What NAS to get? (upgrading in the near future)

General Discussions
1

So my current NAS is filled to near max capacity. It’s a Zyxel 2-bay NAS containing 2 8TB WD Red drives in RAID 1. I’ve filled it already to 95%, and even after deleting various recordings I didn’t need, it’s still near full at 93%. Unfortunately, this is pretty much as far as far as I can go in terms of capacity. So it’s time to get a new NAS. I’m looking into getting a new NAS. However, I’m not sure which one to get. I want a 4-bay NAS with RAID 5 capability (I’m planning on filling it with 8TB drives, and 24TB will keep me from running out of space for a while) that is also capable of running my entire server (as much as I love my current SHIELD-based Plex server, it’s an incredibly disorganized jumble of boxes and wires, and getting an all-in-one solution would be much more elegant), for as cheap as possible (most are less than $500 but I’m open to cheaper options).
My initial choice was the WD PR4100, but i’m starting to consider the Synology DS418play instead. The two have comparable specs, but the DS418 is cheaper and features 4K UHD hardware transcoding whereas the PR4100 doesn’t (even though I currently have no use for that feature, although I’d still like it for future-proofing).

But if anyone has any advice on either NAS or another one they’d like to recommend, that would be great. Thanks in advance!

2

How about, ditch RAID, use the two disks separately 16TB, then buy a large usb drive to back up.

Because “RAID is not backup, it is redundancy”

Failing that, synology.

3

Could you elaborate on that?

4

Elaborate, on no RAID? or NAS

Copy files over usb to an external hard drive, wipe disks on your nas & set up as two separate volumes. Then copy files back, that gives you extra storage

I have a Synology 414. The 418 play is a good nas.

Have a look at the raid calculator https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products

Another thought, if you get a new nas, use the other as backup

5

I meant elaborate on why no RAID.

I like the peace of mind RAID gives me, where if something goes wrong I don’t immediately lose all my files. Using RAID 5 would triple my available storage space while still giving me redundancy in case I lose a drive.
If my current NAS supports 12 TB drives I’ll consider using it as a backup.

6

The idea was that without raid, you double the capacity. You wouldn’t loose the files if you backup to an external drive

7

I don’t think I can get USB drives in 16TB sizes. But if I could hook up two 8TB USB drives, set the internal drives to RAID 0 and the external drives to RAID 0 as well, then setting the results as RAID 1… (Wait, wouldn’t that be RAID 10?)
Depends on if my NAS could handle it, but that would solve the problem for much cheaper. I’ll look into that.

8

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.