I apologize if this is a duplicate. I tried to send from my phone a few days ago and the progress icon never stopped spinning, so I don't know if it went through.

First, some background. I currently have a Drobo 5N that has been giving me good service for many years, but is now getting to the point where I’m maxing out on available space; every month or so I’m getting status warnings until I delete or move data. The unit has 16TB installed (4x3TB, 1x4TB WD Reds) with about 12TB available after single disk redundancy. The current firmware only allows for 16TB, and although I understand that I can increase that to 64TB with different firmware, it can’t be done without removing and reloading all the data. Since this would involve getting something to off-load all the data to, then upgrading to new HDDs anyway, I started looking for a new solution and came across your YouTube videos. They're great by the way.

I’m a home user, and right now the main use for the Drobo is for media storage. I use the Plex Media Server on my PC as I found the app on the Drobo never worked well for me; or at least I never spent enough time trying to get it to work better. With a new NAS I will want something that will handle Plex directly, and I will also start doing a local backup of my PC as well; currently my PC is backed up off-site using Backblaze. I should also look at backing up my wife’s iMac beyond the external drive that holds her Time Machine files. Oh, and there are also a couple decades of photos that we should get around to organizing.

Anyway, from watching your videos I am looking at the following setup, and I would like your opinion as to suitability for my use scenario. (Much of it is available on sale in my area (Canada) this month)

NAS - DS1520+ (with stock 4GB memory) $929 CDN

DRIVES - 3 x IronWolf 12TB (ST12000VNA008) - $295 CDN ($885 CDN) (This would increase my available storage to 2.5x the amount of data that I will initially load. I could increase this to 4 drives from the start if there would be any benefit, or just have the extra bays in reserve.)

CACHE - No NVMe cache as it doesn’t seem to be beneficial for my main goal of a Plex server. However, I can get Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2 NVMe (MZ-V7S1TOB/AM) PCIe 3 x 4 for $140 CDN if I’m wrong.

RAID/FILE SYSTEM - I will use SHR with single disk redundancy, and BTRFS. Over the years I twice had to replace a failed drive in the Drobo and the hot swappable feature made it so simple that I want to stay with something that can offer that feature, as well as handling potentially mismatched drives, and SHR seems to provide that if I've understood your videos correctly.

I still have what are probably the usual questions about should I get something with more bays, or slots for upgrades, but I don't really see that as being an immediate concern as I don't have anything else that's above 1GBe.

That’s it. Your thoughts?

Regards,

I am considering which 8-bay NAS solution I should go for for my Plex Server. I'm only really considering QNAP for its superior hardware. I have dismissed the 'TS 872XT' due to the reports of QA issues with the motherboard. This has me now looking at the 'TS-873A' and adding a 'MSI GTX 1650 4G'. However, I'm not sure if this CPU is too weak given my use case, and that I should instead and get the 'TVS-h1288X' and add the 'GTX 1050 Ti 4G'. Given the price difference of £1,500, I would like to know if its necessary to get the 'TVS-h1288X' for its stronger CPU please.

My typical use case all occurring simultaneously:
- 2 4K direct play/streams , each 30Mb/s
- 8 transcodes from 4K 30Mb/s to 720p 4Mb/s

Followed you off and on for several years. Thanks for the reviews. I've had great success working with non-profits here in Nome, Alaska using Drobo 5N2. But sadly, as you know, they are filing for bankruptcy. So, I'm looking at Synology and just now familiar with their OS. How does it compare to Drobo for ease of use and FTP setup. Seems pretty easy. I love their offsite backup feature on partners Synology NAS.

Would you recommend the Synology NAS DiskStation DS1520+ or would you recommend a newer model? As stated above, I have 5 new Iron Wolf 4TB drives ready to go in. I'm not needing a ton of room at this point but would be pulling hundreds of MB daily for programming by an FTP retrieval software on our local internal network.

Thanks for you help.

Hi, we’ve had a couple of power blips recently that have made me think about getting a UPS for my NAS, which I never purchased.
Whilst the NAS has recovered successfully from those blips I think it’s tempting fate to leave it.

The NAS I have is a Netgear ReadyNAS 214 running OS 6.10.7.

