Gear / Technical Help > Ask The Tapers
NAS or similar storage options
bobstammers:
Hi,
I'm in the market for revamping my home storage.
I currently use a WD EX4100 with 4 x 2TB drives giving me 7.2TB overall (back up is done to a couple of external drives). 1 drive has failed and I'm thinking I may as well upgrade the while system instead of replacing the drive as I'm up to 6TB in files.
My current thinking is a WD PR4100 with 4 x 10TB in Raid 5 giving me 30TB usable space including some drive failure security.
I guess what I'm really asking is what is the current thinking on the best way to go and which manufacturers have the best reliability both in terms of the drives and the hardware itself. Also considering best RAID format etc, doesnt have to be RAID 5, am I missing some other configuration..
I run SONOS throughout the house, have the PLEX app for movies and Transmission app for torrents currently on the NAS. Music storage is bog standard MP3 collection, FLAC live stuff, WAV new stuff, also store some movies, music vids, family photos etc.
Your wisdom would be very much appreciated.
Budget is 2k GBP but hopefully closer to 1.5K
Cheers.
Blakeq:
Seems like Synology and qnap are the leaders for Nas stuff and have the best software support.
I just got a lower end Synology. Have not set it up yet.
For drives, some people prefer Western digital or Seagate. I went with Western digital. I got some 12 tb externals during Christmas sales that I will shuck. ( Remove the cases from).
rumbleseat:
I have so little objective information that was thinking of not even offering it, but anyway, here it is. I don't have any experience with the WD NAS boxes. But, I've been running a Synology DS414 for almost 6 years with Seagate NAS 4x4TB drives. It has been flawless. I've requested help from Synology a couple of times and they've provided excellent advice, even logging into my NAS remotely and helping me free up space and get it configured properly. I also have to put in a good word for Newegg - I had originally purchased WD Red drives and for some reason (bad lot I'm guessing) the NAS trashed all 4 during installation. Newegg took them back and refunded the purchase without a question. The Seagate drives installed fine and have been running smoothly ever since.
The NAS is running Synology's version of RAID so I'm covered if a disk fails. Even so, I have it do a weekly backup to an 8 TB and 10TB set of WD MyBook drives.
I particularly like the "DS Audio" phone app that gives me access to my entire music collection wherever I am. I'm guessing WD and QNAP have similar apps...
daspyknows:
I have been very happy with my synology unit. On the otherhand stay away from Buffalo products. Their stuff is unreliable, things failed shortly after warranty expired and support horrible. The head of support told me I should expect things to fail. Ended up corresponding with EVP of Sales and Support and they sent a refurbished unit that was DOA.
Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B):
I've been running a Synology DS918+ with 4x6TB WD Red drives. Gives me about 16GB total storage.
It's been 100% reliable (knock on wood). It was easy to set up, and has a lot of options to use it for other things. Currently I have Deluge (torrent client) running on it. One of these days I'll get around to setting up Plex (media server) as well.
Don't forget that a NAS is NOT a backup solution by itself. Yep, a drive can die and you'll probably be ok...but if you're house burns down...it's gone. If you accidentally delete a bunch of stuff it might also be gone.
Because of this I also have a Synology DS218+ that lives at my brothers house. I initially backed it up and home and then brought it over to his house where it gets sync'd to the 918+ nightly.
Finally, I keep 1 HD in a safe deposit box that is a back up of my critical data (mostly my recordings and photos). That gets updated about once a year
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