Hi there,

I've been really enjoying the site, and appreciate the help it's been giving people like me who are very much new to the world of NAS. I have a very niche question here that I'd love to get your expert advice on. I'm asking on behalf of a blind person, my dad, who runs a radio station.

My situation is that currently I have a DS218.
But now, this is not enough!
The PC which hosts my dad's radio station, which has sat on my desk for the last 3 years, has finally given up the ghost. We like the idea of resurrecting the radio station, but this time running it as a VM on my always-on NAS. It needs to be a Windows VM because the radio station apps are Win only. More importantly, whichever NAS we choose, it absolutely must be able to handle the GUI aspects of the VM REALLY WELL: being blind, my dad uses JAWS screenreader software to navigate the GUI and use the radio software, so slowdown here would be a nightmare.


So what we're looking for is a NAS that can handle this requirement. I will also be using the NAS for home/photos, and plan to slot my current 2 drives into it.

So, getting to the point...

Am I right about the following?
- My current NAS, DS218, will not run the VM well
- The DS920+, which looks like the next step up, won't run the VM particularly well either
- The DS1261+ should run it all fine? Except 6 bays seems overkill for what will be 8TB of data at most!

Just checking in case there is any new machine I should be looking at. Happy to consider QNAP options too. Budget of £1,000 including HDDs.
Thanks so much for reading my question.

HI guys,

Love the YouTube channel. I wonder if you can help me, I'm Currently backing my MacBook laptop up, via Time Machine, to a basic extrnal drive, 8TB, and then saving projects to another basic External Drive, just Seagate or similar 8TB when I'm ready to move the files fully off my laptop.
I also backup final edits in HD jpeg to Amazon Drive and Dropbox.

I'm looking for a better solution, I've thought of keeping a basic Time Machine drive going, but also getting a Synology DiskStation DS720+ or DS220+ ,saving all my final Projects to those Drives, in a Mirrored Raid, probably using 4TB Barracuda drives, (8TB when available)
And then just swapping those drives out when they are full, and storing them away, labeled, and in a database, so if i need access to any old projects, I know which drives to slot in.
I'd keep the cloud storage going also.

Just wondered if that was a good solution, or if something cheaper like a Terramaster would work as well.


Thanks a lot for your help,

Have a great week, Chris.

Years ago I purchased an Apple AirPort Extreme timecapsule as backup device and built in wifi station. Nowadays the wifi function is obsolete as tech is old. Yet the device still has 2 Tb capacity.
I have heard rumors you can set the device up as a NAS
Anybody has any experience with this?

Dear all,

I was about to pull the trigger to but 2 NAS systems one -rim are and the other one to back up the primary.
But while reading more I understood that the NAS must be connected to WAN (the incoming internet cable router) via router or switch. And from there on data is collected and distributed via your LAN.

But what if you don’t have a cable wired LAN, just WiFi only (which works fine by the way).

Here is why I would like to use the NAS:

1) be able to edit my photos on the NAS. I don’t want to download it from NAS to pc, edit then upload again (my editing software ON1 Photo RAW allows this is even geared towards that)

2) store my office work data documents etc

Sofar a DAS would suffice but;

3) I also want to be aboe to access ph0tos remotely, edit or delete or city whatever

My setup is simple: I use an iMac at home, iPads and phones and I use a MacBook Pro ( cheers yesterday bought the new iMac 14 inch M1 Pro and its amazing).

I want to be able to use high speed data at home for photo and for Plex. But can that be realized with WiFi only?

In my mind I had thought hoped that I could connect the NAS to the router to allow remote access and for distributing collecting data via WiFi at home, PLUS connect it directly to pc for high speed data exchange AND connect it directly to tv via hdmi.

Is that possible?

