Help me pick a NAS

Any reason not to go with a Synology DS216j?

I have a Synology DS216J with a single 3tb drive, very easy to set up, all my music is on there and it also backs up my Mac as well.

Ian

Toe posted:

Borders Nick,

You mention that you might get a NAS and wish to keep costs down.

The WD My Cloud you already have is a NAS I believe, and you can stream directly over your network to the Superuniti. The installed streaming software is Twonky which I found works fine but gets slagged off on this forum.

You do not have to spend a fortune on multi-bay NAS, a WD My Cloud 2TB is less than £100. You can back this up to a portable USB drive - these are about £60 I think.

Toe- thanks for that. My mistake,  it's a WD My Passport not My Cloud i.e. It's not a NAS.  I use and like Minimserver so probably will go with Synology.  A one bay will more than likely be fine for now. I think I've seen someone on here using a DS115J successfully.

If you can afford the extra, go for a 216J, not a lot more expensive, but a LOT quicker (for other tasks, on music playback neither breaks a sweat), it has a dual core processor so is happier doing other tasks at the same time as music playback, and it also provides room for expansion.

I have a 115j, but for someone else I'm installing a 216j:  The choice of that one is based on my experience.

I have a 216j and its been faultless and its pretty quiet. I have mine in the living room behind a cabinet and with the door closed, its pretty silent. 

After spending many thousands on Naim, spending a little extra for a much better Nas makes perfect sense!

Borders Nick posted:

Toe posted:

Borders Nick,

You mention that you might get a NAS and wish to keep costs down.

The WD My Cloud you already have is a NAS I believe, and you can stream directly over your network to the Superuniti. The installed streaming software is Twonky which I found works fine but gets slagged off on this forum.

You do not have to spend a fortune on multi-bay NAS, a WD My Cloud 2TB is less than £100. You can back this up to a portable USB drive - these are about £60 I think.

Toe- thanks for that. My mistake,  it's a WD My Passport not My Cloud i.e. It's not a NAS.  I use and like Minimserver so probably will go with Synology.  A one bay will more than likely be fine for now. I think I've seen someone on here using a DS115J successfully.

I also have a DS115, and it seems absolutely fine - I only bought it to back up my Unitiserve, but will also run Minimserver transcoding FLAC to WAV on the fly with no problem at all. 

After reading a lot on this forum about NASs and Asset UPnP (or Minimserver) in particularly the approach of Simon-In-Suffolk using a RaspberryPI as DLNA server for his NDX streamer. I'am wondering if a second RaspberryPI can function as a NAS perhaps with one or more SSD connected to it by its USB ports?

[@mention:1566878603876589]; You are using several different NASs connected by ethernet to the RaspberryPI, is there a difference in sound quality between them? Do you think using SSD in a NAS, and therefore eliminating the mechanical/rotating noise will enhance the sound quality further? Or is het pure the RaspberryPI that is responsible for "rebuilding the packages" and therefore the sound quality (of the NDX).

spurrier sucks posted:

i have an external HDD connected to my Mac Mini running minimserver but I'm thinking about buying a NAS. Any suggestions on what to consider?

I am a big fan of Synoloigy. I have a 1515+ 5 bay NAS with 18 TB net space.. Software and support is good, the device is very reliable and flexible, I use it for music as well as a backup device...  I have used other Synology products and they are all very solid.

Borders Nick posted:

Good topic as I'm also thinking about a NAS in the near future, but do I need a 2 bay one or would 1 bay suffice ? Currently I keep my music, ripped by iTunes (yes I know, wash my mouth out etc.) on a Win 10 PC with an external WD My Cloud HDD back up.  I also keep another back up on a separate laptop.  I run Minimserver on the PC.

My intention intitially would probably be to retain the current ripping / PC storage / back up system and copy stuff over to the NAS for streaming.  My main reason for the NAS is just to avoid having to fire up the PC all the time, although I appreciate there may be SQ advantages with a NAS.

Any thoughts on 1 bay vs 2 bay  ?  Trying to keep costs down.

I would always go 2 bay and mirror the drives at minimum... Hard disks fail, I have 9TB of music, I would not want to lose that.

DUPREE posted:

I would always go 2 bay and mirror the drives at minimum... Hard disks fail, I have 9TB of music, I would not want to lose that.

