
I've done a fair amount of reading on plex servers and file sharing, but I still have a pretty elementary understanding so I'm hoping for some critique/constructive criticism on my plans. I plan on supporting up to 4 plex streams all through Wifi to TVs, tablets, laptops, phones. No remote access at this point. I plan on using a NAS device as storage for tv shows/movies/music and it will also be a torrenting machine. Then have another computer serve as the plex media server. This is probably overkill, but here's what I was planning:
File Storage/Torrenting server
Synology 2 Bay NAS
WD 4TB Hard Drive (x2)
&#x200B;
Plex Media Server
Micro ATX Case
Gigabyte Motherboard
Ryzen 5 2600 CPU - 13000 passmark
8 GB Ram
Graphics Card
&#x200B;
Still trying to figure out the power supply for the PMS. I think 550w should be ample. I also have a 1TB hard drive from years ago that I think I can use with this. If not I'll just get another one. My understanding is PMS transcoding isn't burdensome on RAM, but more processors cores/threads so I made sure I have ample room there.
&#x200B;
The one caveat is this will be in the living room right underneath the main TV, so I wanted to try and keep noise level down. Or is this all just unnecessry overkill and I should just look at a T710/T310 dell server as the PMS?
I use this NAS as my own personal cloud storage. I don't have any experience using it for sharing FL Studio files, but I imagine it's no different than any other files really. You can sign into the NAS from anywhere at anytime. It's pretty great, albeit a bit pricey upfront. But you'll never have to pay for a subscription cloud storage!
NAS == Network Attached Storage. In short: its a dedicated computer for your hard drives. As such, you can have all sorts of awesome software on it that automatically runs checks and ensures that the data remains as clean as possible.
Over the long term, if you want to really keep your data safe, you can't rely on passive storage. You need software to automatically run checks and fix errors that pop up.
You can connect a NAS to your network, and your main computers will read/write data to it as if it were a normal hard drive. It pretends to be a hard drive, while offering a lot of protections for you.
> No idea what NAS is r any of those terms after "2 hard drives".
ZFS is Solaris Unix's resilient filesystem, designed to combat bitrot and disk failures. In practice, you get ZFS for free when you install something like FreeNAS.
Storage Spaces is Microsoft / Windows solution to resiliency. If you're more of a Windows person, you'll need to buy a Windows License for $100, but there are certainly benefits. I do prefer the $0 software solution however.
RAID1 is an older technology: it means pair two hard drives together. Whenever data is written to one hard drive, write it to the 2nd hard drive automatically. It fails to deal with the case of bit-rot (if one drive bitrots, you don't know which drive holds the correct data). But still, because two hard drives are working together, you need to lose both hard drives before you lose all the data.
In short: RAID1 is protection against catastrophic disk-failure. If someone shoots your computer with a gun, destroying one hard drive... its fine. All your data was automatically copied to the 2nd hard drive already. You then can buy a new hard drive and restore the RAID1 functionality. Only if both hard drives fail before you restore the RAID will you lose data.
The case of bitrot is way harder to deal with though. So in practice, you should use ZFS or Storage Spaces.
--------
NAS4Free is my software of choice. It is $0 on the FreeBSD operating system (kinda like Linux but different). So you don't pay for Windows, and you only need a $5 4GB USB drive to boot NAS4Free.
CPU + Motherboard of course will run you ~$150 or so, +4GB of RAM to 16GB of RAM (depending on how strong of a NAS you want). You can build a cheap NAS for $250 total, or buy one prebuilt for ~$300. I personally prefer to build my own however.
Hard drives come separately of course. Grab 2x 5TB Hard Drives for $300 and you've got a build for a total of ~$550 or so.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B075N1BYWX/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1523789863&amp;sr=8-2&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=synology+2+bay&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=41ew6gtQQZL&amp;ref=plSrch
No transcoding required.
&#x200B;
I was eyeballing Synology for the attractive cases, easy expansion units, and attractive OS.
