(Topic ID: 238542)

Network Attached Storage - Whatcha got?

By mcluvin

5 years ago


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  • 122 posts
  • 47 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 4 years ago by Zitt
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There are 122 posts in this topic. You are on page 1 of 3.
#1 5 years ago

I'm putting together an old Mediasmart hopefully running XPenology. I'm just kinda amazed that my 10-year-old hardware (EX-490) is more than competitive with what is currently available (with a few new upgrades).

Mediasmart EX-490 - relegated to the closet years ago after concurrent 1.5 TB Seagate HD failures.

Xeon L5430 CPU - 4 core x 2.667GHz - $12 on Ebay

Sticker allowing me to run a socket 771 Xeon in a 775 socket. - ~$2 on ebay

1 stick of 4 GB DDR2 Ram- This is the bottleneck and hard to find. My first ever Google ad purchase ($20). Thank you offerup!

I've still got to sort out the VGA debug cable. Anybody else doing this?

#2 5 years ago

I just use a SanDisk Cruzer 128gb stick plugged into my Nighthawk router. Easy and cheap- $20 on Amazon.

#3 5 years ago

I have an old quad-core intel 6600 with 8GB of RAM still running win 7, but with 8TB of disk space. We also have a store bought NAS with 6or 8 TB for backup.

#4 5 years ago

Only the real deal Synology here, DS916+, love their devices. Use their mesh routers as well.

#5 5 years ago

I just recently started using a 1tb ssd drive plugged into usb on the router. Works great! Has to be flash or ssd or it go to sleep and have to be rebooted all the time.
Had to create playlists on the device not the drive, btw...

#6 5 years ago

40TB x2. (Redundant backup.) Eventually going to pull all the drives and upgrade to 80TB x2.

#7 5 years ago
Quoted from jarozi:

Only the real deal Synology here, DS916+, love their devices. Use their mesh routers as well.

Same for me. Ds1019+

I am very happy with their products.

#8 5 years ago

I'm running a headless eight core i7 Mac mini server with a 500GB Crucial SSD boot volume and a 32TB Promise Pegasus R8 Thunderbolt disk array (RAID 5 with one hot spare, so 24TB usable).

#9 5 years ago
Quoted from jarozi:

Only the real deal Synology here, DS916+, love their devices. Use their mesh routers as well.

Same, have had a Synology DS411j for 8 years(?) with no issues.

#10 5 years ago

Oh man, I was thinking about a personal cloud, or media server, or redundant backup drives, but I have no idea where to start. I've considered buying a $300 pre configured NAS, but dont even k ow enough about the topic to know if it's a good deal or device or solution.

I just with there was something plug and play that it's easy to add drives to in the future, and easy to connect to with all of the families devices.

Is it wise to run a media server as a NAS backup? Or should those be two separate devices?

#11 5 years ago

I just use p-cloud. It’s like drop box but doesn’t require you keep a copy on your local drive.. looks just like a network drive. Easy as heck to setup and my files are off site in case my house gets hit by lightening or something crazy. There is a cost but not bad.

#12 5 years ago

I have 2 4bay qnaps, although I'd probably go with synology next time. A ton of security issues with qnap lately.

#13 5 years ago

I have a QNAP running ssd

#14 5 years ago
Quoted from OHMI_Arcade:

I just use p-cloud. It’s like drop box but doesn’t require you keep a copy on your local drive.. looks just like a network drive. Easy as heck to setup and my files are off site in case my house gets hit by lightening or something crazy. There is a cost but not bad.

I thought the topic was about network attached storage, local not off-site.

#15 5 years ago

Synology DS412+
Very reliable and has been running all alone in basement utility room for several years.

#16 5 years ago
Quoted from wayout440:

I thought the topic was about network attached storage, local not off-site.

I guess but having a cloud solution that acts just like local network storage is, I thought, relevant because it does the same thing and doesn’t require any hardware nor configuration.

I like your idea of simply using a flash drive also... because it’s also easy. I like easy.

