Hello,

Appreciate this article it has been beneficial. I am looking for the best configuration recommendation for a Plex Media server. I currently have a TS453BE (4x16TB hard drives with 8GB ram) which is good but I get lagging at times so I think it might make sense to upgrade the machine. I don't have a need for more storage but I assume it's a processor issue when I run into the problem.

I do have a decent amount of MKV files so my machine is likely struggling during the transcoding. Currently, there are about 5-6 people on the box at high times. Any recommendations?

Also, should I consider getting an NVIDIA dedicated card installed? I am completely open to recommendations so appreciate any guidance.

Thanks
Anthony

I want to stay under Synology's limit of 6GB of ram, but I am unable to find a dual-rank 4GB module for the drive. The ones that you have listed are single rank, but you seem to recommend dual-rank for Synology RAM purchases.

Hi Nascompare Team,
I’m trying to decide which NAS I’m going to by from QNAP. I use the TS-219+ for many years and now its time to move on.
I have the QNAP TS-253E-8G and TS-264-8G in mind. The newer TS-264-8G has faster CPU but the TS-253-8G has M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 3 x2.
Is there and advantage of having M.2 PCIe Gen 3x2 instead of Gen 3x1? The SSDs (WDS100T1R0C) should not be the problem.
I have the 2.5Gbit network as bottle neck in mind.
Maybe you have general explanation what PCIe Gen makes sense 3x4, 4x4…
Thanks for your help
Mario

Hello, I’m still debating on which brand to go for, Qnap, Synology or Asustor. I’ve tried QNAP and user experience is not bad but can be too complex at time to set certain things. I want it to be easy to setup, low maintenance and fast. I’m thinking of the Synology DS220+ but I would love to have your opinion

Hi there.

Firstly I found your YouTube channel and website absolutely fantastic for information, thank you.

I’m a shooter & editor and found myself in the same place many do in terms of external drive woes.

I bought 7 x 4tb iron wolf HDD, a QNAP TR-004 and a TS-464-4G (I’ll upgrade the ram) and add m.2 drives.

I edit on a MacBook Pro and have a beefy editing PC too that is rarely used since buying the MacBook Pro.

For my editing/data workflow I plan on the following:

Raid 5 config on 7 drives

After a shoot I’ll dump video rushes onto the NAS

PC will have a watch folder on NAS that will automatically create low res video proxies when I dump rushes.

I’ll use proxies or full res locally from NAS and occasionally proxies remotely if I need to edit from home (rarely need to edit remotely)

Now the question:

I’m not super savvy on the network side.

I rent an office that supplies Gigabit Ethernet and approximately 300mbs internet.

I presume I’ll need to get a higher speed switch to connect both PC and Mac to NAS simultaneously?

I’ll need a thunderbolt to xxgb adapter for the Mac and an appropriate pcie card for the PC (only has dual Gigabit currently)

How can I utilise dual ports on NAS to achieve 5Gb speeds and will I be able to also get that bandwidth on PC and Mac ends with appropriate network adapters.

If I create a local network in my office, can I then connect that switch to the supplied internet in office via Ethernet?

Many thanks and I love your work.

Looking to build a custom and low power NAS mostly for backups for now, motivated primarily by clutter of external HDDs (8TB WD Reds). Have experience with Linux and originally intended to follow the recommended advice of ZFS on RAIDZ1/2 for up to 6 drives max (if I need any more, I will replace an 8TB drive with 20TB ones); however, I realized I never need more than 1 drive on during the bi-weekly/monthly backup (I will do daily incremental backups to a Pi with an SSD attached) to these drives. Therefore, I'm thinking of only turning on the NAS 1-2 times a month for backup and leaving it off otherwise. In addition, I will be connecting these drives to the NAS via USB 3.0 instead of using them as internal drives because I only want to selectively turn on the relevant drives I need instead of spinning up all drives in a ZFS pool if I just need to backup say 20G worth of data or view a media file. I was a little skeptical of relying on USB interface, but I think it would be suitable for my purposes of backing up to 2 drives instead of the traditional raid setup that requires all drives in a pool to be up regardless of how much data is written to it. This should reduce both power consumption and wear and tear on drives (some people might argue NAS drives should not be spun up and down, but for my infrequent use I think it's worth it and considering the fact that most PCs involve daily shutdowns with regular HDDs, I would imagine NAS-rated drives are a little more durable than that).

