Which NAS Next?

[Enquiries]

Hi Rob,
I've been watching your video updates for some time now (they are great by the way, always informative and full of common sense) and wonder if you could advise me on what NAS I should upgrade to next please?

I currently have a four bay QNAP TS-431 with 2 x 8TB Seagate IronWolf drives, configured as RAID1. I purchased the system second hand a couple of years ago for about £150 and I quite like the QNAP QTS O/S so would prefer to stay with QNAP. Having said that I'm happy to look elsewhere if necessary.

I use the NAS as a file server for my photographs and for nothing else. I don't want to run Plex or iTunes or P2P sharing. I just want something that I can use on my home network to store and edit my images. I also use the NAS to access my images remotely via my iPad and iPhone using the QFile app which works wonderfully and is great when I'm out discussing a photoshoot with clients (I'm trying to build a photographic business).

The issue I have is that it's quite slow. Not as bad as the old Buffalo LS520 that I have gathering dust in a corner, but never the less, it is quite slow. It has a slow CPU and a small amount of memory which is not upgradeable so I'm looking for something as a next step up and would appreciate your advice please.

I have quite a limited budget I'm afraid so I can't stretch to a QNAP 451D2 that you reviewed recently much as I would love to, but then of course there would be many features that I'd never use so it may be a bit of a waste even if I could find a second hand cassis for less than £300.

I hope the above makes sense, but if not please do feel free to email me to answer more questions.

Stay safe.

Thanks and best regards,
Howard.

[ed]

Maybe you would consider a two-bay like TS-351. You can still have a RAID5 which is an efficient way to protect your data.Alternatively, 431P3 would be a slight improvement, but it would still fall into a value series range.Celeron based NAS would be much faster.I hope this helps.