NAS setups

[boyerizm]

Anyone have a NAS at home? If so what are you running. I'm weighing options, Synology does everything I want and seems simple vs TrueNAS which is open platform/free/robust but seems like it'd be a bit tricky to set up.

End of the day I want to be able to sync a shared music folder between a home based NAS and a hard drive in my car. That way I don't have to shuttle music around manually.

That and I'd also use it to back up my MacBook with time machine.

[vreihen16]

I have a Synology "Plus" series NAS at home. I strongly recommend the "Plus" series over the cheaper "j" series or regular no series, because the "Plus" series utilize Intel processors and can be used to run things like Docker containers and virtual machines.

I can't comment on music sync to the car, but I have used my old "j" series and current "Plus" series to backup my MacBooks via Time Machine (and Raspberry Pi collection via rsync).....

[UncleWede]

Use Synology in my professional settings, but no such need at home. Synology has so many built-in apps that I could see it being a great home device as well, just not things I needed at work.

They are finicky about the actual disks you put in them, but will work regardless. You just get a constant error that he drive isn't supported, or something to that effect.

[Alfisti]

I'll be honest I did my research and got it down to Synology and Asustor. I went with Asustor as for the same price it had more RAM/performance but fuck me it's cumbersome to use and really, synology looks just as bad. I am really surprised hoe half assed the apps are and how difficult it is to share access and folders. It hasn't done for me what i was hoping it would do. In the end, it is just aback up device, it has not served well as a live, flexible, cloud device one can use at all times.

[bucketfoot]

I'm on my second QNAP now (first one is 7+ years old and still in use as my secondary device).

I don't recall the specifics, but didn't really like the Synology options. I did come close to going with an Asustor for my new one but they were hard to come by when I was looking.

Overall I have been completely satisfied with my QNAPs.

[paquet]

Another vote for Synology - in the home, SOHO and small office.

[zx10guy]

Some other options are Thecus and Drobo.

As to running using these NAS devices for more than a NAS, it's just my opinion, that you're better off building your own platform to accommodate that goal. I run VMware on a Dell R730 which has a bunch of virtual machines on it. One of them is a Windows Server 2019 VM that is running as my file server.

[stevenc]

I run synology SOHO as well. They are very solid!

[WayneM3]

I use a Synology NAS - DS918+ and have been very happy with it. I store my music on there and stream from there to my SONOS system as well as copy the folders every once-in-a-while to a USB to update the car. I store all of my pictures there too and have it backing up automatically to IDrive every night. I also have it running a PLEX server to play movies at home or anywhere else with a smart device or tablet. I am currently only using 4.2 TB of the 26.2 TB available.

You do have to have a little knowledge to set it up correctly but there are tutorials for many of the functions and there is always someone else out there that has posted the solution to whatever issue you come across.

Who ever would have imagined so much available storage on a small, home system 25 years ago? I remember being in a datacenter with a setup the size of a refrigerator and that was 1 TB and thought, who would ever need that much storage? I have an old TDK 8", 128kB floppy disk (from a TRS-80 Model II) sitting on my shelf to remind me of how far we have come.

[boyerizm]

I know, its remarkable how much data is floating around out there. Blessing/Curse

Re syncing files to a USB drive in the car I think I'm onto a solution…
https://syncthing.net/
Provided you've got the drive hooked up to something like this https://a.co/d/6GAqGmN

This is a WIP 🚧

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by WayneM3

Who ever would have imagined so much available storage on a small, home system 25 years ago? I remember being in a datacenter with a setup the size of a refrigerator and that was 1 TB and thought, who would ever need that much storage? I have an old TDK 8", 128kB floppy disk (from a TRS-80 Model II) sitting on my shelf to remind me of how far we have come.

Back in the late 1980's, I *had* to be the first person in our county with a one GIG hard drive. It was a 5.25" full-height SCSI drive, and weighed several pounds. That brick cost me $1,820 in 1980's money.

