Newly venturing into NAS territory for 4-member family, allowing our growth with look at our current device list and my newbie thoughts below. After review of 2022/2023 best picks article, I find myself a little on the fence about which I should choose and why. I'm open to any feedback/suggestion with my main newbie question being: Do NAS box systems price WITH hard drives for storage, or must the drives be purchased individually?
Devices (all pc, unless stated otherwise): One family desktop PC, 3 laptops, 2 iPad tablets, Ps5, Nintendo Switch, 2 iPhones (in another few years, will have need to support 4 mobile phones).

Thoughts on NAS storage structure: 6-Bay NAS, filled solely by SSDs broken down as follows:
1 Master (largest capacity drive - for receiving backups from the other 5). This drive would then back up to Cloud Storage.
1 Security cam/system (planned future install)
1 Misc. saves (word, excel, scans, etc..)
1 Music files
1 Familty photo/video
1 General computer backup

I have a 2 bay ds220+ with 6gb of ram and it is constantly running at 54% ram usage.

What could I upgrade to that would be faster than a 220+?

I host a couple of websites from my NAS and run 4 dockers constantly as well as Plex

Many thanks for your help

Jon

I am totally new to the NAS world...  If you have answers / advise please let me know...

My wife and I have two homes. One in Washington state, the other in Oregon.

I travel between homes with my laptop.

Is it possible to set up a NAS at the Oregon house and backup to it real time while my laptop (and I) are at the other house?

Can I hookup the NAS to the internet and backup to it from anywhere?

Lastly can I access the NAS from my laptop/PC and my wife backup her MAC as well?

Any answers will be greatly appreciated!

I have 2 questions:
1. Should I defrag HDDs on my NAS? They are on btrfs. If yes, how often? I read that I should delete all snapshots before defrag and recreate them afterwards. What is the most efficient way to recreate snapshots? How to handle immutable snapshots if I have any?

2. My current array: 3x ST16000NT001 on SHR. I have only 1 empty bay. Planning to add another ST16000NT001, but the model is out-of-stock. Closest alternative is ST18000NT001. So, if I opt for 2x 18TB (so I won't waste the 1.8TB), I need to remove a 16TB. Would it be wasteful to use that 16TB drive as an external backup destination for my NAS?

Thanks.

Currently, I have 3 units of Seagate Ironwolf Pro (ST16000NT001) in a SHR Storage Pool on DS1522+.

Can I add an Exos X18 (ST16000NM000J) to that same storage pool to increase storage capacity?

My research indicates there's potential issue due to the 512e/4kn format.

Can you also explain more on 512e/4kn?

List of WD hard drives: https://nn-computers.es/disco-duro-interno/wd/page-2

List of NAS from various brands https://nn-computers.es/unidades-nas

I recently bought an USB hard drive from Western Digital, I have some external drives at home all of them between 1 and 6 TBs of capacity, I was thinking about buying a NAS drive and I have options from Synology and WD and a full list of NAS hard drives, my idea was to buy a WD NAS with the hard drives on it or buy the hard drives apart and install these and I came across this issue about WDDA and the 3 year warning, people not recommending WD, etc..

Should I be worried about if I buy WD if I disable WDDA? Can I buy WD stuff or do you recommend just Synology?spaon

Hi,

i've been reading and watching your content for ages and you already helped me a lot during my 2 NAS purchases. Lately I've decided for a Qnap TS-464 successing my QNAP TS-469 Pro. After setting everything up software problem followed after software problem and no I am sick of this brand and their support. To me, QNAP was a no brainer so far but now I want to switch brands as I can't stand their horrible support anymore.

My setup is as following:
- Camera Sony A 7 R IV (100mb per raw file)
- DJI Mini 4 Pro
- QNAP switch QNAP QSW-2104-2T (10GBE / 2,5gbe)
- PC with 10GBE
- Macbook AIR M1


I mainly edit my pictures at my PC and moving my work to the NAS as quickly as possible for safety issues (not loosing my work). Additionally I back the NAS up twice a week. Given my use case as an enthusiastic hobby photographer (with some paid work) I recently purchasing a DJI drone for video purposes I would be happy for a recommendation outside the QNAP world.

Best regards,
Franz

Hi,

I've been pondering the idea of purchasing my very first NAS. I'm on the fence whether or not Qnap or Synology. My use case would be for backing up my Windows 10 drive(nvme) and two other internal HDD. I also want to stream Plex to my Apple TV 4K (2nd gen). I currently have Plex server (no plex pass) on my PC tower and it streams flawlessly to my Plex app on my Apple TV. Can a 2-bay NAS such as Synology DS220J or DS223J do the trick? Or perhaps Qnap TS-233-US?

Thanks for your time.

Hello! I recently discovered NAS and your channel and was inspired to make my own NAS. I purchased the recently reviewed and released SilverStone Technology CS382 8-Bay SAS-12G / SATA-6G. What would you recommend to help fill my new case. I just wanna make sure I do things right and I like how you find available part on AliExpress at times. Look forward to hearing from you soon!

Can you help!

I bought the ZTE MC888 on your review, but the manufacturer is saying it's lockded to Livewire only.

So, is this supposed to be unlocked or are there rules?

I'm really confused as I wanted to use my TalkMobile network (which gets 5g) and instead, I'm getting bizarre and contradictory information.

BTW you'd "love" the unprofessional and confusing, and contradictory live chat with the manufacturer, happy to send.

THANKS SO MUCH

Stuart