&#x200B;
Would this set-up work? https://pcpartpicker.com/user/GleekedOwt/saved/6GsMcf I made a quickie part list. It's $200 less than the Synology model (without the storage drives) and is more powerful. (Comparing to the Synology DS918+)
&#x200B;
I'm not certain what route to go with the OS. Amahi looks nice, but I'm not sure I can install Lidarr, Radarr, or use Python scripts on it. FreeNAS - same concerns, and I've read that it's "more advanced".
Do you have any other comments or OS suggestions?
I recommend the following in order:
Again most of the time you only need to use MakeMKV, name the file, move it to your NAS in the correct Plex folder and done. I do not recommend compressing every movie to have more space. Storage is cheap, Electricity and time involved in compressing is not in comparison. This will cost ~$1,000. Which will give you about 4T of storage at minimum. $1k for 4T of redundant backup is a good deal.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optiplex-390-Intel-Core-i3-2120-3-30GHz-8GB-RAM-DESKTOP-COMPUTER-NO-HDD/362827327261? $50 w/shipping.
add a dual NIC, https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-0FCGN-Dual-Port-PCI-E-1G-RJ45-NIC-With-Full-Height-Bracket/202816687059? $11
for $61 you'll have about 3x the hardware performance of a $550 off the shelf NAS.
https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/DS918+
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/
&#x200B;
now, if you build your own, you'll have to fuss w/the OS. and the above doesn't have hot swap bays.
but, yeah... you're looking at about 10% of the cost VS buying an off the shelf NAS.
&#x200B;
> I just need a second copy of the data really.
RAID / NAS is not a backup. please do not consider them as such.
Before recommending DS918+ for its expandablity, it's worth noting that you can basically buy a new DS918+ for the same price as the DX517.
The DX517 is ridiculously priced: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-5bay-Expansion-DX517-Diskless/dp/B06Y4J9GR8 $468-618.
DS918+: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT $550.
https://camelcamelcamel.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/product/B075N1Z9LT?context=search
Here's the price history on Amazon. You can set an email alert to be notified at a certain price point
I actually never saw it for 600. Lust looked at my amazon order history — I bought it in jab 2018 for $529.99. Looking at the price history here it’s always user $550
https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B075N1Z9LT
The 1618 hovers about $730 https://camelcamelcamel.com/Synology-Bay-NAS-DiskStation-Diskless/product/B07CR8RZYY
So it’s 33 or 25 % difference depending how you look at it
I think what happens is because with synology the majority of the cost is fixed — distribution, software, services, and support — drastically improving hardware results in minor end user cost increase. Which makes low end, a tiny bit cheaper models disproportionally worse value compared to competition where hardware cost constitutes larger fraction of the price. Does it make sense?
I see. So you'll need to get a NAS device because the drive you currently are using is not network capable. It's just a large capacity hard drive. I'm not sure what the USB ports on your router are used for, but that's the reason why your Shield can't see it. There are many kinds of NAS's out there, you'll just need to do research on what is best for your needs. Just as a reference, here is the one I'm using: https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Home-Personal-Storage-WDBVXC0040HWT-NESN/dp/B076CTK55W
Look into Synology NAS devices. Works with Mac/Windows, decently priced and you can put whatever size drives in them you need to accommodate your needs. I use one at home and at work. Start with something like this, then find drives to populate it: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS1019-Diskless/dp/B07NF9XDWG/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=synology+nas+4+bay&qid=1572919695&sr=8-5.
They are pretty easy to setup as well.
1x Synology 5 Bay NAS DiskStation DS1019+ (Diskless) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NF9XDWG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_PENFDb752SYT1
4x SanDisk Ultra 3D NAND 2TB Internal SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s, 2.5"/7mm, Up to 560 MB/s - SDSSDH3-2T00-G25 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071KGS72Q/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_TFNFDbG45J0F4
2x Crucial P1 500GB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD - CT500P1SSD8 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J2WBKXF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_wGNFDb7D37E0X
You can leave the lat bay open or put a 5th SSD in. You can probably also use synologies dynamic load balancing and plug one port into each of your two switches.
Synology is very reliable and not too complicated. It has its own interface you access through a web browser plus you can attach additional drives to it. You can run 2 drives in RAID for redundancy or run them as a single drive (if you are daring).
