You have a 70" 4k TV and a macbook !
I assume they were not cheap purchases.
You have gone from buying an 8 bay 1815+ to a 2bay 216play!
My suggestion as before buy a 4 bay (you can use 2 bays until more storage is needed) with an Intel CPU.
You can add drives but you can’t add Bays!! (well you can but it means a new unit)
Look at the Synology 416play…
;
=)) I’m terrible I know.
@spikemixture said:
My suggestion as before buy a 4 bay (you can use 2 bays until more storage is needed) with an Intel CPU.You can add drives but you can’t add Bays!! (well you can but it means a new unit)
Synology offer the DX513 5-bay expansion unit which is much cheaper than a whole new NAS & does add bays to supported models e.f. 1515+, 716, 916 etc
@nigelpb said:
@spikemixture said:
My suggestion as before buy a 4 bay (you can use 2 bays until more storage is needed) with an Intel CPU.You can add drives but you can’t add Bays!! (well you can but it means a new unit)
Synology offer the DX513 5-bay expansion unit which is much cheaper than a whole new NAS & does add bays to supported models e.f. 1515+, 716, 916 etc
Not relevent !
@spikemixture said:
@nigelpb said:
@spikemixture said:
My suggestion as before buy a 4 bay (you can use 2 bays until more storage is needed) with an Intel CPU.You can add drives but you can’t add Bays!! (well you can but it means a new unit)
Synology offer the DX513 5-bay expansion unit which is much cheaper than a whole new NAS & does add bays to supported models e.f. 1515+, 716, 916 etcNot relevent !
How is my post not relevant? You claimed that you can’t add bays whereas I demonstrated that you can. Depending on the base NAS chosen the OP could start with 2,4,5 or 8 bays & later on down the road add another 5 or 10 bays just by plugging an expander unit or units into the NAS at a far cheaper price than replacing the NAS with one that had more bays.
clearing throat
While the OP may not want to hear these precise words, they aren’t aimed in that direction.
“There are a number of ways to skin a cat. As long as the job gets done, it’s all good” 
If the OP can afford to buy a Synology which has eSATA expansion ports, that’s the OP’s decision.
If the OP has to or wants to wait, is that not also the OPs decision? Maybe the OP likes the idea of having a second NAS down the road for some other purpose?
Synology isn’t the only cat in the yard, either. QNAP and Asustor both make models that can handle 1080p transcoding. (QNAP’s TVS-x51 and TVS-X82 models, and Asustor’s AS-700x model, for instance.)
The AS-7004T works well for anything except perhaps 4K content. As I don’t have any 4K devices, can’t test it. I would guess it would Direct Play 4K well, but transcodes might suffer.
And I do suggest getting a unit with more bays than you think you will need. Mine is a 4 bay, but I have another 7 HDD’s hanging off of it through USB3.0. (Faster transfer speeds than eSATA on my system…) It’s the only thing I wish I had done differently. If I had gone with an 8-bay model instead of a 4 bay, I would have had a few less headaches a while back…
@nigelpb said:
@spikemixture said:
@nigelpb said:
@spikemixture said:
My suggestion as before buy a 4 bay (you can use 2 bays until more storage is needed) with an Intel CPU.You can add drives but you can’t add Bays!! (well you can but it means a new unit)
Synology offer the DX513 5-bay expansion unit which is much cheaper than a whole new NAS & does add bays to supported models e.f. 1515+, 716, 916 etcNot relevent !
How is my post not relevant? You claimed that you can’t add bays whereas I demonstrated that you can. Depending on the base NAS chosen the OP could start with 2,4,5 or 8 bays & later on down the road add another 5 or 10 bays just by plugging an expander unit or units into the NAS at a far cheaper price than replacing the NAS with one that had more bays.
Chuckpa explained it 
Hey Hey Hey!!! No cat skinning going on in this thread! =))
Thanks again for all the input. I have settled in on the DS416play. My next question is storage. Keep in mind I’m trying to get by as inexpensive as possible while doing what I need it to do…without future,“O crap,I should have…”.
Right now I need about 8TB storage to be comfortable.
I’m looking on the big river site and am eyeing either 1x8TB or 2x4TB. Both are roughly the same price and if I can operate satisfactorily on 1 drive of course I would get the 8TB for future space expansion. Also Seagate Ironwolf or WD Red??? Or is there a better option?
I like the idea of a 10TB drive but it looks like the price jump from 8 to 10 isn’t a good band for the buck.
If you wish so set up a raid array and u have 8tb of data u need at least 3x4tb (maybe more) or 4x3tb
3 and 4tb are about the same price per meg.
So go for 3x4tb and later u buy another 4 6,8 tb.
But just to complicate things is u buy a 6 or 8 later u only get to use 4tb of it until you replace one of your first 3 (4tb)
That’s using Synology’s raid!
While it’s nice having that 8TB drive in a single unit, when you add another 8TB, you are likely to need to move the data before you put in that second drive. Converting from a single drive to a Raid 1 could wind up erasing anything on the drive. And you definitely don’t want to go with Raid 0 if you ever plan on having all the drive bays filled, and Raid 5 for speed/fault tolerance.
(Yes, I know, Raid 5 is “iffy” at best, but better than a kick in the teeth.)
You can migrate to Raid 5 from Raid 1, but not from Raid 0 with most NAS OSes. Personally, I wouldn’t go with anything short of Raid 5, which means at least 3xXTB drives to give you (#drives -1) X size for storage. (So 3X8TB, minus 8TB = 16TB, roughly.)
Keep in mind, also, Raid isn’t back up. Unless you want to rerip or redownload everything, you will still need some way to back everything up.
Increasing the drive size on arrays usually means you need to replace all of the older, smaller drives with larger, and then you can increase the size of the entire array. In most cases, the size is controlled by the smallest drive in the array.
Point of order?
The brand new drive offerings from each respective vendor… If it’s their first in that capacity, I recommend checking how their previous ‘First Production Run’ drives are fairing out. It’s not uncommon to have an unusually high failure rate during the initial startup.
I’d personally would rather get a known-100%-solid 6T, use it until I’ve exhausted its free space and actually need ore space than lose the entire contents or, potentially, the entire RAID set.
Also remember, drives bought together are usually from the same production run. Also, they’ll tend to wear out together. Plan ahead.
I just got a Synology DS416, which is a 4 bay and dropped 3 4TB drives in it for now. I have to say I am impressed with the unit and the DSM operating system is killer; very organized and easy to configure. You might want to check it out.
