NAS shopping - QNAP questions

Bart,  if it was a power failure that took out your drives,  then before you get another NAS you realy should consider a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) as a new one will do exacly the same if its playing/writing at the time of power out. 

A UPS has a small 12v battery that instantly provides AC at power failure,  then it signals the NAS go to a safe mode or shut-down. 

In addition to the NAS I also have my phone & ISP supply going thru my UPS,  this gives me about 20 minutes of saving work & finishing off stuff before a safe shut-down.   Very useful & all for the price of a fancy ethernet cable.

Thanks Mike- great advice.  I'd considered such in the past but it fell off my radar!  A good investment I'm sure.

Hi Bart,

i run a HS-251 with asset running on it and it steams to my Superuniti and Linn Exact streamers. Never overheated or fell over. Just plugged into the switch off the router. Both systems hard wired on Bt infinity as my provider. Couldn't reccomend it highly enough

regards

ing

I bought mine from Amazon fro about £62GBP

........

APC Back-UPS BK350EI
Input: 230V 50/60Hz +/- 3 Hz (auto sensing)
Output: 210 Watts / 350 VA 230V 47 - 63Hz (sync to mains)
Output Connections
3 x IEC 320 C13 (Battery Backup & Surge Protection)
1 x IEC 320 C13 (Surge Protection only)

The surge (lightening) protection is handled by an internal isolation transformer & together with a C&D mode choke they do a pretty good job of reducing RFI from the SMPS (s)

Mine is wired as per ............. 

What's the yellow wire doing?

Its a USB-USB communicating UPS-NAS

It' allows you (on PC) to input small changes specific to your power volts & costs to set up the UPS.  If you get a power out,  even for a millisec, it tells the Synology & that sends me an e-mail to that effect.

Hi Bart.  I don't know anything about these these things.  But i can tell you that I replaced the Synology 212 for my NDS because I found it too loud being in the same room. The new NAS is a QNAP 251 with two 1TB Samsung EVO SD drives. After struggling with the default QNAP media player (which couldn't make sense of the tags in the WAV files) I installed ASSET.  It's now the NAS of my dreams. Perfect presentation of my CD library and of course completely silent.  I back up to a 2TB Western digital hard drive.  The NAS is set up to combine the volumes of the two drives rather than mirroring them.  So I effectively have a single 2TB drive on the NAS.

Thanks Mike. I'm guessing I don't need the extra wire then.......

I'm pleased the one you recommend is so modestly priced - a lot of those on Amazon are upwards of £100. I think it would be a good idea to get one ordered, and I can wire it up with the phone line throught it, and connect the router and switch too. 

Thanks!  Do you use WD red drives?

Thanks!  I have to decide whether I want to combine volumes like that, or do RAID.

https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...ndancy-is-not-needed

Some stuff about NAS configurations here.

how about keeping your old NAS as backup

SJB

Thanks JB; the nas that's misbehaving now reports both a failed hard disk AND a network connection error; I don't trust it at this point. 

Did you go with JBOD (I now know what that means) or some flavor of RAID.  Thankfully Synology's default RAID is not 0!

Hi Bart.

I went down a similar road like you...

My first NAS was a Synology and is still in office backup use. It's good, but too noisy for a music room.

My second NAS became a QNAP fanless HS-251 with 2x 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSDs, because it's directly connected to the same switch in the living room as the NDS.

I run Asset UPnP for QNAP on it and am lucky with this combo.

Minim is even easier to install than on the Syno, because you don't have to install Java manually before. Just click to install Minim and it installs Java automatically in one go (it it wasn't there in advance from another package). But I was glad to get rid of Java in general (security holes).

Very little point IMHO in using Raid. I can't see what it offers that's likely to be useful, given the extra cost and noise of using it. If you use good back-up practices you don't need Raid, and it can lead you to an entirely false confidence.

Wrt to a noisy NAS - fans, disks, etc - of course you can get a silent one. If not, I've found putting mine on a mouse mat reduced the noise a good deal - removes the resonance through the feet. 

Its in the APS package

But you need it to get the best out of the APC & Syn combination

In the Synology DSM control panel under system / hardware & power / UPS tab you can set options for safe mode and power off if  there is a power failure - so you need the UPS connected to the NAS via USB so it knows when the UPS has kicked in.

Yes thanks johnG, mine is set for 30 secs before going to safe - the power is off & amps are out so nothing is playing.  But at 30 secs it allows the few second off-on power outs that we get in storms to pass with the Synology going into safe mode - which once it does it needs to complete before turnaround.

Yes - same here. My post was directed more to HH

Thanks John, that's most helpful. As you can tell, this is straying into uncharted waters for Mr Numpty here.

Hi Scott,   the 4 sockets in a row are all outlets & are therefore female. 

The black ones have surge with battery backup, the white one is surge only.

The leads that come in the kit will get you going in a basic way,  however as I always do, I made up all new leads to fit in the installation without a rats nest of coiled wires.  

I used a 90 degree angled plugs to allow the UPS to push back closer to its rear wall - the ones I used had the ability to be orientated left or right & up or down.  

Yes I run 2 x Wd Reds 2TB... Superb no issues

I am looking to buy a QNAP.

I'm currently using a WDMyBookLive NAS, running ASSET on my Macbook which my SuperUniti prefers over the generic WD software. It does however mean I'm leaving my Macbook running permanently at the moment, hence wanting to move to a QNAP running ASSET running on it.

Am I correct in thinking I need to buy the QNAP plus a couple of hard drives? Doesn't anyone sell the whole thing with hard drives?

Is ASSET compatible with all QNAPS or do I need to look for a specific version of a QNAP?

I really want it to be as small and compact as reasonably possible, 2TB is plenty storage for me and back-up's not an issue as this will not be my main storage drive anyway.

Lastly, any tips on where to buy the QNAP in Sydney, Australia? They don't appear to be sold in general electrical type stores such as JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, Dick Smiths etc.

Thanks :-)

Blythe, this probably has to be an online purchase.  Amazon sells QNAP but I'm not sure whether they do in AU.  I'd check any/all online electronics retailers, as well as QNAP's website which does have a 'where to buy' section.

These are mainly sold without hard drives, which you buy separately and install yourself.  It's quite easy.  You just want to be sure to get compatible drives.  Western Digital "Red" drives seem preferred by almost all these days; they are intended for use in a nas.