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076G6YKWZ
I also have a few of these:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003X26VV4
It doesn't have any management interface but works well for attaching to a USB interface such as to your modem/router and does different types of RAID.
Other than that, people suggest you get a cheap PC box and build your own, get some experience that way.
Edit: updated links
Synology don’t even sell directly do they but potentially one of their resellers might discount at Black Friday.
Looks like prices at Amazon are fairly stable though. CamelCamelCamel link
Beep. Boop. I'm a bot.
It seems the URL that you shared contains trackers.
Try this cleaned URL instead: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=sr_1_4
If you'd like me to clean URLs before you post them, you can send me a private message with the URL and I'll reply with a cleaned URL.
I'm using a Synology NAS. I tried to use my WD NAS but it's software was pretty limited it what it can do. If you're just starting out I'd recommend a 2-bay NAS, Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218j (Diskless) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_a9D0BbA1AWCDS
They're nice from what I've seen however for the most part, a NAS will function the same as all other NAS devices. It's from it's basic functionality where you will see a difference. I know that Synology is kind of the benchmark of NAS devices. They have great support and operate on a Linux based OS which is great. Also they have a lot of backup options and free appliances which from what I've read the WD MyCloud and other devices don't have.
On Amazon you're going to find the best price for most devices new. IMO this https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=synology&amp;qid=1556817727&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-2 plus 2X4TB WD Red drives is a better option.
There's lots of options, but you don't specify a budget, and that makes it hard.
After many years in consulting IT, I wouldn't trust a thin client further than an ant could throw it; they're terribly engineered and are treated as disposable hardware for a reason.
Buy a two-bay consumer NAS, like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1537810617&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=synology+to+disk
Doesn't have to be Synology - Buffalo makes some, as do a pile of other manufacturers. The NAS is only slightly larger than an external USB disk. Most of them can be configured as internet-accessible and support SMB and CIFS, and anything along these lines is going to be more power-efficient than any other setup I can think of.
Using just a raw external disks is a bad idea; you're going to run into problems with them not mounting correctly after a reboot and breaking your share configuration.
&#x200B;
If you want privacy you need to host things yourself. An easy starter would be to setup Syncthing https://syncthing.net/ on all your computers and sync common work and personal folders. I do this for my business's work and documents. It can scale to large videos and projects very well so you can use it to setup a remote backup server with a friendly gui.
&#x200B;
When you are ready to get more advanced you can buy a little NAS (a tutorial linked below) and setup both syncthing and Nextcloud https://nextcloud.com/ on it. Nextcloud is a google drive/docs replacement.
&#x200B;
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ
&#x200B;
It's a little advanced so if you can just run syncthing on your computers would be a good start.
&#x200B;
There are quite a few free tutorials for the open source equivalent applications. See below for my picks for the equivalent on Photoshop and Microsoft Office.
&#x200B;
https://wyatttechcourses.com/pages/free_tutorials
&#x200B;
&#x200B;
If you buy a laptop I highly recommend System76. Laptops have a lot of custom work in them that makes it difficult for the community to get working 100% on Linux. System76 does a lot of little things like contributing to patches, flashing Linux friendly custom firmware to get things working 100%, and they offer lifetime support. (They just sent me a free replacement for a v key I just broke off.) Plus you will be supporting a Linux vendor.
&#x200B;
https://system76.com/laptops
&#x200B;
(WyattTechCourses has no affiliation with System76.com, I just buy all my laptops from them.)
&#x200B;
Edit: reddit's formatting does not want to cooperate.
Synology NAS
Buy this and two hard drives, and for all intents and purposes your data will be immune to hard drive failure.
Or just get a cheap USB hard drive to back them up.
It's 2018, "the hard drive might crash" is no longer an excuse not to store things digitally. NAS devices, USB storage, and online backups have rendered that concept obsolete.
Would this one suffice?
Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218j (Diskless) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_lGe4DbR0HSMKX
I gotta respond to a fellow Owl! I also did similar topic replies earlier today. If the 350GB HDD is running your OS then your first step would to be to get a cheap 250gb SSD and transfer your OS onto there. How many extra HDDs bays do you have within your computer? Next step would be to get a 8TB or 10TB shuckable HDD on sale, Easystore and Elements drives are good.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/dmisv3/anyone_familiar_with_backblaze_storage_pods/f55nxpp/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/dmvcqc/bestbuy_easystores_8tb_130_10tb_160/
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-500GB-Internal-MZ-76E500B-AM/dp/B07864WMK8/
But to expand upon that it really depends on how much money you want to spend and the quality of a setup you can get by with for now. As history has shown, every dollar you spend now gets you less than what you can get next year. Putting that aside though, you do need a base level set up and upgrade from there. The cheapest is just to reuse your computer as a "NAS". You could purchase Drivepool (Windows) if you want to pool/combine all of the drives onto one drive letter/mount point or use free MergerFS (Linux) standalone or within OMV4 OS (also free).
There is a real void in the market for cheap low end stuff that you can expand cheaply. You can use USB external storage, but USB is finicky so don't trust any raid setups via USB, but Snapraid might be ok'ish... You want a network attachment with one of the following.
https://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-hc2
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076G6YKWZ/
https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/nas-killer-4-0-build-guide-fast-quiet-power-efficient-and-flexible-starting-at-125/667/12
Since you already have a computer up and running then you can skip the odroid, but it's still good for standalone NAS backups of your OS or VMs. The Synology is new AND it is network attached, not USB attached; however it is only 2 bay (4 bay is too pricey), it has minimal processing power and upgradeability with no storage expandability. Depending on your location and shipping then ebay would have the highest value per dollar spent if you make the right purchase and the used device doesn't crap out shortly after... I made a ton of posts on all this, so if you want start reading up. Just click on the link then read and keep following the links and reading, have fun.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/d56cfr/best_upgrade_from_a_single_drive/f0nxotm/
> Is RAID the same as Bay (e.g. 2-Bay NAS)?
No raid is different, here's a vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE7Bfw9lFfs
Would not recommend, that specific product got a 3.5 rating on Amazon. I generally don't trust anything under a 4 rating.
I would recommend something like:
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ
filled with: https://www.amazon.com/Red-4TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B00EHBERSE
** make sure you pick the correct size hard drive.
Also the DS218j for $119. I think everyone should get one of those to use for HyperBackup.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076G6YKWZ
If the servers are in AWS, you can use their Snowball (https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/) to grab the data and have it sent to you.
&#x200B;
Alternatively, get one of these (https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TR-004-Enclosure-Attached-hardware/dp/B07K4RC7X9). They're just disks you can attach using USB. Grab 4 drives, flick it to RAID 5 (so you have 1 redundancy) and you're good. 4 10TB disks should come out something around 21TB worth of space.
Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:
Amazon Smile Link: this one
|Country|Link|Charity Links|
|:-----------|:------------|:------------|
|USA|smile.amazon.com|EFF|
|UK|www.amazon.co.uk|Macmillan|
|France|www.amazon.fr||
|Canada|www.amazon.ca||
|Italy|www.amazon.it||
|India|www.amazon.in||
To help add charity links, please have a look at this thread.
This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting). The thread for feature requests can be found here.
We use these at work for our surveillance.
For home use you can pair with this or this
QNAP can do all that, but not well and not at the same time. And if you want the actual Plex server to run on your NAS? Forget it. The POS processors they include can't even handle one stream without stuttering.
FreeNAS is a BSD build that supports all sorts of plugins. It's ridiculously easy to set up, you have full control, and you can customize as much or as little as you want. Plus being able to upgrade your hardware over time if you want to expand.
Neither QNAP nor Synology is offering enough to justify their prices. I mean, seriously. $430 for a shitty 1.5 Ghz Celeron and 2 GB of RAM? Wut? And don't even get me started on this shit.
They are offering nowhere near enough benefit for the prices they charge. The only decently priced units they have are small home-office 2-bay systems that are only good for just straight storing files (and at 2 bays, I wouldn't really want to do more than that with them anyway). Sub $200? That's fine for a convenience fee. But for most of their stuff they're charging server prices for less than half the performance.
Why cloud? I would just buy a backup appliance. Something that the drives can be replaced.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=psdc_13436301_t1_B00OZ0CTAU