First of all, I am very thankful for your videos. I have been trying to recover from a RAID data loss that I swore would never happen again and several people I found pointed me to your videos. Then I find this wonderful tab offering advice and it is exactly what I need. I have asked several companies about setting something up but most are in the market to sell me something and have offered very different solutions in kind, to whomever company sponsored them. So I am looking for a completely unbiased help and opinion. So I thank you for any suggestions you would be willing to provide.

Firstly the problem. I have a lot of media I generate and I wanted to safeguard this. I originally had this data spread across several separate HDD's that I was looking at migrating into a RAID array. Initially my aim was for the expanded storage in one location but also the fail-safe redundancy RAID 5 offered. No in hindsight I made a rookie mistake. With an ASUS motherboard, I created a RAID 6 array containing 4x 4TB HDD's. I migrated a test batch of data onto this array and after a few months where I ensured the array was stable and trustworthy, cleared some of the data from backup HDD's in order to free up those drives for other uses.

Then the fateful day came where I unwittingly updated the BIOS settings of the motherboard. Being that I also did not understand that my raid array was software based, I lost everything on that array when the BIOS updated. It was devastating loosing so much hard work because of my stupid error. I even stopped creating because I had lost 4 years worth of media and didn't see the point continuing, if I might loose it again later on. I still have those 4x hardrives just sitting in a cabinet untouched as a reminder. I have tried recovering the data through various programs but every time, the file structure is still there, but the data recovered is completely corrupted. If you think this data could still be saved, by all means let me know, but for now these disks are just a grim reminder.

Sorry for the long winded explanation but I wanted to give example of what I'm trying to avoid in the future and my motivations for doing so.

So my question is for the product and the design for my new RAID cloud. I currently have 4, 10TB NAS HDD's that I want to set up as a data cloud. I need the redundancy of fault tolerance, which is why I went with RAID 6 in the first attempt in order to fail-safe against hard drive failures and corrupt data. I want an NAS for data access away from the machine, remote backups, & possibly streaming video in the future. I would also like to have DAS connectivity for local backups as well.

My goal is that I want to design a core system vault that all my devices (PC/Android) back up to on a regular basis and therefore provides some protection from getting locked out from Ransomware attacks. A system that is my media hub for not only watching movies, but accessing and editing video, or at least keeping a safe copy of the media in the vault, while I migrate the media onto another computer, edit it, then re save it on the vault.

I was looking at the WD My Cloud until I saw most of the reviews by users that would use it like I wanted to, swore never to buy it again. Lately I have been going back and forth between your very knowledgeable reviews between Synology & Qnap. I like the features of the TS-453Be and the auto back-up software from QNAP. But I'm also torn with your explanation of the Synology equivalent. I am also now thinking about waiting for the QNAP 453D after seeing your recent video.

I would welcome and love any feedback you might offer, for a guy that really messed up with his first venture into RAID storage and is very cautious getting back into it.

Discuss: VMware and QNAP NAS - Turn your Local PC into a VM

Hi,

Hope all is well in your part of the world at the moment - we're in lockdown so the perfect time to sort a few issues out on the NAS.

I have the QNAP 451A, with 2 x 6TB in raid 1, and 2 x 2TB in a separate in raid 1.

6TB is used for media storage - movies TV etc. This is accessed throughout the house by a number of Kodi devices as well as any PC on our home network - very handy in the current situation with a house full of teenagers.

2TB is raid 1 as it has family photos, home movies and documents we want to have a level of protection over, hence raid1. Currently plenty of room on this setup.

From memory, I only put the media on raid 1 as I thought 6TB was huge! Should have thought back to when I used to think my 350 MB HDD was huge!

As it turns out - the 6TB is almost is almost full. I have been looking at your (very helpful) videos on how to upgrade drives etc, and buying two larger drives is certainly an option, although costly.

Finally - my question - I am thinking of reverting the 6TB to 2 x JBODs, essentially giving me 12TB, but no ability for redundancy/protection. Is it possible to achieve this without fully resetting the NAS, and starting from scratch?

Hopefully I'm using the correct terms?

Appreciate any advice, thanks in advance.

Scott
NZ

I'm looking for 2 wireless IP cameras to connect to my synology NVR1218 system. My current one are Nighthawk from my old cammy subscription service and keep disconnecting. I'm looking for something around 4 or 5 MP if possible please

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Hi i really love your youtube videos really help me alot in choosing my first NAS DS1815+ and now DS1819+
I'm using the DS1819+ now with SHR2 Btrfs 4X2TB and 4X6TB i was thinking if i get the DX517 Expansion Unit can i slot in 2xSSD in raid 1 READ cache ?

Thanks

Dear Nascompares!

Please help me, because i'm lost.
I need a NAS to DLNA with fast transcoding for samsung smart tv. I can't choose between Synology DS718+ and Qnap TS-251d or 251+. At the moment i have TS-228.

Please help me to choose.

Thank you very much

Andras

Discuss: 7 Fun Things to do with your NAS Whilst in Self Isolation

Discuss: Disk2VHD and QNAP NAS - Turn your Local PC into a VM

Based on your recommendations and lack of new releases from Synology, I believe the 918+ is the correct NAS for my application.

My question is should i install HDD plus SSD Cache or just install SSD hard drives as my storage media.