Anyway, now I'm trying to decide which low power processor/motherboard to get (e.g. Celeron/Pentium/i3? 10-12th gen? Motherboard should have 6 USB 3.0 ports--I'm skeptical of USB hubs and their reliability, also potentially drawing more power itself than needed. Considering mini-ITX up to mATX). I think the most demanding use case for the NAS in the future is very basic home surveillance (just simply recording a video of the porch to see when packages arrive). For this case, I'm wondering what type of camera to go for. I want something that's low power and cheap. It only needs to do basic recording for me to view in real time and can be powered on/off remotely. It does not need tracking or AI. It should not require monthly subscription or the use of a potentially outdated client app, hence I'm looking for something that's open-source friendly and compatible with open-source home assistant software. Apparently I also want ONVIF compatibility and I guess PoE? It should only store videos in my server and will be restricted to an isolated network for security reasons (e.g. to avoid "phoning home&quot. I was considering a DIY cheap solution like using an old webcam but I think something a little more robust and higher quality is suitable. At most I will only ever need up to 6 cameras. Do such cameras typically do video decoding themselves or is it better to rely on the CPU to do that, in which case that would affect the choice of CPU? Any suggestions on cameras is much appreciated (perhaps recommendations for outdoor and for indoor use). Quality doesn't need to be excellent, 720p/1080p is fine. Low power is the most important factor since the NAS is only serving myself. When using it for home surveillance, I'll probably have a a single SSD/HDD then and run the NAS 24/7.

I should mention I typically have my desktop PC running 10+ hours a day and a Pi that runs 24/7 if either of these can take some load off the NAS so it can remain a lower power build (doubtful).

TL;DR: Looking for low power CPU that may or may not need video decoding depending if the surveillance camera can do it itself and recommendations for low power surveillance camera that doesn't need fancy AI tracking and is open-source and self-host friendly, not dependent on a third-party company for monthly subscriptions, data storage, or to their client mobile app interface.

Much appreciated.

Hello, thanks for the amazing site.

I have a huge amount of data stored over lots of drives, including:

• Synology DS416 NAS with 4x4TB WD Red drives > 10.8TB in SHR
  
• Synology DS218 NAS with 2x4TB WD Red drives > 7TB in JBOD (I don’t know why I chose this over RAID 0, I use this to serve my HTPC and don’t need redundancy [I always backup my NAS], so is RAID 0 better than JBOD?)
  
• Multiple WD Elements/My Book USB3 drives which I connect to a Windows PC and backup all my NAS and files on other drives so that they all get backed up to Backblaze Cloud storage for that one low price as you get unlimited storage for connected external drives
  
• Backups of drives using bare 3.5inch HDDs in USB3 docks
  

• Large 20-24TB storage so I can move all my data onto the one NAS to have it consolidated and accessible
  
• Thunderbolt 3 connection to allow direct connection to Macs and PCs
  
• I will be creating video content for online training using a Sony 4K camcorder (need mic recommendation)
  
• Would like to be able to have video or high resolution photos that I am working on at the time in an SSD cache for fast access on my Macbook Pro 15inch 2018 (will upgrade to silicon Mac in late 2023)
  

1. NAS selection: QNAP TVS-472XT looks from reviews to suit, but interested in other options. I see that model I mentioned has various CPU options, for my use case what is the sweet spot?
   
