Hey,
I’ve currently got a DS216+II, which I’ve had for over 5 years. What would you recommend for an upgrade? Below are some points to help.
Must be 2 bay as I’ve not got room for anything bigger
I mainly use Plex to play lossless music from my NAS but also play films and TV shows
I also use my NAS for Time Machine backups and Synology Cloud backups
Another thing I’ve been wondering, how easy is it to transfer all the data from an old NAS to a new one? Is it possible to do it seamlessly? Including Synology Cloud backups not being interrupted etc?
The amount of fuss for a 7 year old NAS , IMHO, isn’t worth it.
My DS1815+ is frozen at DSM 6 and I’m glad I have it that way.
As for transferring to a new NAS, Synology’s method of simply moving the drives and having it update DSM is still the technique however updating Plex for DSM 7 is the PITA part even I don’t like. There are a lot of steps ( I did provide all the screenshots) but it does take time.
Synology DSM 7 is different and you’ll need change those elements too.
If you want to go from a 2-bay to a 2-bay NAS, what are you hoping to improve upon with the upgrade?
I don’t think there are any 2-bay models which have sufficient processing power to support video transcoding in Plex. Even newer ones. So nothing will change on that front.
Or is your current device falling apart? Then of course it makes sense to replace it.
But if you are only seeking to improve the transcoding, I think you will be better off by adding a (SFF) PC, which will be acting as Plex server, but keep the media storage in your existing NAS device.
Well I just thought that since it’s over 5 years old it’s probably best to get a new one as I don’t want to leave it till something goes wrong then get a new one if you know what I mean. I’ve not had any issues with it other than it being a little slow sometimes. Mainly when streaming a show or film from Plex it will stutter here and there, but no issue with the music side of things.
How do you work the SSFPC into a set up then and would that help play film / shows a lot smoother? I just thought it was my Amazon Firestick being the issue as I can normally stream fine to my laptop or phone.
You set up Plex Server on that small machine.
It will probably help with transcoded playback. Which playback will be transcoded is directly dependent on a number of factors:
the Direct Play-abilities of your playack device
the makeup of your media files
the available bandwidth between server and client
whether you need to use subtitles and which subtitle format these are in
The more decrepit the client device and the more often you’ll need subtiles, the more likely it is that a powerful Plex server machine will help you.
Now copy AppData.zip to the new machine’s PlexMediaServer folder.
On the new (TO) machine
Stop PlexMediaServer
Open FileStation
Open PlexMediaServer shared folder
Rename AppData → AppData.old
Unzip the AppData.zip.
You will see a new AppData created.
After it’s done (again it will take time)
You need to fix the underlying file ownership of the files in the PlexMediaServer shared folder. Here’s how to do it. (it makes the files you just moved to the machine match the PlexMediaServer user id on that machine.)
“AppData.old” can be deleted after this is all done. It’s not needed.
Step 8 is because Linux is very strict about files and which username owns them.
The files came from another machine (your old Syno) and the ownership IDs might not / usually aren’t the same from machine to machine . (They look the same but don’t universally match from host to host). Step 8 makes sure they are correct for the host they are going to be used on.
Hey,
Sorry for the slow reply. So if you migrated with the Synology app and the files were copied over wouldn’t the Plex files all be there and the same as before?
Yeah, exactly. So if we used the Synology Migration Assistant and copied over from old to new would that be sorted or would we need to tweak things? Sorry for the confusion.