#17 5 years ago

30TB Unraid server for all my media. So easy to setup and easily upgradable when I need more space. Runs off a single core processor with 2GB of RAM. Been using over 15 years.

https://unraid.net/

#18 5 years ago

This should be an interesting thread to discover some newer solutions. I'm presently running FreeNAS 8.2 on a desktop that may be 10 years old - it presents a share drive to our home net and a drive for time machine backups. Share sits on a mirrored raid; the backup sits on a single drive. I periodically tar off contents to a removable drive that I store at an out-of-town location. All this stuff is effective, but certainly dated - everyday use with macOS and ubuntu is seamless but admin can be much less straightforward. Following to see if any newer/better solutions show up.

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or my replacement LED display boards for model H & model S Skee Ball

#19 5 years ago
Quoted from DBLM:

I have a QNAP running ssd

Have you had any issues? Where I used to work we were having multiple cases with QNAP NASes dying or losing network connectivity. Several bad main boards that had to be replaced. One of them had to be swapped twice.

I love the polished interface though. No ugly flat theme.

#20 5 years ago

Synology DS416j with 2 4TB hard drives (basically total 4TB redundant storage).

Realistically this problem has been solved. Just get a Synology, slam in a few hard drives and you're done. It takes a little bit of maintenance to keep it going but it's pretty easy.

#21 5 years ago
Quoted from TheKorn:

40TB x2. (Redundant backup.) Eventually going to pull all the drives and upgrade to 80TB x2.

Heh I thought I was a digital pack rat....

#22 5 years ago
Quoted from Crash:

Have you had any issues? Where I used to work we were having multiple cases with QNAP NASes dying or losing network connectivity. Several bad main boards that had to be replaced. One of them had to be swapped twice.
I love the polished interface though. No ugly flat theme.

No issues in the few years I have had it. I had a synology before this and had issues. Did not like the interface at all. I like the qnap better and like that I can use two cat6 cables concurrently to increase transfer speeds.

#23 5 years ago
Quoted from BoJo:

30TB Unraid server for all my media. So easy to setup and easily upgradable when I need more space. Runs off a single core processor with 2GB of RAM. Been using over 15 years.
https://unraid.net/

This is what I’m doing next. QNAP is Swiss cheese, and freeNAS is too cumbersome and a bit outdated as far as interface and maintenance

#24 5 years ago
Quoted from jarozi:

Only the real deal Synology here, DS916+, love their devices. Use their mesh routers as well.

The 918+ looks neat. Do I need NVME cache? No! Do I want it? Yes!! I just wish my Mediasmart had 2 DDR3 ram slots. I could do so much more with it.

#25 5 years ago

Upgraded from a DS410j that I had for 5 years before that. Didn’t really have to, just wanted faster transfers. Moved the same drives over to the new device, and upgraded it to 8gb RAM. I send all my data to the cloud via Backblaze integration for offsite redundancy. Overkill? Probably.

#26 5 years ago
Quoted from Luckydogg420:

Oh man, I was thinking about a personal cloud, or media server, or redundant backup drives, but I have no idea where to start. I've considered buying a $300 pre configured NAS, but dont even k ow enough about the topic to know if it's a good deal or device or solution.
I just with there was something plug and play that it's easy to add drives to in the future, and easy to connect to with all of the families devices.
Is it wise to run a media server as a NAS backup? Or should those be two separate devices?

For $300 your options will be a bit limited. At that price for minimum configuration required I would check out the Western Digital My Cloud Series. The 4TB version below is just over $300.

https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Ultra-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B01AWH04EW/ref=sr_1_6

If you want to have a prebuilt NAS that can transcode media files, especially HD / 4K media files using Plex, then a more powerful solution is needed. The Western Digital My Cloud Pro series is a good option. The pro series is more expensive than the solution above (drives not included either) but it's also far more powerful, supports transcoding and allows for a great number of RAID configurations. If you don't need to transcode videos to stream to devices the regular My Cloud option above is great for pictures, documents, music, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/Diskless-Cloud-Pro-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B01GLRX6C4/ref=sr_1_7

#27 5 years ago
Quoted from OHMI_Arcade:

I guess but having a cloud solution that acts just like local network storage is, I thought, relevant because it does the same thing and doesn’t require any hardware nor configuration.
I like your idea of simply using a flash drive also... because it’s also easy. I like easy.

I used to be against cloud storage (it's my data and I want it all local! lol) but for items such as family pictures / video, and documents it's a great option. I started to grow tired of worrying about my NAS having an issue (using RAID 5 but things can still go wrong), replacing drives, it being stolen or lost in a fire, backing up files to BluRay discs, etc.

