Hi,

I am currently looking for a 14tb HDD. I am hesitating between the HGST/WD Ultrastar DC HC530 SATA 6Gb/s, 512e SE 14TB and the WD Gold (WD141KRYZ), 14TB.
From what I understand and the Gold has some disadvantages. I would like to know your opinion.
- Gold more Power usage when active or idle
- Gold more noise
- Gold less lifetime than HGST Ultrastar
- Gold less fast than HGST Ultrastar

I would like to use the HDD in my Synology NAS, which I have in my living room. I use it for data, but also for streaming music and and video at home, but also when I logon on from outside.
Would the Gold be to noisy? Does the Gold indeed have all the disadvantages mentioned above?
I do not know I understand correctly. Is the Gold the same as the Ultrastar. Only a different name?

Kind regards,
Danny

Hi there,

Great website, thank you for all reviews and guides.

I feel a bit cheeky asking directly but since the form was here!

I currently run 2 Drobo's 5N's;
Drobo A - Total Capacity of 10.72 TB made up from 5 drives at 3tb each. 1 drive for redundancy
Drobo B - Total Capacity of 28.90 TB made up from 5 drives at 8tb each again 1 drive for redundancy

Between the two of them I only have 1.5tb space free so I need to action an upgrade. It has taken me 4 years to reach this amount of space usage.

I am currently using these as pretty dumb network shares for Plex and general file store in my home (attic). Originally I did have nzbget and couch potato running on the Drobo’s but it just wasn't worth the hassle and so now I have a dedicated htpc come server handle all that.

From reading online I see a lot of people have had problems with Drobo products, I haven't had any issues myself and have quite enjoyed the experience and would be looking for something just as trouble free in future.

My thinking currently is to buy something with around 15 bay capacity along with 30tb of hard drives. Move the contents of Drobo A to the new NAS then disassemble Drobo A, sell the enclosure and move the drives to the new NAS. Then do the same with Drobo B.

I’d like to somewhat future proof myself a bit better than I did last time by just buying a new Drobo. So being able to take two of the 3tb drives and change them to a 10tb drives without having to rebuild volumes or anything like that in future would be good. Being able to shrink volumes would be nice too, like I can do with the Drobo’s currently.

Hope this is enough information for you to make an informed opinion.

Thank you in advance for your time.

Regards.

I am looking for a NAS as a small music server. I am using a Buffalo Link station at present. My library is small compared with others. It currently is 250gb of Flac I do not see this going beyond 500 gb
I have seen a set up where someone had set up a music server using the DS218j. Whilst I am sure this does the job well, I prefer the appearance of the Play version. The set up I saw was using Plex to sort his libraries which I liked and would want to include this feature. Most of the time I will play back through a Sonos system. I do not visulalise wanting to connect to the NAS externally (outside my home) so all my equipment will play the Flac media.

So will the DS218 play suit my purpose, and if I set it up on 1 disc can I add a second later and arrange it in a raid situation so that I have a back-up if one disk fails.

Hello

I have seen you on youtube and you are the NAS expert .

My old Asustor 4 bay NAS just broke and I am looking for a new one.

I am looking at Synology ds218j (125GBP), ds220j (157 GBP) and ds420j (280 GBP).
I saw ur video on the 218 and 220.

My budget is max 300 GBP
So which one is my best option?

Is getting two ds218j NAS over one ds420j better?

Thank you

Best regards
Petter

Aloha,

I'm a professional photographer and work out of a home office as well as a gallery elsewhere. I am wondering if there is an easy to use solution that would allow me to keep a desktop NAS or similar in both locations on two different networks that would sync with one another automatically? I'd like to be able to work directly on the devices if possible, using Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom etc with sometimes quite large image files (2gb and beyond). Something large enough to back up everything would be nice, as well as expandable down the road. I expect I'll need battery backups on them along with the modem, router, etc. Currently using a 2015 5k imac at the gallery, a 2019 imac pro at home and a late 2015 macbook pro on the road.