I believe Netgear are no longer selling new NAS devices, so I may be in the market at some point for a replacement/upgrade. Therefore I would like some advice on options for a UPS solution which will work now and have some future proofing.

Thanks

Dave

I like to think of myself as reasonably competent but I'm failing in my efforts to set up my NAS for use with photos. I've been following your videos but I'm still in trouble. Do you know anyone who can spare me a few minutes to see where I'm at and explain where I've been going wrong?

Desperately yours


Glenn

looking for a NAS , i am a Pro Photographer , currently running a 6 year old Drobo 5N2 with 12 TB storage (Full).

want something with decent upgradeability and some SSD cahing..

Appreciate any help you can give.

thanks
Noel

Hi, Great video thanks! I can’t seem to find the answer to these criteria for me I hope you can help! After lots of research I’m pretty sure I want to go for Synology NAS To store my photos at home instead of paying iCloud,but

1) is it true to say that a cheap secondhand Nas from eBay will have an old operating system might not run the new photos app?
2) sinology seems to be the only NAS that will let me have two drives in 2 different locations that mirror each other so I have a back up should my house burn down! Or is a 2 bay NAS set to RAID better even tho the disks are always spinning?
3) linked to the above, my daughter goes to university in sept, would her photos back up to a NAS located at home? All the online info just says ‘photos can be acessed anywhere in the world’ but doesn’t say if the photos have to be on same network to be saved.
Cheers muchly! Dale (Brighton)

Hi,
I am interested in a NAS for storing my dslr photos, videos , phone photos and videos as well as computer backups for me and my family . I am estimating I would need around 12Tb to be future proof for the next 5 years. What would you recommend ? Should I opt for a 2bay NAS with raid 1 which would serve as a backup for redundancy? Or should I keep my backups somewhere else

Regards,
Raj Patel

Hey there,

first of all I want to gratulate you for your gr8 content and thank you for all the information I've already gatherered.
I'll try to make it short (I will fail).

What I need NAS for:
90% - 95% family photos and video storage in raid for redundance.
Today I have no need for any of the extra features like VMs, transcoding (I can play videos running out of PC) or any additional stuff like e-mail services etc.
The only extra thing I would like my NAS to cover is my home surveillance in the future. I have no cameras installed yet, but I plan to do it. That will be 4 or 5 main cameras around the house and maybe (don't know if thats posible, I assume it is) intercom camera.


So the first question is: 4 bay or 2 bay.
Just for my photo and video backup I suppose 2 bay would do. However I want to keep some headroom for extra features I plan to utilise in the future as mentioned before like surveillance, and also perhaps some more options that at this point I don't know yet I want to use, since I have no experience with NAS (that's why I want Synology for ease of use #iphoneuser).

I assume that I can use 2-3 of the 4 slots in a 4 bay NAS for my raid storage and the last one for surveillance dedicated drive like SkyHawk, so for that I need more slots than 2. I rather would not want to use my NAS drives (in case of 2 bay NAS) for recordings, so either I'll buy bigger nas, otherwise when cameras thing will kick off I will need additional device dedicated for surveillance.

So I was thinking DS418. However, I'm not in rush and as far as I know there will be new devices in 2022 released - both in 2 and 4 bay lineups, so for now I'm gathering info and waiting for new releases. Even if new devices will not offer me anything I really need, perhaps older models will drop in prices when 2022 Synology NAS come out.
I am tempted to go forr DS420+ but thats like additional 1/3 price of DS418 and I might not utilise the plus model fully.

Also maybe thats not a bad idea to consider 2 bay NAS for now for my files, and then get 1 bay for surveillance?

Should I consider other brands?

Any thoughts?


Thanks again
Maciej

Hi, I have 2 apple tv's - 5th generation and 3trd generation. I can download the Plex app on 5th gen and it accesses my movie no problem. Now the 3rd gen doesnt allow app downloads - so u have to fool the system to access plex by altering the dns server on apple tv settings. I got this also to work. The problem is that to get this to work I had to download Python and PlexConnect. Then from my desktop I ran the software and it allowed me to access my movie libraries from apple tv using the app Trailers. This is running off my PC and if I shutdown the PC appletv 3rd gen cannot access my Plex. I want to load this info on my NAS which runs 24/7. I am not sure how to do this and if my NAS server is DLNA.
Thanks for any helpp u can give me