I am looking for a suitable NAS device to store and play 4K videos for my family. My main need is to store movies, personal videos and be able to stream to the TV in my house via the local network. I also want to use the NAS to back up photos from my phone and computer. I am confused between Synology and QNAP, not sure which one is more stable and easier to use for beginners? The minimum requirements are 2 hard drive bays, support 4K transcoding if needed, and good compatibility with Plex. Can anyone suggest a suitable model? Thanks in advance!

I am eager to implement a centralised backup solution in my home, however I am weighing up the cost-effectiveness of ready-to-go NAS boxes (e.g Synology, QNAP, Terramaster, etc.) or to build a DIY nas and BYO operating system to it like TrueNAS. In Australia, Amazon have Terramaster systems for as low as AU$399, however they are reviewed poorly and I am nervous about buying something that doesn't last, although the cost is appealing. On the other hand, I like the expandability of a DIY NAS and the control I can get over it. However once all of the parts of a DIY NAS are added up, it ends up costing more than a Synology system. Would it be better to buy a Terramaster system and flash my own operating system to it, buy a NUC and drive bays, or build a NAS from scratch? I'm stuck for choice..!

I have finally bought my first NAS and I decided on the new UGreen DXP 2800 2 bay. It is for my video library and my choice boiled down to the UGreen and the Synology DS224+.
I decided on the UGreen because it has superior hardware to the Synology. Software may be better on the Synolgy but I thought for streaming movies in Plex, that the hardware played a bigger part.
At £263.99 the price made it an easier choice.
I welcome your comments since I am a newbie.

Now I have to save to buy the hard disks and then I dive in.

I'm on a M4 Macbook Air so any hints are welcomed. 

Thanks to Nascompares for all your helpful advice, 

Used to have a NAS drive years ago and now no longer supported.
Back into photography and video and looking for a good backup solution to store and keep safe photos and video pre and post editing.

Also looking at music server for my wiim ultra media server

thanks

Hi, I am from US, I need a suggestion. I am using a Wifi that my landlord provides for free. I dont have physical access to it, however.

I need a NAS that can connect to that wifi router, backup my phone and PC which are also connected to that router. Also, When I am away, I want to be able to access the files (especially from an Android phone.

Please suggest a Wifi NAS that enables the above. Thanks a bunch!

Regards
Andrew

Looking for a DAS 5 or 6 bay array with hardware raid to handle minimum 24tb of data with ability to add/swap drives and expand as data grows. RAID options of 5, 6, 50 requirements. Primarily for photo and video editing and archiving. Looking to spend between $2000 to $3000 for the array and hard drives. Thoughts?
Thank you,
Joe
joe@joefornabaio.com

Hi,
I got an TVS-h674-i5-32G with stock ram, 32 GB SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16 GB).
Other specs: 2 nvme 1TB in raid 1 for system/apps. 3 hdd 8TB in raid 5 for archive, images and films that I can't lose. I also use it as a plex server. Finally an 8TB external drive as backup.

I've been thinking about upgrading the Ram to an Ecc model, not sure it's worth it but I feel better safe than sorry. Not using that much ram as of yet so don't think I need more than 32GB.
So the question is, what ram do you recommend?
Don't mind a few options if you can of course.

If I upgrade.. Can it be swapped without formatting or anything? (like PCs, generally best to go fresh after upgrades). Gearing up the system so I'm not too experienced with NAS systems yet.
Thanks in advance for any advice.

I am an amatuer/professional photographer, but just barely.   I have been plagued by external and internal hard drive failures and I'm in need of a solution.

I have 7 years of photographs across two different operating systems and I need a clear and concise way to keep my photographs accessible and also organized. 
I am currently using a macbook pro (2023) to do all of my editing, and I'll be staying with mac, although from what I read about the web interface that's a non-issue. 

Right now I have 6 or 7 external drives, totaling about 8-10 terabytes storage.   I want to put the data from all of those onto 1 NAS.  
I don't know what kind of backup I need.  I certainly don't want my only drive to fail (again) but I am not capable of buying multiple drives for raid configuration, at least not in one go. 

I looked into building my own NAS, which is fine I've built my own computer before, but I'm stuck on what might be the best kind of bare bones with the ability to upgrade parts of it in a few months without starting from scratch again.  

I probably ingest 500 to 1000 gigabytes a year, so I'll need to factor in some overhead for a couple years until I can upgrade or add more drives.  

What kind of raid do you suggest I use?
Do you think I should just start buying parts to make my own or buy something off the shelf?

Currently I am running a Synology DS224+ with 2x 16TB HAT3301-16 drives. My current backup process is a SeaGate Expansion 16Tb external USB hard drive connected 24x7 to the DS224+ running HyperBU on a 1x/week auto-backup.

I would like to start approaching the 3-2-1 BU philosophy by implementing a 2nd NAS (probably as JBOD) to BU selective important shared folders. This NAS would simply be a BU repository and not used day to day. I currently am the only user for my home networking system and all remote access is through TailScale.

I do plan to upgrade the DS224+ to a 4 bay (or larger?) unit sometime within the next 12 months on a staged process - new NAS chassis - migrate the two 16TB drives to it - adding drives as req'd. I might wait to do the update until then and use the DS224+.

What would be a suitable NAS for the BU role? Nothing fancy - Trying to keep costs under control. Thanks.

I’m going in circles. Finally decided on a Terramaster t6 423 for my needs. Bought it from the Terramaster.com website as there was a sale. 569,00 instead of 759,00. Thought great. Payment was a little dodgy. The visa portal was not working on the de website. Customer support directed me to global site where I could use visa. But as I was buying this as a business expense I decided to use the de site and PayPal express checkout. Payment went t6423 came couple of days later.

I asked for an invoice and this is where I start to distrust the company. I can simply not get a valid invoice with vat and vat number listed from the company for a product bought from there de website in euros.

Anyone else had this experience?

I just want to send it back now. See how that goes. But then I need help choosing a new device.

Rack format would be nice but not a must. Was planning to use 2x parity so 4 bay may be a little cramped. But if needs be, budget wise I’d go 4 bay 1x parity.