I essentially need to be able to work from a drive on various networks and have them back up automatically to a different location for redundancy. I'd prefer to keep the cloud out of it to keep monthly recurring costs down (I'm currently storing perhaps 16tb or images and shoot about 100-500gb a month)

I do also work from the road sometimes, is it feasible to upload to these drives from the macbook pro remotely for backup? The ability to work from the drives remotely would also be great, but I'm not sure if that's practical.

I'm currently using OWC enclosures hooked up directly to my office computer in a RAID 1 configuration, storing 2nd drives as they fill up in an alternate location. Worked pretty well for me with one computer, but suddenly it's very clunky and I'm constantly carrying a portable external drive around and still finding myself without an excel file I need or without the newest version of an image that I need to finish editing, etc.

Any suggestions you can offer would be very much appreciated! I've skimmed Drobo and Synology but it's overwhelming, not my forte.

Lyle

I am looking at Thunderbolt 3 NAS or external drives - what storage would you suggest for high(ish) speed single user but good value performance - at what point am I better off getting a thunderbolt storage (with SsD?) vs thunderbolt 3 NAS - I am confused as most of the consumer HDD seem to be 7200 so don't see how this can be fast

Hello.
First of all I want to tell that I appreciate your work here, I won't have found similar quality content in brazillian websites.
I am searching for a NAS and I found a WD My Cloud EX4100 for $ 400 equivalent price here. I also have found both Asustor AS3204T and AS3104T for the same price each one. The question is: The EX4100 is used and the seller gives 6 month warranty but the device appears to be better than Asustor ones, even they're brand new ones. Ignoring price and warranty time, I would like your oppinion about these NAS models, which one would you recommend in performance and reliability? Here in Brazil prices for NAS are too high and those ones are good opportunities for my budget.
Thank you in advance.

I Have Ds411 slim, I looking extra ram for this device

waldek

Hello

I watch your videos on youtube, they are really good. I am after some advice and guidance. I dont mind paying a consultation fee for it as I dont know if your products would be what I will be purchasing.

I am starting a Plex Media Server and initially plan to setup a 150TB server, with plans to expand in the future as my 4K media collection grows. I would have really liked a setup like the Storinator Q30 from 45 Drives (based in Canada) - something simple, looks aesthetically good and most importantly really quite but I cant seem to find something similar here in the UK. I have an old iMac 2009 (3.4GHz Core i7, 16GB RAM with upgraded SDD memory) it amazingly still performs really well so I have little appetite to replace it !

Having said that, I have also been thinking, instead of the dedicated server such as the Q30, why not replace my old (but still well-functiong iMac) & build a PC/Plex Media Server combo in a Thermalake Core WP200 (the case has a capacity to host up to 60 HDD's so plenty of future expansion).

The server will be for me, my family & a small group of friends so it will have to be able to handle multiple streams/transcoding (including 4K) & have 10Gbit network connectivity (for future home network project).

For the HDD's I will need some help, I have started buying WD portable 14TB drives and the plan is to 'shuck' them and use them to save some money on storage. Most of them are in fact WD Red HDD's from what the research I have done.

Sorry this is a long email, as you can see I am very confused about the direction I want to head with this as there is so much information out there with endless possibilities.

I would really appreciate your advice going forward with my project.

Thank you

I have studied for years QNAP NAS, ever time I get ready to purchase I find something new. I was getting ready to purchase the ts 451+ , then l saw your review of the QNAP TBS-453D. I really like the size and portability.

I have read, watched all reviews I could find on the QNAP TBS-453D. My question are:
1. What is the release schedule for this device?
2. What drives would you recommend?
3. Have you verified that 16 g of ram works?

My use case is home use, multimedia, photos, and music. Family is working on genealogy, Family photo library, creating digital images via scanner of all old photos.

Look forward to your response, will purchase in the next 30 days unless new release expected soon.