QNAP RAM?

More than more enough - 1GB of RAM is only needed for A/V & business applications.     I have 512MB on my Synology & the Resource Monitor widget rarely shows RAM over 20%.     However I expect QNAP's OS & Asset RAM use will be different,  but 1GB will more than cover it.      The amount (6TB) of music is irrelevant as you can only play one album at a time.

I have a Qnap 253a, with 4GB of ram. It uses 17% while playing and transcoding a 96k FLAC file to WAV. It's a really good machine, and you can hot swap disks if anything goes wrong, by opening the front flaps, with no need to get a screwdriver out and fiddle with tiny screws. 

I have the TS251's "silent sister", the HS251, which has an identical spec but is passively cooled. No problems at all fitted with a 5TB WD Red drive and running Minimserver and BubbleUPNP server at the same time.

Andy - haven't you asked this question some time ago?

I also have a QNAP 251 Silent NAS - have no idea what's inside, but it manages 6TB WD drives perfectly. 

As above. More than enough. 512k would do it but a bit of headroom always makes sense.

Many thanks for the helpful replies and yes Adam I did ask a similar question a while back when doing preliminary investigations.

It was just the RAM that was bugging me - now given replies, I'm ready to put in my order.

Andy

QNAP with 256mb/1Ghz CPU. steaming redbook to SBT.

It was a couple of years ago when I took these snapshots, but i seem to remember, the results where pretty similar for HiRES

Ram usage is a funny old thing. The more you add the more a computer will use. 

My QNAP TS412 only has 256mb of memory, runs minimserver and transcodes flac to wav and has been doing so for many years without a hitch.

My 2TB single bay QNAP T-112 also only has 256MB of memory, runs Minimserver with "on-the-fly" transcoding from ALAC to WAV24 and has been in use for the past few years without any issues. Looking at the system status/resource monitor page indicates less than 50% memory usage while streaming some hi-res tracks. 

Hungryhalibut posted:

I have a Qnap 253a, with 4GB of ram. It uses 17% while playing and transcoding a 96k FLAC file to WAV. It's a really good machine, and you can hot swap disks if anything goes wrong, by opening the front flaps, with no need to get a screwdriver out and fiddle with tiny screws. 

Just a question. ANdyp19 says he is not interested in mirrroring etc. How can he hot swap if he doesn't Raid or mirror? In fact I whole heartedly agree with the external backup but for the very reason you give yourself the addition of an extra disk to the Qnap would give the additional security and ease of the hot swap. Any performance issue caused by Raiding is bunkum. 

I use two disks in raid, so could potentially hot swap disks. For the extra cost of £90 for a 3tb drive, I don't see why anyone would use just one disk, backups or no. 

garyi posted:

Ram usage is a funny old thing. The more you add the more a computer will use. 

...and that's where you get the increase in efficiency.

(It applies to people as well (Johnson's law): Clutter expands to fit the space available [i.e. it has properties analogous to a gas!].  )

Hungryhalibut posted:

I use two disks in raid, so could potentially hot swap disks. For the extra cost of £90 for a 3tb drive, I don't see why anyone would use just one disk, backups or no. 

It’s pretty obvious why a 2 bay nas is not a good idea. The chance of disc failure is increased by a factor of approximately 2.

 Your Qnap 253a (discless) costs near £300. A single bay QNAP(discless), which streams highres music without a problem costs about £100.

fatcat posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

I use two disks in raid, so could potentially hot swap disks. For the extra cost of £90 for a 3tb drive, I don't see why anyone would use just one disk, backups or no. 

It’s pretty obvious why a 2 bay nas is not a good idea. The chance of disc failure is increased by a factor of approximately 2.

 Your Qnap 253a (discless) costs near £300. A single bay QNAP(discless), which streams highres music without a problem costs about £100.

 

Seriously? The sums we are talking about here are trivial to anyone who has invested in Naim kit. The solution advocated by HH provides hot swapping for a disk failure and the backup of the NAS provides contingency for total NAS failure. All for less than a Qube. 

andarkian posted:

fatcat posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

I use two disks in raid, so could potentially hot swap disks. For the extra cost of £90 for a 3tb drive, I don't see why anyone would use just one disk, backups or no. 

