I can find all the information in the world, but it doesn’t really answer my question and I would hate to make the wrong choice in my first NAS.
It’s for Plex first, but I wouldn’t mind dabbling with other things if it can support it. Currently I stream to 1 Roku outside of the house, and my gaming PC (attached to my TV) for local. Eventually I may add another local or outside, heck maybe both.
Currently I try to get anything I can in a 4k format, but often times settle for 1080p. I would like my 4k in home to be at 4k no transcoding down, but for the outside of the house, 1080p is fine as is (or downgraded from 4k) resolutions can vary, H264 vs 265 vary, HEVC is another possibility for the files.
I have seen the DS220+ is the best budget and about 3-4 years old, I have seen that Terramaster 423 is another strong contender as well. QNAP is also up there often as a choice. I would like to be under $500, and if I can get 4 bays that would be awesome, but 2 bays are fine as a start, I can add more later on, add a 2nd NAS, etc So which is the best choice? Is there something I am over looking?
My goal is to retire my 10yr old PC that is currently doing hanging in there, and save that for either something else like a fun project PC for playing with different OSes or etc, or just retire it (i7 4950 if I recall or something to that effect, DDR3 ram, shes old).
Not sure what your old computer is but you could convert it to an Unraid NAS server if it has enough horse power for your use case. On the other hand you can purchase a decent computer for under 500 and convert it to Unraid.
I have been using Unraid for years and I like the flexibility of adding drives and features it has. I have not had any issues with plex since I installed it on this NAS. Plex runs in a docker container and so does all the support apps I use.
I had considered that as an option but I don’t want to deal with if and when it dies. It’s a 4000 series CPU (i7 but still almost a decade old) not much RAM, igpu. I was thinking of getting something I could set and forget.
I tried unraid once and it was confusing to me, this was a few years ago. Has it gotten more user friendly? Let’s say the system dies and I buy a new NUC for example (something under 500) how much of a pain is it to get back up and running?
It’s difficult to say what will work for you. If your focus is on 4k remote streams I would be a little concerned with going for a NAS with a low power CPU. If your internet speeds are ok and you stay away from things like PGS subtitles you might be ok
I understand a budget is what makes a lot of choices for you but given my experience I wouldn’t recommend a 2 bay. If you’re getting mostly 4k stuff you will outgrow a 2 bay faster than you might think. I started with a 4 bay and have a 2nd as a backup and I’m already regretting not building an Unraid server for the reasons Alucard1 mentioned
I bumped the drives my NAS from 10tb to 16tb and I got no additional storage until I replaced all 4. It’s painful to spend 1500 dollars and not see 1gb of increased capacity
I don’t know how Unraid used to be but it doesn’t seem any harder than using the OS on my NAS
I know your i7 is old but it’s really not that bad.
If transcoding performance is your main concern, I would consider just adding a lower cost Nvidia GPU to your current machine. That might give you some wiggle room to save up until you can get what you really want
If it’s primarily storage then I guess that’s different
It has gotten a lot better over the years and easier to use. SpaceEnvaderOne on YouTube has many help videos for Unraid and how to setup various apps you might be interested in including setting up Plex.
I have had about 5 drive failures over the years and all I did is just replace the drive, it was rebuilt and have never lost any data. As for the system files, they are all stored on a USB drive so all you have to do is backup all the files on that drive on a computer so restoring the system files is easy. I do have NVME drive I use for a cache drive and there are apps you can install on the NAS to backup these files to the data drives as well. I have never lost any files that I could not restore and files I had to restore was due to my stupidity.
The outside connections would definitely be ok with 1080, the only 4k would be in home and even then I usually end up with 1080pm just due to file size since my 1TB drives are getting a bit full. I was looking at 4TB to give me room to breath again.
Speaking of drives I didn’t realize it took that much space away off each drive, I knew some would get used (if I recall I read 4tb is a 1tb loss) but spending 1,500 to upgrade and only get 1tb sounds terrible. Is that a NAS thing vs unraid thing?
I was concerned about the life it has left (the i7, the ram, etc etc) hate to have the system die and then be in the market for a new thing or a new system overall. I guess it was kind of piece of mind to know it’s a shiny new system that shouldn’t die and will remain future proof for years. It’s handled anything it needed to just fine so far (if it needed to transcode it didn’t hit any issues) every once in a while I’d have to restart a video after skipping a bit to get it to catch up but it does instantly which isn’t a huge deal
If I was going to get anything I was shooting for 4bay and starting with 2 drives, with 2 more down the road, I was thinking raid 5 (so 1 back up of each, I think that’s 5 right?)
Nice to know unraid has gotten much better over the years, I’ll take a peak at it as an option for sure. Nice to have tutorials too!
I forgot unraid is flash drive based, I’ll have to grab one.
I still have my concerns about my old system holding up, it sometimes as it is now just drops off the network, and I can’t remote in, even though I have vnc and chrome remote and the nic is showing comms so that’s why I was leaning so heavily to a nas.
