Okay guys so currently i have a an asustor 2 bay NAS. The model i have is the ASUSTOR AS-602T. I am trying to upgrade because i have filled up my 2 four Terabyte drives. I have a third Terabyte drive but i can’t fit it in this device. I’m pretty familiar and used to my Asutor device so i was going to just upgrade to a bigger Asutor NAS. I was looking at the ASUSTOR AS6208T which is a 8 bay NAS. It looks like it may have a better processor and more memory. Unfortunately the NAS is currently sold out from amazon and i’m looking at alternatives. I know that Asustor isn’t even mentioned when most people talk about a NAS recommendations. So i am asking you guys for recommendations. I want the device that is fast enough to seed thousands of torrents and run my plex media server. Everything i download i can directly play so i don’t really need to transcode anything. I need a device that is at least 6 bays but preferably 8 bays. The apps i use are Couchpotato, deluge, headphones, jackett, plex, sickrage, transmission and utorrent. The asustor nas has all these apps right in the app store. From some research i did it looks like synology didn’t have every one of these apps. And qnap didn’t either but you could install them manually. The budget i have is no more than a thousand bucks. I’m also purchasing an additional 8TB Red drive so they are pretty expensive too. Btw i have never built a computer before but if you think that is the best route and have a build recommendation than please post that as well. Any help would be appreciated.
I suggest Synology DS1815+ but 1k$ is not enough.
@Jessel723 If you want to just move your drives to a new box and then upgrade to some of the newer apps that might no be supported on your old model, I suggest you don’t scrimp and just dive right in to the big boy on Asustor’s lineup. The 70xxT. I run the 7004 and it’s a solid workhorse. It handles everything I’ve put through it very easily, and has enough CPU to spare. Over 30TB hanging in or on it right now…
If you go to any other manufacturer, in order to put your drives into them, you are going to lose your data. With the Asustor models, you shut down the old, take out the drives and put them into the new, turn it on, and there it is… (Done it at least 2 times now, so I know this works well.)
@MikeG6.5 said:
If you go to any other manufacturer, in order to put your drives into them, you are going to lose your data. With the Asustor models, you shut down the old, take out the drives and put them into the new, turn it on, and there it is… (Done it at least 2 times now, so I know this works well.)
How would this work? The OP is talking about moving from a 2-disk NAS to 8-disks. It doesn’t sound like any form of RAID is used at present but when moving to the larger NAS you would want to use RAID-5 or RAID-6 with one or two parity disks. Can you really convert from JBOD to RAID-5/6 without doing a backup/restore.
@nigelpb said:
@MikeG6.5 said:
If you go to any other manufacturer, in order to put your drives into them, you are going to lose your data. With the Asustor models, you shut down the old, take out the drives and put them into the new, turn it on, and there it is… (Done it at least 2 times now, so I know this works well.)How would this work? The OP is talking about moving from a 2-disk NAS to 8-disks. It doesn’t sound like any form of RAID is used at present but when moving to the larger NAS you would want to use RAID-5 or RAID-6 with one or two parity disks. Can you really convert from JBOD to RAID-5/6 without doing a backup/restore.
I’m going to guess here, that he probably bought both drives at the same time he bought the NAS. And unless he selected to go against the default Asustor settings when he set up the Raid initially, he’s probably got a Raid 1 in it now.
To migrate either a Raid 0, 1 or JBOD from an older model to a newer is a two step process.
The first step Is to get the data that he already has put into the new NAS, without having to do a lengthy copy or use externals, etc. (Both of which can take up a lot of time, and may cause problems with the data down the road.) Taking his old drives and plugging them into the same manufacturer’s product, (in this case Asustor) and letting the new NAS find the disks and data is step one. Verify everything is working before you move to step two.
