Question: disk size v bays

Plex Media Server
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1

Hi NAS Brain trust :slight_smile:

I am in the lucky position of being able to get a new NAS (my last 2 have been QNAP with WD-Red’s and I have been happy with them).

My question is, should I be looking for:

  • smaller drives (say 6TB) with 6+ bays
  • larger drives (say 10TB) with 4 bays
  • larger drives (say 10TB) with 6+ drives, but only using 4 to start?

…I appreciate that 10x4 is not 6x6, so I guess my real question is: which configuration gives me the best reliability?

I appreciate that NASs with larger bays may come with more power - that’s not a problem for me and its primary use is Plex (with some computer backups).

My usage is mainly inside my own network with typically only 1 steaming offsite. My highest res is 1080 and I can direct play to all of my devices and most of the offsite ones.

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more bays give you more flexibility, even if you do not use them all initially.

I would recommend ensuring any nas with more than 4 bays, can support converting from raid 5 (single redundancy) to raid 6 (dual redundancy).

generally, you should probably not use raid 5 on more than 4-5 drives.

and never forget, that raid is not a replacement for backups.

backups = multiple copies of your data, on multiple devices, ideally stored in multiple locations (think fire/flood/theft).

3

thanks. It’s a great point - I’ll do a search unless you happen to already know the ranges that do this?

cheers - I’m actually raid 5 now on my current 4 bay.

Agreed. My QNAP isn’t currently backed-up as it’s 10TB of media for Plex and I have no clue how to do that (I did use Crashplan when they had a personal plan).

My Mac is fully backed up using multiple apps to multiple destinations (2 offsite) to ensure redundancy.

I will probably use my existing NAS as the backup to my new one (so onsite backup only). I am not interested in versioning - it’s either a movie or it isn’t, so it’ll really just be a copy, but on a different physical machine.

4

yeah, media, maybe not so critical, can always re-rip… (albeit still a large time re-investment best avoided)

photos of your kids, important documents, home videos… stuff that cannot be replaced… that is the stuff that needs worrying about.

6

cheers - will look into that.

[edit:] the processor does not seem powerful enough to run Plex. Is your suggestion based on running Plex Server on a computer and using the NAS purely as media storage?

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