That’s a NAS thing. If your 4 bay NAS is in a raid 5 configuration you get the full storage space of 3 drives. You lose the capacity of the 4th drive but that’s what keeps you from losing your data if any of the 4 drives die. Four 10tb drives will get you roughly 30tb of useable space. (27.2tb real)
Let’s say you have a 4 bay NAS with 10tb drives (total capacity of 40tb but 10 is gone using raid 5) for a total of 30tb
You want to move to 20tb drives
You buy the 1st 20tb and add it. You still have only 30tb of useable space
You buy the 2nd 20tb and add it. You still have only 30tb of useable space
You buy the 3rd 20tb and add it. You still have only 30tb of useable space
Not until you add the 4th and final 20tb hard drive will you see the full capacity of all four 20tb hard drives
Unraid doesn’t work the same way. As soon as you add 1 drive and give it time to rebuild, you have the capacity of whatever size drive you added. You can also mix and match sizes which you can’t do in a typical NAS
The only rule to this is that your parity drives have to be the largest drives in the pool
This is good because if you’re running out of space you don’t have to worry about putting out a large chunk of money for a lot drives all at once
This is a long term consideration, not really something to worry about for now
I’m actually running an older i7 on my Windows server than you are. I’m not suffering any performance issues and I have a backup so I don’t feel as rushed
I have a DS1815+ - I outgrew it in a few months (CPU not strong enough). I use it now for Plex development work.
I bought a QNAP TVS-1282-i7 in 2017 - I outgrew it too (not enough storage and I/O too slow. I do Plex testing on it.
I also have a DS418j and a TS128 (too small for my use but ok for Plex testing)
I ended up building my own in Nov 2021 so I wouldn’t outgrow it any time soon.
(Syno isn’t cheap and higher-end QNAP is expensive).
Yes, I’m a freak (but look who I work for )
My foundation is a 12 bay Fractal Design 7 XL case.
Currently running 12x 12TB Hitachi HUH721212 HDDs running SAS/SATA-3
Configured as RAID 6, XFS file system, I have 100TB of usable storage.
There are also 14 SSDs in the machine .
It was a very pricey build but I have a base which I can use for a long time.
By upgrading the drives from 12TB to 20TB, I’ll have 166TB usable space (should I ever need it)
I rip my BluRays raw and keep all the quality.
My Nvidia GPU (P2200) does the HW transcoding.
(The Xeon CPU doesn’t have HW transcoding capability)
That’s the extreme end.
I never thought I would EVER need something this big when I started in 2014 but here I am.
PS: I still use the QNAP as my mirror backup. (My LAN is 10G) I’m upgrading the HDDs to 20TB so I can fit all 100TB from the main NAS and still have room to grow.
I assumed the size issue was just based on hdd size/raid type I looked at a few calculators example if I had 6tbx2 and 4tbx2 id lose 4 tb because of the mismatch, some formats (I wanna say shr? It was late and my insomnia had kicked in) gave me back that space and but it wasn’t protected, while not ideal still better than losing the space.
As for why I’m concerned about the age, I’m a tech in an arcade and we have some new and old games like any other arcade but I have seen the strangest things over the years. Things will just die with no warning, monitors, power supplies etc. Prolly has me a bit more concerned than I should be, but I know the abuse they take and the abuse I have this pc lol (it ran VR for me during COVID lockdowns, poor thing worked overtime )
Anyway lol, I’ll definitely look into getting a PC for this, any suggestions for a potential build? Or preferably a pre built? While I could build my own, I’m lazy now a days I admit it
You sure do love your storage, I dreamt of that much storage many years ago lol now I’ll be glad when I have 8tb or more
You are very right the good qnaps are stupid expensive (the “tv” line for sure are) syno isn’t terrible and I was down to those 2 brands due to issues with terra master I was seeing recently (last few months). As I mentioned above I’m looking for set it and forget it if possible.
I’m starting to consider a pre built PC (I don’t want to build it myself and I’ll get a warranty on the PC), any suggestions for things to look for spec wise?
Thanks for your time your feedback is appreciated!
It depends on your needs, if most everything will be direct played, then you don’t need anything very powerful. If you need to transcode, then you will need a machine that has a powerful enough CPU or GPU to handle that. Some of the newer Intel processors have built in GPUs you can use for transcoding. I am not sure which ones are compatible with Plex but I think there is a compatibility list somewhere on here.
I run the below hardware:
Micro-Star International Co., Ltd B450 TOMAHAWK (MS-7C02)
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core @ 3200 MHz
24 Gig DDR4
8 Data drives and 1 Parity for 24 TB total storage
1 TB NVME for cache, docker and VM data storage
I run about 17 docker apps, mostly supports 7 of them are to support Plex and one Windows VM to support my 4 channel TV Cable Card Tuner.
Most of the time my CPU load is 20% or less and if I wanted I can transcode one 4K HDR video without any issue but I don’t do that. I have 1080p optimized copies of the 4K videos for my 1080p TVs and for remote streaming. HD space is cheap now of days.
I was thinking about it a bit overnight and I can start with just getting a HDD enclosure (that supports raid) to start with (it’s 1/2 the price of a NAS or more) and when the time comes the computer does eventually die I can get a nuc or possibly build something…
In the mean time I can do more looking into unpaid and if I decide to pull that trigger I can and turn raid off on the enclosure and use it as a 4 HDD bay.
This way I get the data off the drives (they have been on for 10 years along with the computer ) and then maybe build something or get something to play with with unraid
I am still very curious about everyone’s builds and what has been learned over the years by you guys so please keep sharing.
I’d swear by the synology DS1821+. I run 2, upgraded to 8gb RAM, with eight 8TB hard drives in each (128TB total). I’d go as far as to say I’ve never had a serious issue.
