Hi All,
I can’t find information anywhere. I want to expand storage on my PC server. I’ve read that NAS drives are not good to be put inside PCs, but they’re the best for Plex? So my question is, should I just buy bigger hard drives for PC or buy NAS unit with NAS drives and use PC to get data from that NAS?
Is there real benefit of having NAS? Like:
NAS drives will live longer?
Transfer speeds better, etc.?
Thanks for help!
You can use NAS drives for storage, just don’t want to use them for system drives.
If you have a spare computer you can build an Unraid NAS. This NAS allows you to use various size drives to expand your storage but requires at least 2 drives to start with. One Parity and one data drive. Unraid also supports docker containers which is what I use to run Plex as well as various other apps and VM’s if you need that in the future. I use a Windows 10 VM that I use to run my InfiniTV cable card and Proxy to emulate a HD Homerun tuner for Plex.
As for hard drive sizes, I would not get anything bigger then a 4 or 5 TB. The more storage the tighter the tolerances are and drives can get damaged easier. There is a lot of info on the net about this. Besides unraid is able to support up to 28 data drives.
Thanks for very detailed response. Unfortunately don’t have spare PC to create NAS. I am looking into x2 hard drives 4TB each. The main question is: is there any benefit of having them on NAS rather than in PC where I have Plex server installed (that PC has got 3rd SSD drive where system and Plex is installed).
Thanks
Well the benefit of a NAS is for redundancy so if a drive fails you don’t have to spend time ripping your movies and music again.
Sorry, but drive can fail in nas too, am I right?
Yes but it is protected data so you replace the bad drive and it is rebuilt and you don’t loose any data.
Thanks, that’s great! Is there any loss in performance if I move from internal drives to NAS unit? (Data need to be transfer via network for transcoding etc.)
Nas drive vs desktops drive are not so differents. Nas drive are design to work 24/7 and have better temp tolerances and higher MTBF but are not design to be start and stop many times a week like desktops drives.
like was saying alucard1 Nas enclosures or software nas solution Can have data protection protocol like raid 5 or raid 0 or raid 1 or for freenas raidz-2-3 you should take a look 
But the answer to your question dépends on how you operate your pc. If you power on and off often you need i think regular drives if not nas drive is the best to go i think
Sorry for my english i’m French
Your English is very good.
My PC is used as server, turns on at 6am and turns off at 00:30 by itself.
Thanks
I you turn it on and off every day i think regular desktops drives are better but if you are whilling to not turn off your pc and blocked spin down (hibernation) of the disks on windows i’ll go with nas drive.
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