Discuss: Synology DS920+ NAS TimeTec 8GB and 16GB Memory Test <br><iframe width='560' height='315' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/I8M7d_JScIs' frameborder='0' allow='accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture' allowfullscreen></iframe>

Good Morning,

I find your work very helpful and professional.
I would like to ask your opinion for my scenario: I never had a Nas before, and I am looking to buy one, upgrading the ram and use it for:
- backup for PC
- backup for Mac, compatible with Time Machine
- Hosting virtual machines for Pihole, Unbound and VPN
- Hosting VM for OpenStack as it is a subject for my degree

Looking at your reviews, I was tempted to buy an Asustor Nimbustor 2 that recently is discounted, adding 2 Seagate IronWolf of 2TB each and changing the ram with 8GB Crucial module.

Do you think that with the same budget I could get a better setup? I don't mind waiting 1-2 months, after the Christmas period.

Many thanks in advance for your contribution.

Best regards and Happy Holidays.

Mauro

Hi!

First of all I LOVE your videos! Recently I found them and francly I spent half of my vacation watching them!

Why I'm doing that? I want to bay a NAS for my home (flat) where I'll do some home automation, setup a Home Assistant and stuff like that (I know VM can run Home Assistant but I'm planing to buy a separate hardware for that - an ODROID).

About the NAS - I don't need big storage but need something that will co-work with maximum of 2 security cameras (2K or 4K) and will play 4K movies.

As I mentioned in the subject - I'm leaning towards the DS720+/DS920+. I'll be able later ont to add 8-16Gigs of additinal RAM and SSD for cashing to improve performance.

I completely trust your advice and would invest in the hardware you would recommend.

Thanks you!

Hi there. I am finding your tutorials really helpful for a beginner!. I have just bought a Synology DS1520+ with five 8TB Seagate Pro Iron Wolf Hard Disks.

It is basically just my wife and myself using this NAS and I moved to using NAS as I have an array of external disks, two of which failed along with their back up. So I thought it time to grow up!

My wife and I want to share documents, but I also want to access my photo library using Lightroom which is notorious for being slow if the images are not on the same drive. So read/write speed is important above capacity and cost.

I do also like the idea of SHR and the option of adding larger disks later on, but after my recent experience redundancy is also very important.

Obviously I realise that my NAS is not a back up and will have external back up, offsite and in the cloud for key documents.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

Quent

Robbie:

I found your incredible YouTube channel & website by searching for PLEX help topics. What an excellent resource!!

I'm hoping you can weigh in on my questions!

I have an extensive movie and music collection scattered among 4 Netgear ReadyNAS's:

RN516: Total volume 18TB, which holds 17TB of BluRay movies, in MKV containers; No 4K movies yet; RSync backups pushed to RNDP6350.

RNDP6350 ReadyNAS Pro (running OS6): Movie backup NAS (18TB total volume) with files at 17TB

RN214 - Approx. 2TB of high resolution FLAC music files feeding a SonicOrbiter ROON Server (https://www.smallgreencomputer.com/collections/audio-server/products/sonictransporter-roon-server-hqplayer?variant=31106712502341); this NAS also contains digital photos; Total volume of 11TB

RN102: 4TB NAS is Music NAS backup; 2TB in backup files

As you can see, this unwieldy setup has grown over the last 10 years. I'm rapidly running out of space on the ReadyNAS movie NAS's and have ordered 2 16TB drives to expand each NAS for extra space on an emergency basis.

I'm running X-RAID in a RAID-5 configuration. At one time, I ran Plex Media Server from the RN516 but have since moved this to the SonicOrbiter i9.

The Sonore SonicOrbiter i9 is really built for ROON but is also promoted as a PLEX Server. That was a mistake as I'm having issues running PLEX from it.

I only run Direct Play to the various screens in the house. I'm still experiencing a lot of buffering. If Direct Stream is checked off, movies simply will not play on the Plex clients.

I also plan to buy a NVIDIA Shield Pro at some point as a PLEX client/Netflix/Amazon streamer for my LG OLED screen.

So, I'm thinking it's time to replace all 4 Netgear NAS's with a new QNAP TVS-h1288X as it seems that QuTS Hero is the future OS for QNAP. I want a NAS that is most suitable for future-proofing.

The ReadyNAS will permit me to swap out one 4TB drive with a 16TB drive at a time. It will take several days to resync each drive but I will eventually have an expanded volume. This is a great feature as it makes volume expansion affordable.

Can you tell me if QNAP has the same ability as ReadyNAS? I'm hoping I can start with 4 bays with 4 TB drives and 2 bays with 16TB drives, slowly adding more 16 TB drives as budget permits. Would that work?

I'd like to replace using the STi9 as a Plex Media Server. I know it will be a nightmare moving PMS again ... this time from a Linux box (STi9) to QNAP NAS. I had no luck moving the metadata files from the ReadyNAS to the STi9 so ended up MANUALLY rebuilding the Collections library, etc ... what a headache.

Regardless, I am prepared for more pain ahead moving PMS from SonicTransporter to a powerful NAS that won't run out of space and has plenty of horsepower to play 4K files in the future.

The ReadyNAS's have been super-reliable workhorses for the last 10+ years. I'm hoping an investment in a new NAS, designed to run PMS, will do the same.

One more question: There are many advocates out there who recommend building your own NAS and PMS using UnRaid. While I'm proficient with hardware, I am very green with Linux systems. Regardless, I would appreciate an objective opinion about this.

Lastly, once a new QNAP PMS NAS is built and setup, what do you recommend for backups? Do I retain the RN516 and use it purely for backups from the QNAP, via RSync? Or, do I build a Unraid server from spare old PC's, etc for the backups only?

Anyway, I look forward to your opinion on this. Much appreciated.

All the best during the Holiday Season!

Cheers,
Herb ...

Discuss: Synology DSM vs QNAP QuTS Hero NAS - Virtual Machine Deployment <br><iframe width='560' height='315' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/sMXxAyIUQJ4' frameborder='0' allow='accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture' allowfullscreen></iframe>

Looking for a 6 Bay NAS (10TB HDD) with 10G UTP network and NVME for cache. I was erring towards QNAP, but a compatriot has complained about their support.

Currently running HP Microserver Gen8 (FreeNAS) and Synology DS411j

Discuss: Synology DSM vs QNAP QuTS Hero NAS - Surveillance and NVR <br><iframe width='560' height='315' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/zY3RCNTnJx4' frameborder='0' allow='accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture' allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hi, I'm very much an amateur at this NAS thing but love the potential and I want to learn more. Your website and videos have been instrumental! I've been using a synology DS216+II with 2 6TB HDD in RAID1 configuration and have run out of room and my system is slower than I want so I decided to make a big upgrade to the synology DS1621+. My question is about setting up the new system once it arrives. Do all of my new drives also need to be 6TB or can I populate it with 4TB HDD? I was thinking of getting four of the 4TB HDD that have a drive speed of 7200rpm and I was hoping that I could somehow transfer the data to those in either a RAID 5 or SHR configuration (more likely would do SHR if that is possible) and possibly get rid of the older/slower 6TB drives. Is this even possible? Or do I need to keep the older 6TB drives in the mix (I will have 6 bays so I guess I could...is there a downside to that?). l was hoping not to have to spend the extra money in buying all 6TB drives but will if I have no option.
Thanks! And pardon my ignorance.

Nice article. I do have a question regarding the processor. I'm looking at the AS5202T for my home network. I see the Celeron processor advertised as 2 core, but your article describes it as quad core. Can you explain the discrepancy?

Thanks for your passion in this area. Very helpful for those of us who are wading into this new area.

Allen