My main PC is about dead - including several alerts for the drives failing too. I have a new laptop and hardly ever use my PC now, so I’m thinking do I just replace it with a NAS?
I’ve got a budget of about £800-£1000GBP although this would need to include some drives too. I’ve currently got 22TB of media.
I’ve never really looked at NAS drive, I’ve looked at the spreadsheet but I’m not sure what some of the options are - I’m guessing that the more columns that say yes, means it will be compatible to changes for longer?
Can anyone give me almost an idiots guide to whats-what and maybe even a NAS drive that you use which works seamlessly etc?
I’m no expert on the vast range of NAS systems available, but I’ve been very happy with the two Synology boxes I’ve had: a DS214play and a DS918+.
if I were buying now I’d probably get a DS423+ or DS923+. A couple of 14GB drives will get you the capacity you want and just about fit in your budget.
You might try converting your old computer to an Unraid NAS server. It’s a lot cheaper as long as your computer does not have any hardware issues other than your drives going bad. It’s like 60 bucks for up to 6 drives. You can mix and match drive sizes with the exception that the parity drive is the biggest drive in the array. I have been running this NAS for years with no issues and have never lost any data when a drive failed.
A NAS is great. Unraid is cool but takes more tinkering to get going. If you just want a plug ‘n’ play appliance, and there’s no shame in that, Synology is awesome.
If the NAS will also be your Plex server then you need to figure out if you need hardware accelerated transcoding via Quick Sync, and make sure you get a NAS which can do that… Plus, Plex Pass to unlock the feature.
(Unless you only ever play files to devices which can directly play all media of interest, and know that will never change, I think that hardware accelerated transcoding is a very important feature… But some people are happy jumping through flaming hoops to avoid it. YMMV.)
you could just build a new pc and dedicate it to being a media server. My reasoning is; once you get into something like synology or qnap, you’re kinda locked in with them and they’re a one-trick pony… they’re a nas and that is it. if you were to build a media server, you could very VERY easily do it on your budget and get more than enough capacity and functionality than you would get out of one of the aforementioned nas’s.
in my setup at home, i have an old pc with parts i either grabbed outta the trash bin at work or got for cheap off ebay and it simply runs truenas core. i3-7100T cpu that sits and tiddles it thumbs all day long… connected to it i have a small win10 pc that runs plex, handbrake, and all the other things and THAT’s my media server… the nas is just for storage. you could absolutely consolidate my setup into one box without truenas or anything like that. i like the modularity of my setup because if blow something up it’s easy to fix without having to start all over… PLUS, as much as i hate windows, yeah, plex seems to work best on it (or at least its easiest to use), so that makes it easier to manage.
also, someone mentioned using unraid… from my own experience unraid is messy and you have to pay for it. if you’re gonna go that route, might as well use truenas since it’s free and far FAR more robust (especially truenas core… put it on hardware that 2-3 generations old and it’s bulletproof).
windows10 workstation/enterprise/IoT has built-in software raid which is more than adequate (i mention those because i dunno if it’s possible with home edition, however i know from experience that it’s in those 3). Control Panel-> storage spaces, and there you go… it would be far easier and more reliable than unraid.
just my 0.02
