Hi, am thinking about buying my first NAS to move my Plex server to a new Synology DS920+ with four Seagate Ironwolf NAS 8tb HHD. One problem is I cannot afford the NAS and all four hard drives at once. I would like to by the NAS and one 8tb HHD and add the others as I can find deals. So, my question is will I be able to switch from Basic to RAID 2 then to RAID 5 without losing all my data as I add drives. Thank you for any help.

I have a DS1520 with 5x16TB (in SHR) and was gifted a DX517 which I also added 5x16TB (in SHR). I have storage pool/volume 1 on main unit and wanted to use the DX517 storage pool/volume as a full incremental back-up destination so whenever I make file/folder changes on the 1520 this updates the 517 back up.
My questions:
1. Can you Back-up to a second pool/volume on a DX unit?
2. Which is the best software/package solution for the incremental back-up option?

Hi Robbie,

Thank you for your review videos they are very informative and straight to the point.

I am looking for a desktop NAS for the following use cases:

- Watch 4K films streamed to AppleTV, Iphones, Ipads (I have a SSL based VPN into my home network in the event I would like to stream over the public Internet when I am out)
- Backup Iphone videos and pictures
- Host Virtual Machine with Steam running on those VMs to be able to play games remotely
- Host Virtual Machines for work testing (Active Directory Domain Controller, Network Access Control servers etc.)
- Games will be streamed via Steam play (there is an app on AppleTV which lets you stream from any Steam machine)

My current LAN is:

- Cisco Meraki full stack, firewalls, switches and WiFi 6 APs

My thinking is to purchase QNAP TVS-872XT-i7-16G, starting with 1x 16TB disk and no GPU in the PCI slot. Then in next year spend some money to fill in additional hard drive bays, more RAM and procure dedicated GPU to run more advanced games.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

Alek

Hi Robbie,

as always, love the show.

Recently I upgraded from the 1821+ to the 3622xs+.  I got a great deal buying the unit new on ebay for $2,200 so I couldn't resist at that price point.

I was using (7) 16 TB Seagate EXOS drives in a RAID 5 array and added (2) more 16 TB Seagate EXOS drives for additional capacity and for conversion to RAID 6 to protect against 2 failed drives.  Essentially I added 1 drive for expansion and 1 drive for redundancy.

The question I have is this.  I am currently running the RAID conversion and expansion processes and it looks like it is going to take 4-5 days.  Is the unit actually picking up and laying down each file one at a time since it has to create a second set of parity data and the stripes and block sizes will have changed since I am both expanding the volume pool and converting the RAID from RAID 5 to RAID 6.

THanks,
James.

Dear NAS compares-team,

I found your website via your great youtube channel which I think does a phenomenal job on explaining everything around NAS which is the reason I wanted to ask you my question.

Since I moved into my own house I have a 19" rack in my cellar where all network cables go together and are patched into a 24 port 1GBit switch. In this rack my router also finds its place as well as a Synology DS216play. Unfortunately I messed up back in the days when I bought it by setting up a Raid 0 configuration with two 2TB drives which are now 70 % full and one drive starts getting sector errors. With this setup it's impossible for me to just switch drives and be good to go. Since I want to have more bays to be prepared for future events and only a two bay system can be installed in the rack due to space problem I thought of getting a RS based synology station into this rack with new drives, backing up everything from the old station and selling it to a decent price.

Yet I am still confused which way to go since the only rack based systems of the current lineup fitting in my rack would be the RS422+ or the RS1221+ due to its shortened form factor.
As for my use case I currently have all my music, videos (most of them ripped DVDs but more on that later), pictures and data (disk images of old computer games and from GOG) and backup data from MacBooks etc.. Since your videos showed that the processor in a RS422+ isn't quite suitable for media streaming I hesitate in buying it and I thought the RS1221+ is just overkill and way too expensive for my use case. If I'm not mistaken the DS1522+ is more upgradeable but has more or less the same processor and therefore the same problem with media streaming I am also uncertain on whether this device would be a good choice. The only device I saw fiting my needs was the DS920+ which is of course a bit old and I wanted to check at least what was on synologys event on the 27th of October. My problem with the DS920+ besides not being the latest device is the form factor which could cause space problems in my rack and I therefore thought of the RS422+ again. To what degree is the media usage still viable on this rack and when should I consider of rather getting a different device? Maybe I have another chance of moving my data from the current device to just a 8TB HDD and wait for a suitable NAS in the future?
I do hope my question is worth your time and you can help me finding a suitable solution.