Today, I could go to a trade show and they give out 32 gig USB flash drives for free as trinkets in many booths...and they are small enough to hang on your keychain.....

[Bavar-ian]

Am on Synology 8 bay in office and 2 x 4 bay at home and at parent's place for backup.
Runs my email and web server off the 8bay in office with a static IP.
Runs great and only had to remember to change HDD every 2 yrs.

[NoMoreVauxhalls]

I also run a Synology Diskstation NAS at home - it's a few years old now ('J' series DS216j) but it does the job as i mainly use it just for storage of movies, and pictures. I did try the apps (including the Plex app) but it didn't perform well so I gave up on that.

For my Plex server, I use an Intel NUC that's running Ubuntu. It picks up the movies from the NAS and serves that content inside my home network, and to select friends and family in the UK and overseas.

I have 4K rips of many films and my setup allows them to all play nicely locally, or over the internet; I was recently in Qatar and watched a 4K film served from my NAS/Plex in the UK. All performed perfectly with no buffering or lag, and looked great on a big 75" screen TV.

[NoMoreVauxhalls]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

Back in the late 1980's, I *had* to be the first person in our county with a one GIG hard drive. It was a 5.25" full-height SCSI drive, and weighed several pounds. That brick cost me $1,820 in 1980's money.

Ha! I remember those drives! Back in the late 80s I used to work in the data conversion sector - we would convert customer data between incompatible systems like the old IBM DisplayWrite and Wang systems, to the new-fangled WordStar or WordPerfect programs on DOS - hahahha. A lot of content we converted came on 8inch disks (remember them) and, of course 5.25inch. But also magnetic tape and all sorts of SCSIness, too!

Happy days....

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by NoMoreVauxhalls

A lot of content we converted came on 8inch disks (remember them) and, of course 5.25inch. But also magnetic tape and all sorts of SCSIness, too!

My last resume is still on an 8" CP/M SSSD (241K) floppy disk. (Haven't changed jobs in 37 years.)

I remember having to spend the better part of a day on the road in the mid-1980's to borrow a 15 MEG 5.25" FH hard drive. The operating system kernel that we were trying to compile overflowed our 10 meg drives, so one of our vendors loaned us a 15 meg drive for a few days to do the build.....

[Chick Webb]

I run a DS1920+ with a 500 GB cache card, and DX-518 expansion unit. Roughly 42 TB, total. It easily handles half-a-dozen Docker containers (Radarr, Sonarr, SABNzbd, Lidarr, Jacket, Transmission, etc.) and the native Plex App. Importantly, this model has hardware support for HD video; keep that in mind if you plan to run Plex. We use it to back up all of our PCs and also to push some content to the cloud, as well. Very stable, easy to set up. Highly recommend.

And, yeah, I remember those limited storage days. We had an entire computer room at HP in Cupertino back in the day with two-high racks of the 7920 drive units stretching for what seemed miles. Size of a dishwasher, 50 MB/unit, removable disc pack, strung together with HP-IB cables. When you put in a new pack, the thing sounded like a fighter jet spooling up. Good times.

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by Chick Webb

I run a DS1920+ with a 500 GB cache card, and DX-518 expansion unit. Roughly 42 TB, total. It easily handles half-a-dozen Docker containers (Radarr, Sonarr, SABNzbd, Lidarr, Jacket, Transmission, etc.) and the native Plex App. Importantly, this model has hardware support for HD video; keep that in mind if you plan to run Plex. We use it to back up all of our PCs and also to push some content to the cloud, as well. Very stable, easy to set up. Highly recommend.

And, yeah, I remember those limited storage days. We had an entire computer room at HP in Cupertino back in the day with two-high racks of the 7920 drive units stretching for what seemed miles. Size of a dishwasher, 50 MB/unit, removable disc pack, strung together with HP-IB cables. When you put in a new pack, the thing sounded like a fighter jet spooling up. Good times.