A yearly Office 365 subscription can be purchased for $60 and it includes 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage. The flexibility of being able to access all of your files from nearly any device is great. The subscription also comes with access to Microsoft Office so $60 a year it seems very reasonable.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1059696-REG/microsoft_qq2_00011_microsoft_office_365_personal.html

#28 5 years ago

Synology 918+ here. Four 4TB Ironwolf drives with 256GB NVME running as Cache. 6GB of system RAM.

About half of it is for just backup of files (pictures, etc), not quite another half is for running a virtual machine (Cache server) and the rest is running their surveillance station app and recoding a couple of networked cameras.

Zero complaints so far. Setting up the cloud backup so it automatically syncs with my Dropbox is just soo nice...

#29 5 years ago
Quoted from OHMI_Arcade:

I guess but having a cloud solution that acts just like local network storage is, I thought, relevant because it does the same thing and doesn’t require any hardware nor configuration.
I like your idea of simply using a flash drive also... because it’s also easy. I like easy.

I'm just saying that I think the thread *primarily* is to discuss hardware in a local network storage system, and that offsite storage such as cloud services could be a whole 'nother thread of discussion.

Sure, some people just don't really need mega-terabytes (see what I did there) of storage. Flash drives are pretty large these days, and most will have some sort of backup on the cloud anyway. I'll just rotate them in and out from my home fire safe. I've made my life so complicated with technology that I can really afford to cut down a little in some areas. The solution might not be right for everyone, but everyone should have some type of backup.

#30 5 years ago
Quoted from jarozi:

Upgraded from a DS410j that I had for 5 years before that. Didn’t really have to, just wanted faster transfers. Moved the same drives over to the new device, and upgraded it to 8gb RAM. I send all my data to the cloud via Backblaze integration for offsite redundancy. Overkill? Probably.

Not really overkill. Bottom line is that if you have any data that is dear to you, whatever it is (family pictures, documents, or whatever) then you have to have an offsite backup plan of some sort. Something on the cloud is one way to do it. The NAS is great for backing everything up (which protects against random hard drive failures and such), but if someone breaks in your place and takes it all you are left with nothing. Same for a total natural disaster such as fire.

The other main use for NAS for me is as a central storage for media files to be accessed all over the house on different devices. I do a little bit of surveillance storage on the Synology also. There are lots of other things that can be done with it as well as some of the examples above show.

#31 5 years ago

I'm running a 40tb FreeNAS server, I prefer it over something like a QNAP since FreeNAS is way more expandable and feature filled. My hardware is:

Intel Core i3-2100T
Super Micro X9SCL
Fractal Design Node 804 Case
32 gigs DDR3 ECC U-Dimms
2x Dell Perc H310s flashed to IT mode
10x 4tb drives in Raid-z2 (equivalent to Raid6)
1x 240gig SSD as a dedicated SLOG drive for caching data to the NAS

I also have a second NAS with the same hardware I keep at my parents house that I rclone everything to once a month.

#32 5 years ago

27TB unRAID server with a 500GB SSD cache drive and a 6TB parity drive.

I also have a older Synology that I use for some things.

#33 5 years ago

Yeah, but how much of that isn't for porn?

#34 5 years ago

I have a ds1817+ and a now very long in the tooth ds1511+. Synology makes a solid product. I also highly recommend checking out FreeNAS if you want to build your own NAS. I have a bunch of SSDs connected to a supermicro board, running FreeNAS. Serves as my VMWare datastore for a home lab. Works great!

#35 5 years ago

I have an 8 bay Synology DS1815+. Love it.

#36 5 years ago
Quoted from Rdoyle1978:

freeNAS is too cumbersome and a bit outdated as far as interface and maintenance

Agreed - and flat-out difficult when it's time to replace a failed drive. Unraid sounds like a worthy next step for me too. But first, TPF. Then Allentown. Then Northwest. Then... I guess I'll get to it eventually.

I'm also an order of magnitude below most of you in capacity - I'm sitting at 1T and not feeling at all constrained.

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or my Pinball 2000 H+V video sync combiner kit

#37 5 years ago

Here’s a story for why you need your own storage and can’t trust the cloud.