2. HDD selection: looking at perhaps 4x18TB.  What do you think of Seagate EXOS 18?
   
3. Question: with high capacity 18TB HDDs in RAID (assume RAID5 ?), what are the typical read/write speeds and how this relates to the connection to clients in terms of where the bottleneck is…obviously TB3 bandwidth will exceed any HDD combination, but more interested in the ethernet speeds: 1GbE, vs 2 x 1GbE vs 2.5GbE vs 10GbE.
   
4. Same question as above when using SSD cache, would TB3 be needed to utilise the speed of an SSD cache, or even 2 x 1GbE system would work?
   
5. Is the SSD cache something that I could easily use in my workflow in terms of when working on high bitrate video, or is it not very seamless and require copying the file to the SSD Nvme storage manually?
   
6. Recommendation for SSD cache in the chosen NAS.  Videos won’t be extremely long or multicam (ie 20 minutes per video max to start but would like up to 1 hour)
   
7. UPS: essential? Recommendations for the chosen NAS?
   
8. Backup software that can ensure I always have up to date backups with minimal interaction.  Built into NAS or client based?  Even if built into NAS would like your recommendation on client based solutions for when I migrate all my data and get it all sorted nicely: incremental, ability to backup to cloud services, keep multiple backups up to date, spread backups over multiple discs if I have lower capacity drives, ability to sync remote servers over SFTP.
   

Hello,

I wanted to you get your opinion/advice on this issue. It seems terramaster has removed support for ANY third party RAM with the latest TOS 5 update for the newer f2-423 models. The device will now only boot with their "oficially supported" ram which of course cost 4 times as much for the same spec RAM you can buy from a third party. Here are some links to their forum discussing.

https://forum.terra-master.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3889

https://forum.terra-master.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=82&t=2283&hilit=memory&start=60

I have recently been watching your videos and deciding what NAS to go with. I settled on the f2-423 and waited until Black Friday deals. I planned to upgrade the RAM in whichever NAS i went with since it is a relatively inexpensive and easy upgrade. The f2-423 went on sale today and i purchased it only to find out i now cannot upgrade it the way I wanted to.

I think this is a bad business practice and other should be aware.

The qnap ts-253d is also on sale. I am considering buying it despite no nvme slots and a weaker processor, for only $40 dollars less.. not sure what to do.

Thanks,
Tim

Love your videos and I am a member of your channel. I have recently watched a number of videos on the 2.5 gbps ports and how they could more than double my throughput speed. But, in all the video's I have watched, no one explains what a home user needs to do in the real world to be able to take advantage of the higher speed ports - aside from buying a new switch with the 2.5 gbps ports. In my home I have a suppled AARIS modem that has the standard 1gb port and puts out a speed of up to 100 gbps. And I have a 6 port switch that can handle speeds up to 100 gbps . All of the articles that I've read seem to say that that speed is sufficiant for a family of 4 with multipe divices connected and for streaming video. But how can I take advantage of my new 4 bay QNAP NAS that came with two 2.5 gbps ports if my internet providers modem only has ports deliverting speeds up to 100 gbps. What do I have to do next so that my new NAS is taking advantage of the two 2.5 gbps ports? And what do I plug the two NAS ports in to to make them work? At the moment I have one of the two NAS ports plugged into my 100 gbps ports on the switch which is then connected to my Google Mesh router which is then connected to my ARRIS DG3270 modem.
Hoping you can help ?

thanks,

Mark

Hi,

I recently watched one of the NASCompare Youtube videos comparing Synology and QNAP. In the video it was stated that IOS live photos was not supported by QNAP. When I search it, I see evidence that QNAP does support it, including an answer to this question on the NASCompares site. Given that we primarily want to purchase the NAS for home photos, I am leaning toward the additional AI capabilities of QNAP along with getting more hardware for the money. Can you clarify if QNAP works with LivePhotos? Do they play when viewing them from the NAS?

Thank you,

Ed