Step two would be to create a new volume with new disks, and migrate the data to that volume. At this point he could then break volume 1, whatever he has, and add it to volume 2 if the disk sizes are the same size, or can add additional disks to volume 2. He really doesn’t need volume 1, since his data is already on volume 2, safe and sound. As long as he hasn’t fully populated the NAS, he can make additional volumes, add to them, increase sizes, etc. all within Asustor’s web app. (within some reason, of course… ) This document from Asustor’s online college covers migrating disks to a new NAS: Introduction to System Migration - ASUSTOR NAS
Asustor says that you can take the disks out of any of their products and plug them into another model, as long as the other model has at least the same number of bays or more. This does work, from the testing I have done, going from a 2 bay to a 4 at least 2 other times in the past. And I’ve walked others on the Asustor forums through this process a number of times in the past, so I’m not the only case, here…
If he goes from an Asustor to a Synology (or QNAP, or other brand), in all likelihood he would have to copy the data over onto the new NAS via network or through external drives. Either of which is going to be a lengthy process. If he buys an Asustor model to upgrade to, he just needs to do as I outlined in the first reply. Each manufacturer has their own proprietary formatting it seems, and it’s not an easy thing to take from one and put into another without another method in hand. (Network or externals.)
As both the 62xx and 70xx models are made with either 4, 8 or 10 bays, he has his choice of how to go about it. Initial costs are a bit high for the 70xx model, but I can attest to the 7004 being worth the money. My NAS is absolutely bullet proof, and able to do as much as I can push it to do. Granted the 7004T is more than his budget, but the 620x is close to it. (Mine ran $1300 before drives, but I also had it upgraded to 16GB when I got it.)
Here’s Asustor documentation on raid migrations, if you are interested: RAID Level Migration and Capacity Expansion - ASUSTOR NAS The only disk configs that can’t be migrated higher are Raid 0 and JBOD according to that document…
I don’t have a raid set up yet. I wanted the most space i could get. The only 7008T I could find they wanted 1400 bucks that a little out of my price range. I really wish they didn’t solder the processors in. They do that to make you spend way more money and buy there markup for extra processing power. I head if you want to upgrade memory than you have to void your memory. I would like to find a device i can buy from Amazon because i have a store card and get 5 percent cash back. lol
Uhm, no, the 7000 series of NASes Asustor makes are all socketed. Check out this thread where I asked Asustor to test out other chips in their models. ASUSTOR Community Forum • View topic - AS7004T upgrades They have tested them with several, including i5’s and i7’s, and the 7008’s and 7010’s can easily be updated without heat issues if you pay attention to the power requirements of the chip. (Lower wattages, etc.)
Unfortunately the 7004’s can’t be updated without some heat related issues… (Which is what I have) And for that matter, you could probably use a 7004T to keep your initial costs down, and use external USB3.0 to add more storage later on, as need arises. (this is what I’ve done, with almost 20TB of externals on my 7004T.) I would have liked to go with everything internal, but it’s not a big deal. I could easily hang 100TB or more off this NAS with the right external enclosures.
As far as upgrading memory, you can get to 10GB without the need to void the warranty. There are two slots in all three models. One can be gotten to by just removing the outside cover. The other requires breaking the tamper seal on a screw to change the 2GB there to something else. (Can only use up to 8GB chips.) I got a heck of a deal on 4 of them, so upgraded both the NAS and my RoG laptop at the same time. (A laptop with 32GB of ram??? And no one is ever going to use more than 640K… right Bill Gates!) 
HTH…
EDIT: Here’s a 7004T without drives in it, for an idea of price. https://www.amazon.com/ASUSTOR-AS7004T-4-Bay-Dual-Core-High-Performance/dp/B00PAPOI8U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482021032&sr=8-1&keywords=Asustor+7004T this is right at your $1000 limits…
Second Edit: For that matter here is your 6204 if you want to go with externals later: https://www.amazon.com/ASUSTOR-AS6204T-4-Bay-INTEL-Quad-Core/dp/B014MRVRWG/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1482021143&sr=8-2-fkmr1&keywords=Asustor+7008T
I would go the route of simply building a PC. I run Plex on Freenas. And I don’t need to worry about it having enough power. Although seeing it from the long run (depending how long you use it) it takes a toll on your energy bill.
