NAS goes to the Router, Server goes to the server.
No need for internal drives in the server other than the small one that runs the server. The NAS has drives in it. I guess you could go with some program like freenas and build a RAID on you own but I don’t have the time or energy for that.
I’m trying to compare two setup:
- NAS plus desktop as PMS unit (your setup)
Vs - Desktop as PMS with all hard drive inside.
What is the advantage to physically separate your hard drive from the desktop server if I can have everything in one unit.
I can only speak for my setup. I run more than 1 server. I have a server on a desktop, laptop and an Nvidia Shield. I have a WD MyCloud NAS with all my media on it. The reason I have my setup is so multiple devices can access the media on the NAS. I don’t keep the desktop on all the time to save power but do keep the Shield and laptop on. I can also access the files on the NAS away from home. Some may not be able to have many hard drives in their desktop depending on their setup, case size, etc.
Ok now I understand. Which Qnap NAS do you have? What is the model number?
I really like your idea to separate storage from the PMS. Right now I’m running some cheap Ethernet switches, do i need to upgrade them as well?
YOu just need to match the switch to the ethernet ports on your computers. If you have 100 megabit ports on your PC you should have 100 megabit ports on your router. I like the NAS approach as said above. Most flexibility. It also servers as a network accessible file server that I can share files with friends. It runs 24/7 which is fine because it is designed to run 24/7. My PLEX server is running on a Dell server. It runs 24/7 too because the box was designed to. A standard PC really isn’t.
I also got the NAS for free along with the server. My company bought it to do fast prototyping of client servers and ended up figuring out that it really wouldn’t work for what they had in mind so it sat in the server room in a box for two years. I asked if I could have it and they said sure. I just had to buy the drives to put in it. Currently it has 10 five terabyte drives. I started with five drives. I can add two more. If I fill that up I can swap them out with larger drives and never have to take the NAS down while I do it. That is the advantage of a NAS over a PC full of drives. It is designed to be easily expanded. PCs full of drives really aren’t.
Thank you. I’m looking at the QNAP TS-x31P2, do you recommend this unit? Since I’m in a limited budget, I assume I can fill two of the HArd drive bay now and add more in the future, right?
I think that is a four bay unit. Sounds good. Yes, you would start with two and end up with the storage capacity of one. Then each additional drive you add will increase your storage by one drive. So if you put two 8 terabyte drives in to start, you would have 8 terabytes of storage. The RAID 5 arangement uses one full drive as a parity check for drive fail over. Add another 8 terabyte drive and you get 16 TB. Add another and you get. 24 tb. All the drives will have to be the same size.
I haven’t followed the whole thread closely. Excuse me if it’s been said.
I recently got a QNAP NAS and added Plex.
Longevity of data, low power, and content available to desktops or iPads
were my concerns. Getting a NAS + Plex was in general a fail at those goals.
The first casualties were longevity and privacy. A whole Linux OS plus Plex
means your drives will always be on constantly for years. Before my drives
were off 99.9% of the time. Privacy was next. Plex scans your files and does
a massive search for all titles at once. It’s a fingerprint they share with who knows.
Low power it wins at that only because it can download things while my desktop sleeps.
Otherwise it would be much cheaper to not have a 30W NAS running 24hrs a day.
Content available to iPads and TVs. It does that pretty well because I bought a NAS
that had a hardware transcoder. So it converts the video portion in hardware, but it
has to convert the audio in software. If it has to convert audio, the CPUs go to 100%, sigh.
Converting audio leads to stuttering on a NAS. New iPads do most converting on their
own hardware so the NAS barely does anything with those, even 4k with True-HD.
What I did get was my whole library available at once, beautifully organized and
accessible to family. I can also have my 250W desktop off at night while my 30W NAS
takes care of content gathering. Spending money to use less energy seems a fair
trade off.
good luck
I just ordered two 10TB drive this week. I’m still waiting for the QNAP to go on sales. Should I hold off on use/transfer any movie to my new drive? I assume when I plug them in and setup the QNAP for the first time, it will format/wipe all my data, right?
If that is not true, what would be the best way for me to transfer data from my old 4TB drive to the new 10TB easystore (Before I shuck it)
Don’t do anything until you get the NAS and put your drives in it. If you do a standard RAID 5 set, your two 10tb drives will end up with a total of 10 tb of usable space. Once you have that, start transferring the data on your 4tb externals to that RAID. Do not erase the 4TB drives after you trasnfer the data. They will become your backups. You need to remember that the NAS is just a secure place to store stuff but it isn’t foolproof and you do need a backup. Keep the externals for that purpose. Always have two copies of everything in case the NAS fails you won’t lose everything.
Agreed with the above, and I’ll add when you get your QNAP and you get Plex installed and updated, just practice with a few movies and a few tv shows. Get a feel for the workflow. Realize what mistakes you’ve made, then wipe it and start again. You may have chosen the wrong volume type, or used a preinstalled share, etc.
One thing I’m really happy I did was use a 500 GB SSD as the first drive in the raid and set it up for QTier so that it’s part of my main storage. Doing so and not using the SSD as cache lets the operating system automatically move any often used data to the SSD. My Plex metadata therefore got moved to the SSD, and I never had to think about it past setting it up the first day.
Thank you!
I’m using the NAS as movie storage only. I have to check and see if my current desktop is using SSD or not. If no, I will be getting one soon. I will use the desktop as my server, and plan on storing my Plex metadata on the SSD.
Nibbles . You have one SSD as the first drive in the raid? (No one has 1 SSD)
What else is in the raid?
I don’t understand , please explain
On my QNAP NAS, there are three ways to use an SSD:
- as cache (read, write, or combined read/write)
- like any other disk
- or as a QTier device, which is a special version of #2.
I use mine as a QTier device. What that means is my SSD becomes attached to my main storage, combining itself with 1 or more hard drives into whatever RAID format I’ve chosen, giving me a RAID array that’s increased by the size of the SSD and which automatically puts the most used files on the SSD, the medium used files on any SAS/7200, and the least used ones on 5200 rpm drives.
When I described putting one SSD as the first drive in the enclosure, I don’t think that was a requirement, but it was conceptually the first drive that gets written onto, being SSD. QTier does have limitations on which Volume types I can chose.
Even in QTier, the SSD acts like an SSD in cache mode, cacheing all reads and writes.
It just moves the least used files off the SSD every night.
I was thinking of regular NAS users who might put a couple of 1 TB SSDs into a RAID10 as their storage for the OS and Plex metadata, maybe using M.2’s as cache when they have a birthday.
This is what the combination of all my spare drives made, essientially a JBOD with QTier.
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