Best regards from Germany
Ulrich Schlecht

Hi,

Any ideas where I can buy this card QXG-10G1TB single channel 10GB RJ45 Copper NIC PCIe.
Thanks.

I am wondering on the best bundle for my planned NAS, mostly for Plex with some other minor add-ons.

I'd like to get either 6 or 8TB drives and am trying to decide amongst the various flavours of WD & Seagate. Am I better off compromising on storage for the up-spec HDD models?

Planned usage is mostly for Plex at home (replacing a purpose -built PC) with some light usage for some other services like backup and photos etc.

My Plex library is (at least 20Tb) and is a mix of mostly 1080p, 720p and 4K content. Most 4K movies are compressed to 4-6Gb size with HEVC encoding.

Hello, 

I have a QNAP QHORA-301W and a QNAP TS653-D.  I recently purchased a QM2-2P10G1TB. Ihave been using one of the two 10GbE ports on the Router to connect to one of the 2.5GbE.

Lately, I have been thinking on adding some cameras to my NAS, and since me and my wife use the NAS to work at the house, I wanted to improve the connection between the NAS and the Router to 10GbE. So I bought a QM2-2P10G1TA and was planning to use it for the connection and also for to add a couple of 1tb cache SSDs...


but now I'm wondering how much that cache will bottleneck the 10GbE connection between the NSA and the Router.. will it be as bad as the previous connection of 2.5GbE or even worse?

if that's the case then i will pass on the cache... but if it's not as bad, I think i can accept a little bottleneck on my 10GbE to gain the advantage of having Cache.

thanks a lot!

Gabe

Hello !

Thanks for your very clear and useful videos !
Sorry for my poor english.

My config :
Motherboard : Asus z690 Hero
CPU : i5-12600K
Fan : Be quiet Dark pro 4 (I dont feel confortable with watercooling)
RAM : G.Skill Ripjaws S5 Black - 64 Go - DDR5 5600 MHz - CL30
GPU : Asus TUF GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
Case : Cooler master Cosmos C700P black
Alim : Be Quiet Dark Power 12 1000W
Dual boot with windows 11 : one system with internet, one system without (for music)
I'm coming from windows 7 (cubase for music)

I understand that for my music system (windows 11 without internet), I need 1 drive for windows 11 and programs and 1 or 2 drives for samples and I'm confused about the right choices.

1/for windows 11 system I'm thinking about M2 nvme, and it seems that, regarding M2 nvme, random read 4kB measurement is a very important factor for music. But all the recent good M2 seem good, so WD sn850x ? Sn850 ? Kingston kc3000 ? New Samsung 990 pro ? Other ? (I fell reluctant about Seagate after two Seagate HD 3,5 died suddenly). Which M2 for system oriented music ?

2/I use several very big sample libraries and I need 2 x 4To storage for them. For that purpose, 2,5 ssd are way better than 3,5 hd. I have 1 SanDisk SDSSDH3 4T00 and I need another ssd 2,5 of 4To : maybe the Samsung SSD 870 EVO could be better ? Or another Sandisk ? Or there is no significant difference ?

3/But...
In some youtube videos, I heard that the disk with the samples might be the more efficient, so would it be better to choose M2. I'm confused about it. Do nvme make a real difference for sample storage ? 2 x 4To nvme involve very heavy cost ! What is your point of view about it ?

I hope there is not some gigantic newbie mistake in my configuration !

Thank's for your time and advice.
Best regards,
Francis

I have bt fibre with the modem in the ultiltiy cupboard and can't be moved it has 1 Ethernet ports but 2 ports on the wall one to the bedroom and 1 to the front room I there a way to have a router in each room or do I need 2 switch to run from the router and have the router outside the door for WiFi as it will be in the middle of the house thanks