Can I use my Synology Router 6600AX as a sort of NAS? Can I install synology backup software onto it to do this work?

Hi
I have a Synology DS920+ (with three 8TB hard disks in a RAID5 configuration) used for archiving and a little work on stills images and some Video (not 4K For now?), The data is backed up on an external HDD.
I was thinking of purchasing a NAS to save movies and TV shows (with Plax) and physical backup to my Dropbox account.
I prefer to distinguish between my work\arcive NAS and my other data, but I'm debating between adding the DX517 extension and a DS420+ or DS423
my questions
1. Will it be wise to install DX517 as an extension for my DS920+ instead of buying a new NAS (DS420+, DS423)?
2. I have a free Bay in my DS920+, can I use it with the five bays (of the DX517) to make one partition? or should it be at one NAS\extension?
3. can I add another HDD with the same volume as the three at the DS920+ and combine it with the Raid5 that exists?

Thanx in advance
Amir

Do you know ANY motherboard that can do PCIe bifurcation (x4x4x4x4) for 2 of their x16 pcie slots?

thinking...

16 lanes of pcie (x4x4x4x4) - first card carrying m.2's
16 lanes of pcie (x4x4x4x4) - second card carrying m.2's
4 lanes of pcie - m.2 boot device
1 lane of pcie - video card
3 lanes of pcie- other motherboard things/NIC etc
===
40 lanes. haswell XEON? 2650Lv3? or similar?

so, 8x 4tb m.2 drives with 2 redundant ones.. = 6 drives worth of storage. = 24tb?

Is this a reasonable thing? and also, is it a possible thing

I’m on the fence at the moment, I don’t know whether to buy the new DS 224+ or buy the DS720+. The DS 720 comes with a lot more expansion capabilities 2 NVME slots on the bottom. The processors seem to be the same and you can expand the ram on both. Which are they both future proof? Can the DS 720+ be more future proofed even though it is already 3 years old. Can you give me your opinion, on what you think I should do. I have files, photos and multi media, and I would like to run virtual machines so I can try Ubuntu.
Kind regards

I have a large opera CD collection database that needs to move from unreliable Bluesound Vaults (4). It would be great to link to Discogs but not essential.
I have an old HP Inspire and newer iPad Air.
Single User primarily.

I am looking for a NAS to set up as my 4K PLEX server. I am thinking about using the Qnap TVS-h674-i5-32G-US 6 Bay. I need to know if this NAS is a good choice for future proofing for up to 8K MKV files. Should I get an 8 bay and leave space for future drives? I also plan on adding two 1TB ssd cards for flash memory since they are cheep. Is there a newer or different model that is better that I should be looking at? Thanks for your help.

Hello Everyone,

Thanks for this community and anyone here helping newbies figure out their NAS setups. It's super appreciated. I've been watching hours and hours of videos about NAS set ups and all related equipment and all I've learnt is that I am woefully out of my depth with this stuff.

I've got a few things I think I've honed in on but I'm still fumbling in the dark with this stuff. 

A big part of what I need help with are questions I have not been able to find answers to on any of the many many beginner videos I've watched.


1 - What other devices do I need to make my set up work and how do I wire it all up? What gets plugged into what? I think I need to plug my modem into a router and then router AND NAS both into a switch which goes out to all my devices. What kind of switch do I need for? Is there something specific for putting a router and NAS input together. Is there an all in one version or do I need all these different devices. 

2 - Compatibility  - Related to the first question. I have tried to look up these different devices but there are sooooo many technical details I get overwhelmed with how to keep track of what works what. What is the simplest combo of devices that all just work together without me needing a computer science degree?

3 - NAS Expandability  - Regarding future NAS storage upgrades: How do I upgrade drives when I need to expand for more storage. IF I start with 4 - 8gb drives and want add space can I just change one drive to a 16gb or do they all have to be the same size. And if they need to be the same size how do I upgrade? do I switch one drive at a time and rebuild each one as I go? That whole process is very fuzzy to me. Also if I just start with 2 drives (in a 4bay nas) and add to them later how do I redistribute the info in the raid? Does the data all need to be rebuilt? 


OK. So here's what I have and what I am trying to achieve.


I am trying to build a NAS set up solely for a media server system. Just to watch my movies and photos. NO backups, gaming, editing or anything processing intensive like that. I have 6 rooms with ethernet lines and the rest would be wi-fi. My house has crazy thick walls so the wi-fi needs to have a strong signal. I have about 500-ish movies I want to store. A mix of regular dvd and bluray. I'm not crazy over 4k so that's not a major factor for me. I figure at an average of 25gb per MKV file I would need about 16tb just for what I have. I'd like to have storage to get to about 1000 movies before I need to upgrade. My photos and videos are only about 500gb combined so that's not a huge factor. I get a fair amount of "traffic/streaming" between the kids and guests on ipads and what not so the ability to handle up to 3 NAS streams and a some heavy youtube action or Netflix streaming would be ideal. Remote access so the kids can watch their cartoons while we're traveling would be awesome too, but not an absolute must.

I'm "aiming" for a budget of $1000 usd. But that would include the NAS, drives, router, switch and any other other devices I might need. From what I've watched so far I was thinking of a Qnap TS-464 using Jellyfin. I was thinking about just starting with 2 - 8tb drives for redundancy and adding on as I need it, to stay in the budget but the whole drive/raid thing and how to change it all as I grow into it is super confusing to me. 

So I that's it. I'm sorry if this is too long of a post. I wanted to be as detailed as I could. 


Could you guys PLEASE help me with a basic setup that all works together and gives me some room to grow but doesn't kill my wallet. And a little help with some of the questions about how to handle the number of drives and how to expand as I go. (As General Sarris from Galaxy Quest once said, "Explain it, as if to a child") 


Thank you all so much for any help you can offer. Any links to videos that address any of these specific questions would also be appreciated.

My existing SSD in Win 10 pc is Kingston PCIe M.2 512GB. Your old review of Nextorage left me with a good impression about their products, plus they are presently on sale. The specific model I am considering is Nextorage 4TB SSD Work for Playstation 5 and PC M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 NVMe with Heatsink Maximum Transfer Rate Read 7300MB/s Write6900MB/s NEM-PA4TB/N SYM.
I believe this SSD is compatible with my pc, but wanted your expert opinion on this. Compatible meaning here that the system should perform at least as good as with the Kingston.
Thank you for your thoughts and opinion!
Roland

I have a large amount of MP3’s 150,000 I want to play on a Sonos whilst keeping tags
I have FLAC files that I don’t want to convert to mp3 but keep tags
I have lots of photos on Dropbox 4000+ I want to keep and down load keeping info
I will down load movies and stream to tv
I like the idea of Dsm
Plex or jelly fin?
I need to dl my photos from Dropbox
I was looking at the ds 224+ but the end of your video put me off
Which nas would suit me??
Thx for any advice you could offer!

Hi, I’m running a DS220+ with two 16TB ironwolf pro hdds, I have another 16TB, 12 TB and 6TB ironwolf hdds lying around. The main use of my current nas is for Plex and ideally I’d like to get to 6 bays so I can fully utilise my hdds and future proof my storage needs. Am I better off building or buying a new nas? Any of the newer synology nas products use ryzen cpu so would be unsuitable for hw transcoding. A 1621+ could set me back €1,000 and I’d end up buying something else to run Plex on. Wondering what my best options would be?