Hi everyone,

After much consideration, I've decided to dive into the world of Plex and NAS to organize and access my 4K UHD Blu-ray collection both at home and remotely. Following extensive research, I've opted for the QNAP TS-464, accompanied by two NVMe SSDs and HDDs. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of all the equipment.

This is my first time setting up a NAS, and it would primarily be for Plex use. Here is my current plan:

1. Install only the two NVMe SSDs for the initial QNAP and Plex setup, ensuring the OS and Plex reside on the SSDs.
2. Integrate the two HDDs into RAID 1, establishing a new pool and volume for storing movies and TV shows.
While going through the provided security checklist, I got a little confused. I'm seeking guidance, particularly in my situation where the QNAP will be exclusively used for Plex. Some specific questions include:

Is it necessary to create a non-admin user with read-only privileges for Plex?
Which port(s) should be closed or modified for optimal Plex performance?
Should I still implement SSL encryption for a Plex setup?
As someone who is tech illiterate, I want to ensure that I'm on the right track. Any step-by-step guidance or checklist tailored to my situation would be immensely appreciated.

Thank you all in advance for your assistance.

Best,

P.

Hi, I'm looking to buy my first NAS. I've been researching for months now but feel I'm still miles away from being informed enough to choose a NAS on my own. It's for personal/family use (max 6 persons using it). Main purpose will be file storage from phones/laptops and accessing files (mostly docs&photos) remotely. I also want to invest in good streaming capabilities. A simple, usable interface will be key for me. Surveillance and AI photo sorting not necessary. Futureproofing is my main issue - I don't want to regret e.g. being left behind on the M.2/NVME train - but I'm not sure where the sweet spot between futureproofing and overspending lies for me. Love the channel and the site - any help you can offer would be much appreciated!

I have a WDMirror and it sucks. I have an Apple IOS household with about 15 devices from iPads, iPhones, iMacs, MacBook pros…etc. I am a UX Designer so interface is important to me over hardware upgrades and such. I need a place to store family photos and videos, ideally they would be accessible outside, personal cloud. I use Google Home so integration with Nest cameras would be nice, if I could store my own home video and have the software keep it for 30days then delete (this is not a priority). I do want easy to use easy to access with web interface and Apps… also Tech support that is not in India would be outstanding.

Hi,
I've been thinking of setting up a NAS, I work in IT, but couldn't get into the hardware part so far.
Now my father really wants to get away from cloud solutions, family(5) is using for photos/docs.
I watched hours of your videos (2x speed, thanks for all the infos ) and I think I narrowed it down to the 1522+, so we are future proof and I can also use it for Docker / VM projects (opt).
Now he just mentioned he would also like to include movies (plex or..) and now I am a bit worried if my choice is still valid.
I watched comparisons that showed that .264 / 1080? is fine, but as soon as you go 4k (or remote) it can be difficult with just the CPU, especially if there are multiple people using it. No real exp here:/
Can you please help me verify my choice or should I switch to GPU integrated =423+ or is there other options? I think it should stay synology with the apps for ez family use?
And also what Disk size would you say to start with? 2x12-16tb?
Best regards

Hi, I just watched your very informative video on the Samsung T9 which answered a few questions and raised a few others! Intel etc have made all this incredibly complicated these days. 

I am in the process of upgrading to a Mac Studio (M2 Max) for music production and require an extensive array of SSDs for audio/sample/archive purposes. The sample drive needs to be as quick as possible as it reads huge libraries. It would be directly connected to one of the ports defined by Apple as:

Four Thunderbolt 4 ports with support for:
Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gb/s) 
DisplayPort 
USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s) 
USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s)

This implies that the port does not support 3.2 gen2x2 though I may be wrong? In which case as per your video the T9 would not perform adequately. Are you able to clarify? This would be a shame as I would prefer something off the shelf and reliable. 

I have explored enclosures with a Samsung internal drive but they made me slightly uneasy given that so many were reporting wildy different speeds, heat issues, deceleration, and the long term reliability/durability is unknown. Maybe I have to go back to this option though. In which case can you recommend a reliable enclosure? 

Thanks in advance!

Hello,
I want to replace 2 Drobos with a good 8 Bay DAS with thunderbolt 3 and Raid 6 to work "on the fly". Also, and inexpensive 8 bay with raid 6 for backup.
I need to reuse 7 HHD that I already have.
For the thunderbolt 3 Das, software or hardware Raid 6 and which?
Thanks for your time.

I have been researching various NAS devices but am still not confident with my knowledge / potential choices I've identified. I hope to have a setup which can mainly support utilities similar to OneDrive with extra features like with photo storage apps (Google Photos etc). This will be set up for my family to each have their own private spaces for files etc. whilst having a family shared area for files + maybe options to share individual files with individual people & hopefully support real-time or near real-time collaboration. Additionally photo storage is also important and I would look for similar functionality in that area as you'd expect from Apple or Google Photos. I would also hope to keep it comfortably expandable in terms of storage capacity as it would be a long term multimedia storage solution & the non-technical interface be easy to use (for less tech savvy parents)

Can existing 2 x 4tb drives currently in a DS218J be transferred directly to DS923+ with no other action needed?

Want to build video edit and serve NAS for 5k HEVC like GoPro but not keen on Plex. Is there a m-ITX board family which can run a recent low-power INTEL with GPU onboard, like the Core i3-13100T or up? Want to have 10gbps if necessary by addon card. Can Plex Emby and others use the latest Intel UHD for transcoding or is graphics version irrelevant? Want to edit big GoPro files, and reccomendation for size and type of SSD in the NAS along with the platter drives to speed things up? If I had to go prebuilt, comments for this type of work. LAstly, seen on one of your Youtubes a teble of AMD cpus and their graphics capabilities, but cannot find it again. Thanks very much for the help.

Hi there, my name's Josh and I'm a cinematographer. In 2016 I purchased a Qnap TS-831X that I've used ever since without much issue. Lately I've started having a number of issues connecting from afar, and an issue even plugging in directly to it where my system can't delineate between whether it should use Wifi or the hard connection (obviously much faster). I have to turn off my Wifi to get appropriate speeds out of it.

I'm wondering if there's a better ecosystem for my use case, even if it's within Qnap. We have a lot of weddings to store and in a perfect world I'd like to be able to revisit any of those wedding projects on the fly if I choose.

Would love some help assessing my use case and finding the right solution. Thank you.