A NAS enclosure is just as likely to fail as the HDDs (and can take all the disks with it) - mirroring won't help one iota in that circumstance.

Use the money you'd have spent on the extra disk(s) to buy a proper backup device.

Huge,

I completely agree with you that a 'proper' external backup is essential.

However, if you can afford the cost of the extra disk, then mirroring does have some advantages in the event that a single disk fails, although this has never actually happened to me so far.

I recently did have a (Synology) NAS enclosure failure. When this happens, then the only way forward is to buy a new NAS enclosure. However, I was able to simply slot my old (mirrored) drives into my new Synology NAS, and was up and running again almost immediately. No need to use my external backup drive which is updated every few weeks and stored off-site by my brother.  

You may feel that mirroring is over the top and not cost effective, but it does have some advantages in the rare event that a single hard drive fails.

An external disk can be useful, and theoretically useful as some argue, but RAID1 with 2 -bay is absolutely an essential for me.

I agree, The NAS provides a lot of utility and redundancy. Synology has a lot of backup and cloud options. QNAP as well. This goes well above and beyond what just raw hard disk drives can do. I am personally very partial to Synology and their DSM OS, but QNAP is a nice device that many like. Take a look at the large number of capabilities both these guys have in addition of UpNP that can help with Photos, media, computer backup etc. I think they both provide an excelent value

I would add one thing in favour of Synology, although in fairness, QNAP may be equally good in this respect.

When I recently encountered a problem with my Synology NAS that turned out to be a NAS motherboard problem, the Synology support team members I spoke to (based in the UK and so easy to call directly) were absolutely outstanding.  They were both very  knowledgeable and extremely helpful.

That in itself, in my book, is very worthy of a recommendation.

banzai posted:

An external disk can be useful, and theoretically useful as some argue, but RAID1 with 2 -bay is absolutely an essential for me.

For what?

Which one? An external disk for extra backup? Personally, I think an extra backup is only for files deleted accidently (by the user), and I have never heard of a case where a NAS can totally corrupt or destroy a raid1 setup.

However, if you do not use raid1, and prefer the jbod configuration, you will lose everything if one drive is corrupted or caput. In that catse, you *do* need a (very big) external hard drive to backup your data. In addition, jbod does not perform as well as raid1.

an external backup is extremely recommended ... just in case if water, fire or thief would come ... otherwise

Same thing would happen to the NAS and the external disk if they are in the same place, unless you keep the external disk at a bank safe and bring it home once a day?

I have a backup at a different location in the house that's less likely to get found by a thief.

I do also have an offsite backup.

As a generalisation people with critical computer storage experience will recommend (at least) three copies,such that you never have all three connected together at any one time.

i have my active store (Mac Mini), networked to a NAS (which is in a different part of the house so less likely to be stolen or affected by fire at the same time), o which I back up as soon as adding anything new to my main store, and a usb disk that I connect and update maybe 2-4 times a year (but these days I don't often add music, or I'd do that backup more often).

The biggest risk to connected items not in the same place is probably a voltage spike, such as from a lightning strile, but regardless, I'd certainly be nervous if the only backup of my entire collecrion was in the same computer (=NAS)

IB, don't you have something like voltage spike protector for your computing devices? I once had a Mac Mini fried during a storm, so I learnt, nowadays all of my computers and electronic devices are protected against electrical surges. Having said that, I am more nervous for my hi-fi system, which is not protected.

All of my valuable data are in the cloud, btw.

I do on the my Mac Mini, yes, though i don't think that renders it immune from disk failure, and I don't have any such protection on the network cabling that links it to the NAS, and ultimately the outside world via telephone line. 

And whilst I've thought about cloud storage, I am unimpressed by the costs - a hard disk costs far less than a year's subscription! For belt and braces I should keep my USB disk backup at a different address, but have never got around to it. (Note to self, take it to work tomorrow!)

telephone line? I lost you.

Btw, it is your choice, I am a firm believer in the cloud storage solution.

banzai posted:

telephone line? I lost you.

ADSL.

Huge posted:

banzai posted:

telephone line? I lost you.

ADSL.

Ah yes, that is what he meant euphemistically I tried ADSL once for 5 mins in the late 80's and I gave up