This is naturally dependend on the build-in Hardware and how many drives you want. For example I have an AMD APU (nothing fancy, but you don’t need a Ferrari, if a Fiat does the same thing) running with 8 HDDs. My yearly bill is 134€ if I run it 24/7. You surely could save money with a dedicated NAS but when will it reach the break-even point? I assume that at this point I would already replace the NAS with a newer model.
I also highly recommend the synology series I myself have a DS1812+
I have a 1511+ 5-bay Synology NAS plus a 5-bay DX510 expansion unit. I could add another expansion unit. The expansion units are great as they allow you to grow from five disks up to fifteen disks at relatively lower cost than buying a whole new NAS. The current equivalent models from Synology are the 1513+ & DX513.
I also have the Synology 1511 and a couple expansion units. The software updates and support have been great. Units have been running 24/7 for 5 yrs now. Newer units have more processor power but mine still runs the current software. The ability to expand the array on the fly has been great.
I am really interested in QNAP new tvs-x73. Strong processor, m.2 cache, large ram upgrades
@ussalaskamain said:
I am really interested in QNAP new tvs-x73. Strong processor, m.2 cache, large ram upgrades
It’s AMD powered so that means no HW acceleration (no Quick Sync or NVENC). The CPU has a Passmark score of 4739 so maybe good for two 1080p CPU transcodes.
That’s fine for me. To each his own. I am pulling the trigger soon. I can’t rely on Plex activing Hw acceleration (I have been waiting a long time) If they did I love synology software I like the 916+ but without quick sync I would struggle with the Dvr functions
@saskir said:
Although seeing it from the long run (depending how long you use it) it takes a toll on your energy bill.
I dunno, mine draws like 35W. That’s really not too bad.
@saskir said:
I would go the route of simply building a PC. I run Plex on Freenas. And I don’t need to worry about it having enough power. Although seeing it from the long run (depending how long you use it) it takes a toll on your energy bill.This is naturally dependend on the build-in Hardware and how many drives you want. For example I have an AMD APU (nothing fancy, but you don’t need a Ferrari, if a Fiat does the same thing) running with 8 HDDs. My yearly bill is 134€ if I run it 24/7. You surely could save money with a dedicated NAS but when will it reach the break-even point? I assume that at this point I would already replace the NAS with a newer model.
I too have built a FreeNAS system. I have Intel Xeon CPU E3-1225 v3 @ 3.20GHz, 16 GB of RAM, one ZRAID1 with four 3TB WD Red drives and another ZRAID1 with four 4TB HGST NAS drives. I run several jails, including a standard Plex Media Server and another jail for Plex DVR Beta built from command-line. I have a total of 13 jails currently running and my CPU usage, even when streaming to 3-4 users is never above 50% for longer than a few seconds. The power supply is capable of 750 Watts for the machine but that’s overkill. It runs 24/7. I’m looking at changing my current case as I’ve crammed eight drives in it with no room for expansion and I’m hoping to add four more 5 or 6 TB drives for yet another ZRAID1.
Yeah I’m building my own computer. I think I might just put windows on it. The parts I bought are definitely overkill but I might put a gpu in it one day and keep it in my living room for gaming. This is the first time I’ve built a pc so wish me luck. I have the new unlocked i7 kabby lake processor and the new asus z270 motherboard. I was thinking about putting free nas but I don’t see any advantages. I can run own cloud and every other piece of software i need. The only software I’m looking for is something that I can see how my computer is from my phone. Like something that monitors the system and can send me notifications. I’ll post pictures after I get the system totally built.
@Jessel723 said:
Yeah I’m building my own computer. I think I might just put windows on it. The parts I bought are definitely overkill but I might put a gpu in it one day and keep it in my living room for gaming. This is the first time I’ve built a pc so wish me luck. I have the new unlocked i7 kabby lake processor and the new asus z270 motherboard. I was thinking about putting free nas but I don’t see any advantages.
There are lots of advantages to FreeNAS, but I wouldn’t install it on low-end consumer hardware like that. When you choose FreeNAS, you then choose appropriate hardware to run it on… it’s not for installing on any old hardware you got a deal on, already have lying around, or thought was “high end” because it was for “gaming”.