It’s pretty obvious why a 2 bay nas is not a good idea. The chance of disc failure is increased by a factor of approximately 2.

 Your Qnap 253a (discless) costs near £300. A single bay QNAP(discless), which streams highres music without a problem costs about £100.

 

Seriously? The sums we are talking about here are trivial to anyone who has invested in Naim kit. The solution advocated by HH provides hot swapping for a disk failure and the backup of the NAS provides contingency for total NAS failure. All for less than a Qube. 

Also - whatever RAID was invented for, in our cases it actually does act as a back up - we have two copies of the same thing on two separate discs.. Plus of course the off-line back up

RAID 1 is certainly NOT a backup - it's what it says - a mirror.

If the HD controller fails you can lose both disks
If the NAS Enclosure (e.g.PSU) fails you can lose both disks
If you accidentally delete a file you will lose it from both disks
If you get hit by a cryptolocker variant then you'll lose all your files on both disks

The only thing it protects you from is loss of a one single disk itself.

Adam Zielinski posted:

andarkian posted:

fatcat posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

I use two disks in raid, so could potentially hot swap disks. For the extra cost of £90 for a 3tb drive, I don't see why anyone would use just one disk, backups or no. 

It’s pretty obvious why a 2 bay nas is not a good idea. The chance of disc failure is increased by a factor of approximately 2.

 Your Qnap 253a (discless) costs near £300. A single bay QNAP(discless), which streams highres music without a problem costs about £100.

 

Seriously? The sums we are talking about here are trivial to anyone who has invested in Naim kit. The solution advocated by HH provides hot swapping for a disk failure and the backup of the NAS provides contingency for total NAS failure. All for less than a Qube. 

Also - whatever RAID was invented for, in our cases it actually does act as a back up - we have two copies of the same thing on two separate discs.. Plus of course the off-line back up

Not strictly speaking true. Raid 1 requires only 2 disks as it mirrors data. Raid 5, possibly the most used, will require at least 3 disks as it provides parity bits that allow allow the data lost on one disk to be recreated by calculating bit by bit the value of data on the downed disk. The weakness in this solution is a disk failure during recreation of the data. 

Huge posted:

RAID 1 is certainly NOT a backup - it's what it says - a mirror.

If the HD controller fails you can lose both disks
If the NAS Enclosure (e.g.PSU) fails you can lose both disks
If you accidentally delete a file you will lose it from both disks

The only thing it protects you from is loss of a one single disk itself.

That's what I meant - if one disc fails, the other one still exists.

Adam Zielinski posted:

Huge posted:

RAID 1 is certainly NOT a backup - it's what it says - a mirror.

If the HD controller fails you can lose both disks
If the NAS Enclosure (e.g.PSU) fails you can lose both disks
If you accidentally delete a file you will lose it from both disks
If you get hit by a cryptolocker variant then you'll lose all your files on both disks

The only thing it protects you from is loss of a one single disk itself.

That's what I meant - if one disc fails, the other one still exists.

That's a mirror not a backup.

Another vote for RAID not being a backup. If you rely on RAID alone as a backup methodology you run a risk of one day being very unhappy.

Just in case anyone thinks I'm dopey enough to have just the disks in the Qnap (and I am pretty dopey) I have two separate backups on USB drives. This also means that I can take the whole music collection on holiday and use it in the car. 

Like HH I have two copies on external drives

I am aware of the RAID functionality. Regardless of how we look at it in pracrice this means my QNAP has two drives with the dame data. 

Adam, the problem is that referring to RAID as a backup confuses people who don't know the difference; they then think that their RAID array is their backup, and hence they don't need another backup.

I note that you and HH do both know the true situation, but there are many others who don't, and they can easily become misled.

Same here, two portable USB drives being used for backup duties. Keep one at home and one at a remote location, just in case.