I am looking to replace my Drobo FS with either a Synology or QNAP NAS. I would like to be able to expand to 20TB + in the future and prefer 6bays. I currently store 400,000+ RAW camera images plus all the usual Word, Excel documents for personal use. I use Lightroom and Photoshop. At least three computers will share this device, two with Ethernet and one wireless. The current NAS devices offer so much more that I would like to take advantage of such as Cloud storage and backup to our phone images as well as multimedia source for our 4K TV. I have looked extensively at the Synology DS1621+ and QNAP TS-653D-8G. I wonder if I need to worry about the different file systems they use? thank you for any advise you can offer.

Discuss: CPU PCIe Lanes Explained - How They Effect NAS Hardware <br><iframe width='560' height='315' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/MnfX0M8TfVo' frameborder='0' allow='accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture' allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hi, I'm looking for instruction/video on how to move apple pictures library to Qnap TS230.
I know that Qnap has a pictures application, but would it be possible to keep mac photo library on NAS. Now I keep that library now on external drive.
Can you please provide some information about it.
Thanks
Voytek

Hello,

Found you on youtube. Great content. I have a channel aswell and I have a crap ton of video file for 10 years now. I have about 3-4 external hard drive and they work, but I want to be able to fill a hard drive and replace it and had the mirror back up like the NAS does. What is your suggestion ? I am not looking to break the bank.

so far I have standard external hard drive from 2 tb to 8tb. All Hdd not SSD.

Dear Friend,

I would like to ask you about which NAS is good for me,

I`m a home user and the main requirement for me is to take automatic backup for 5 mobiles IOS and android but no one from these mobiles can see the other one data.
and windows and I want to use multimedia for smart TV.


Thanks a lot in advance

Hi, first off, thank you for having this help section on your website.

Basically I am looking to get my first NAS to backup family photos and brief ~30s to 1m videos. Currently I am storing these on my PC in 2 locations (1 copy on a SSD and another copy on a mechanical HDD).

With that, I think that 2TB should be more than enough to start me off with a NAS, and I was thinking that possibly RAID 1 would do the job? Again this will be my first NAS, so with RAID I'm not sure what would be best.

I do have a network switch setup in my house that has 2.5Gbit speed although my PC only has 1Gbit, but that is easy to upgrade.

The absolute main thing that I'm looking for is silence along with reliability. I am looking for a NAS that could be upgraded down the line, so do you think that a 4 bay would be sufficient? Regarding the silent part, do you think that installing SSDs would be a better choice than mechanical ones.

Oh 1 final part. I know that some NAS have an app for mobile devices, so that I could transfer photos right from my phone to it. If that is the case, a NAS with that feature would also be a must.

Wow, there is so much to learn with NAS, I'm actually finding it really fun to read up on them!

Thank you again for your time,
Christopher.

Hi,
I'd like to buy a NAS, preferably Synology, secondarily QNAP.

I wanted actually a DS220+, but then in the Synology's compatibility list I could find this SSD unit supporting for NAS Model.

The SSD Unit is a WD Red SSD with part number WDS200T1R0A-68A4W0. It costs right now about 245€ on Amazon and two of them for mounting a RAID system is affordable to me.


Is there any other option within the range of functional characterstics of a DS220+ that supports the SSD Unit mentioned above?


HDD is a no-go to me and my wife. I won't risk with HDD Reds because of their noise. The NAS will be placed in the living room and silence is the main and only reason I go for an affordable SSD solution.

Best regards and thanks in advance for your advice,
Ruben

Hello, Firstly I have built my new NAS a few different ways RAID1 the SHR, (btfrs)I noticed memory usage was down with same applications installed (proxy, plex, Essential AV, Surveillance) memory went from 21% to 14% with SHR all other things being the same interesting!

Anyway can you recommend some budget IP cameras for my budget no more than £200 for 3, thank you.

Hi Robbie,

I wanted to drop you a not to ask you your opinion on which NAS I should buy. Thanks to you excellent youtube videos, I’ve narrowed it down to either the Qnap TS-h973AX or the TS-673A. Before, I also had the Qnap ts-453D on the list, but decided against it because the other two are more powerful.

My use case: I own a small business, only three employees, but I want to future proof my purchase. Up to now I used an unRaid system which is not bad, but the hardware is getting a bit old so now I want to buy something new, something that just works without too much tinkering. In the office it's getting used mostly for serving office files and backup, in the home my movie and music collection is also on it.

I’ve recently upgraded all the desktops to 2.5 Gbe, so that’s a factor for me. 10 Gbe seems overkill for my needs (for now). A bit too pricey also I reckon. My network is a full Ubiquiti Unifi system, so since they don’t have 2.5 Gbe switches, I’m going to use a simple Qnap QSW-1105-5T until they do.

Now, because I want to future proof my purchase, I think the TS-673A is probably the better choice because it has dual PCIe slots and the TS-h973AX does not. Granted, the TS-h973AX has 10 Gbe, but as said, no need for that just yet. Which one of the two would you recommend? I probably will end up putting two NVMe's in it for cache too, but I hear there's no point in buying the fastest ones around because the interface can't keep up. Which NmMe SSD's would you recommend for cache then?

I also want to ask you something about QTS vs. QuTS Hero. I have no experience with ZFS, but have been following up on it for years. It seems to me like the obvious choice About the only downside I can see is that it doesn’t allow for expansion of a ZFS RAID array, like QTS does. But from what I’ve read, it is faster, more robust and comes with tons more features. Would you consider doing a comparison between the two, especially now you’ve got that 64GB of memory handy?

The way I’m thinking of setting the new NAS up, is buying three 8TB drives (probably Ironwolf or HGST, 7200rpm – will look out not getting stuck with SMR models) in a RAID5/RAIDZ1. Is that smart? I’ve read some arguments saying never to used RAIDZ1, only RAIDZ2, but that would cost me another drive. Besides, I will use Pro/enterprise disks, so the chance of drive failure should be lower anyway ?

Another reason I want to do a RAIDZ1 with 3 drives is because that leaves me with three empty bays, in which I can install 3 new bigger drives for an additional ZFS pool once the need arises. You know, future proofing and all. Is that a good idea or would it be better for me to pursue a different path?

With the Qnap software, does it so regular disk scrubs automatically or do you need to do that yourself every so often?

Well, that's it for my questions. Just another thing I’ve always wondered : why do you have difference channels? I mean, Span.com and NASCompares, they both serve the same purpose, no? Doesn’t matter much too because I check them both, but I was just wondering.

Cheers,
Bart

Greetings,

I am writing to enquire about, what would be the best storage enclosure for the most quiet possible 8 x 8 TB SSD solution. The SSDs would most probably be running as JBOD. The use case is 120fps 10bit 4K video editing/ coloring.

The emphasis is on finding the most quiet possible enclosure for remote work at home. Because HDDs are lound when spinning, especially as more storage is added, and as most of the enclosures have loud/ low quality fans that create more noise than one would wish for in his own home/ bedroom, I would like to know if you can suggest the best quiet 8-bay storage enclosure that could store 8 SSDs?

Kind regards,
Kristaps