Thanks

Hi ... Does my new GS108PP support "poe switch is 802.3af compliant (48V) and supports active mode" It's for a poe camera (Reolink rcl-410)? and can I connect as plug and play? On the back of the switch there is a switch, should it be high, medium and low power? and must be connected to my Synology Nas ds210j. Hope you will return. Mogens

Good fun getting here! I have 50K let's call them items, generally .jpeg, .tiff, .png and scanned, etc files using PSE Organiser 2021, Can I save metadata to files and transfer to DS420j. Thanks, Simon.
Synology DS420j

When I try to access my USB drive which I have plugged into my Raspberry Pi 3b+ which is running OMV and connected via ethernet to my switch, I get this error on my Macbook Pro:
"The operation can’t be completed because the original item for “folder name” can’t be found"
What am I missing? The Pi is powered by a CanaKit power supply and the USB drive is connected to a powered USB hub which is plugged into my Pi.

The idea is to set up a NAS for a small business (a non-profit small animal shelter - 100 animals per year). The staff is non technical but can do basic administration of various applications. About 4 normal staff users although the Board might be able to use various applications. Of the Board members, most use an iPad, a few an iPhone, and the Treasurer and myself are PC users - as are the staff members at work although they use iPhones and Androids when they aren't at work.

As it is, there are two kind of users - those who handle the administrative work (primarily handling donations and mailings) and the shelter operation (keeping track of the animals coming in and out along with their vet records etc.). There are a lot of photos involved in the later case - we link to the Petfinder application and share a lot on social media like Facebook. People love pictures (videos) of dogs and cats. There are thousands of pictures to be organized.

We also want to have a surveillance system. We had applied for grant for an elaborate one but with COVID funds dried up. We still have a need, probably in the area of 8-10 cameras although they won't all be active a lot of the time. Our original proposal (from a local vendor) ran about $10,000. Looking at it today there's little logic for it as it includes an NVR and 13 cameras of the $300 variety along with all the wiring. There's some logic to it however in that we don't have any internet connections other than through the router (fiber - 600 mbs) and there's a lot of metal in the form of cages for the dog area for example. We are probably going to need range extenders if we don't do wired connections. And we'll probably need an additional (mesh?) router setup to get decent signal through out the building and outside. Not particularly a NAS issue but an issue.

So we are looking at a file server and a surveillance system at a minimum. Another issue we have is that various Board members have a lot of files on their own PC's, iPads, etc. We should have a central repository so that we don't lose track of what's happened. Last year we had an audit and it was a major effort to piece together from the emails of different Board members (over 5 years, thankfully most had some of them) what had been done. If we had a NAS we could offload a of what now resides in various clouds to a central source controlled locally.

At this point I'm assuming we can somehow use low priced wireless IP cameras (seems you like Reolink and they're in a wide variety of models at reasonable prices) that would be wired internally and batter operated outside. Synology looks a bit better in a way given that QNAP decided to go for a subscription model. I thought the 8 camera perpetual license made sense but I can understand their desire to move to subscription (for the MP4 format if no other). Now Synology looks more competitive. Given that it looks like Synology might be easier to administer for non-technical people. I'm the technician on the Board but I'll be off soon and our personal situation is such that we might not be here three years from now.

I do like to fool with technology although it's been a while at this level. I ordered a QNAP TS-230 and have been working with it for the past week or so. A very nice device for the price. I've got two WD Red 2TB drives. Not a space issue. That said I can see this might be a challenge for the Shelter staff to keep track of. So I ordered a DS220+ to see what I can make of it. It should arrive in a few days. In the interim I'm checking out an outdoor Reolink camera (I have an E1 PRO working in the house). I know I've got network issues to deal with for range extension but fundamentally that has little do with the NAS. I will say to this point that none of this is a cost to the Shelter. If and when we do this, it will all be the non-profits cost and we're working on a fund raiser to that effect. I'm pretty sure we'll need a 4 bay given that one drive will be devoted to surveillance.

OK - two questions. First, in you Synology install you said that Synology might not install over formatted disks. I plan to use the ones I set up for the QDAP. So how does one uninitialize a formatted hard disk. Is it the old wave it over a magnet thing?

Second, and more importantly, from what I described is it more likely a QDAP (which seems to be more technically oriented) or Synology (which looks more user friendly) a likely if more initially expensive choice?

I do want to thank you by the way for all the videos on Youtube. They have been very useful so far.

Thanks,

John

How do i do this?

Is the fan in an Asustor AS6604t easily replaced? I'm upgrading from an old fanless NAS and am wondering what my options are if I don't like the fans on the new unit.