My understanding is you only need to worry about having a GPU for Plex if you have to do a lot of transcoding. So far I haven't had to worry about using a GPU as all my streams have been native. Even when I'm streaming via cellular/mobile, haven't noticed any performance issues. I'm running Plex as a VM on Server 2012R2 on a Dell R730 with E5-2640v4 procs. I can't remember, but I think I have 3 or 4 vCPUs assigned to the VM. I don't remember how much memory I allocated but it's not that much as Plex doesn't need a whole lot of memory. I also set up a RAM Disk in the event transcoding is needed. Most of my media is 1080P with a few (and growing) 4k content. To bypass issues with transcoding 4k content, I've chosen to have both the 1080P and 4k versions on my server.

[NoMoreVauxhalls]

Originally Posted by Chick Webb

And, yeah, I remember those limited storage days. We had an entire computer room at HP in Cupertino back in the day with two-high racks of the 7920 drive units stretching for what seemed miles. Size of a dishwasher, 50 MB/unit, removable disc pack, strung together with HP-IB cables. When you put in a new pack, the thing sounded like a fighter jet spooling up. Good times.

These pictures are great. How times have changed, huh?

[Chick Webb]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

My understanding is you only need to worry about having a GPU for Plex if you have to do a lot of transcoding.

That's mine, too. But I don't have multiple copies of a lot of those 4K movies and so we do need the transcoding on some of our sets. The Synology box, especially with the latest set of software updates, seems to handle it pretty well.

[NothingButToast]

You shouldn't be transcoding anything less than 4k anyway.

As for a home NAS. I use a custom built server running Unraid.

[omasou]

Originally Posted by boyerizm

Anyone have a NAS at home? If so what are you running. I'm weighing options, Synology does everything I want and seems simple vs TrueNAS which is open platform/free/robust but seems like it'd be a bit tricky to set up.

End of the day I want to be able to sync a shared music folder between a home based NAS and a hard drive in my car. That way I don't have to shuttle music around manually.

That and I'd also use it to back up my MacBook with time machine.

In the past, I have used LaCie. If I were to purchase a new NAS today, I would use Synology. I would also make sure it supports DNLA (most do) so that it can use it as a streaming media server in the house.

For movies, I buy BluRays with digital copies and redeem them from Apple so all that content is in one cloud. I recently noticed that watching 4K UHD BluRays is better via a BluRay player vs. 4K streaming even with 1GB FiOS and hardwired Ethernet. So I'm back to a new Sony UBP-X800M2 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player.

So I don't bother with NAS anymore. I have a NOS LaCie 5 bay NAS (no HDs installed) if anyone is interested.

My MacBook is connected via Thunderbolt 3 to two LG 5K monitors. Sticky taped to the back of one monitor are 2 x 2TB Seagate SSDs configured as RAID 1. I use the RAID 1 for local storage/backup and any high-speed work, e.g. Music library, movie editing, etc. Though the internal MacBook HD puts most external SSDs to shame. Run Blackmagic and you will see what I mean. Once Apple releases monitors with internal Thunderbolt 4 hubs, I may upgrade the SSDs to NVMe SSDs but right now cost is too high and speed is limited by the monitor's internal Thunderbolt 3 hubs.

Everything else-iPhones, iPad, MacBook--is backed up to iCloud.

I finally broke down and subscribed to AppleOne. It provides me iCloud for backup, Apple TV+, replicates my music library (burned 400+ CDs) and provides the kids with Apple Music and Arcade.

To play music in the car, I just connect my iPhone over Apple CarPlay. Now when I hop between my M2C, X6, F900XR or service loaner my music comes with me. No messing w/syncing and individual HD storage, worrying about replacing NAS HDs/SSDs or opening external ports to my home network.

[boyerizm]

You guys might appreciate this

https://www.techradar.com/news/world...n-floppy-disks