MySpace deleted almost all of the content that people uploaded from 2003-2015, due to a glitch with server migration. It’s only MySpace, but this could happen to anyone’s digital info.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/myspace-archive-internet-memories-809591/

#38 5 years ago

I am up to 30tb for Plex storage that I serve up to my home theatre using shieldtv. Right now just using a pretty powerful pc (Ryzen 8 core) that does both my main (non gaming) work stuff and acts as the storage hub.

I would love to have a rack mounted solution where I can add drives in my theatre but I find it hard to determine how powerful the system needs to be to serve up 4k....and where the transcoding all happens. Mostly I don't transcode but I have family that connects to my Plex server and it has to be able to transcode....I have built PCs for years but find NAS terminology and tech very difficult to wrap my head around...

#39 5 years ago

DS218+, I think I have to 8TB drives in there. I saved some money on the drives waiting for the WD Easystores to go on sale. There is a guide somewhere that tells you which ones come with the Red NAS drives. I was 2 for 2. I was planning on using an older machine I have here and one of the free solutions and I'm glad I didn't. I have too many things to tinker with as it is. This does what I want, easy storage from any machine on my network and remotely. And Plex. 4k video is a little sketchy, I'm not sure what the bottleneck is. It worked until I put subtitles on. Could be the Xbox, could be the network. I haven't messed with it enough.

#40 5 years ago

Another vote for synology, in fact synology FTW! I've had mine close to 10 years, not a single issue and the SW is easy to use too

#41 5 years ago
Quoted from Shredso:

I saved some money on the drives waiting for the WD Easystores to go on sale. There is a guide somewhere that tells you which ones come with the Red NAS drives.

I'm using 10 TB Easystores. The 2 I have so far are white, but supposed to be functionally equivalent to the reds.

Quoted from Luckydogg420:

Here’s a story for why you need your own storage and can’t trust the cloud.

Not only that but they may just decide they aren't providing the service anymore. Samsung did something like that a couple of years ago.

Thanks for the feedback folks! I appreciate any participation. CPU came in today and it looks perfect. Hopefully, my ram shows up this week. I'm gonna kludge together a VGA cable so I can access the bios and change a few things.

#42 5 years ago
Quoted from gweempose:

Yeah, but how much of that isn't for porn?

I can answer that precisely!

...and I choose not to.

(But for real, I can answer it. 39.8TB isn't porn. The rest is gweempose in various states of undress.)

#43 5 years ago
Quoted from JoeJet:

I am up to 30tb for Plex storage that I serve up to my home theatre using shieldtv. Right now just using a pretty powerful pc (Ryzen 8 core) that does both my main (non gaming) work stuff and acts as the storage hub.
I would love to have a rack mounted solution where I can add drives in my theatre but I find it hard to determine how powerful the system needs to be to serve up 4k....and where the transcoding all happens. Mostly I don't transcode but I have family that connects to my Plex server and it has to be able to transcode....I have built PCs for years but find NAS terminology and tech very difficult to wrap my head around...

Plex Pass user here with a Shield too, but with a cheapie Zyxnel NAS310 that I added an equally cheap 2T drive. Seems to work fine for the home theater at 1080.

#44 4 years ago
Quoted from mbwalker:

Plex Pass user here with a Shield too, but with a cheapie Zyxnel NAS310 that I added an equally cheap 2T drive. Seems to work fine for the home theater at 1080.

Yea it's really confusing to figure out the best way to run this stuff. I would prefer to have a NAS that I can just slap another drive in when needed vs a PC with limited space but from what I understand if the storage is separate from the location if the Plex server it can affect performance. With 60+ GB files for one 4k movie I see storage running out quickly.

#45 4 years ago
Quoted from jarozi:

Only the real deal Synology here, DS916+, love their devices. Use their mesh routers as well.

Second the Synology. Great stuff. A buddy of mine has the mesh router, but I don't have one so I can't help him get it working remotely. I'm sure it's great, too, my friend is a tech noob. If I ever get down there, I can help him get that running, but he loves his Synology NAS.

#46 4 years ago

Synology DS411, RAID10. I upgrade storage every 4 years and my NAS every 10 years. I’m due to replace the DS411, but I really don’t have any complaints about it.

Don’t forget to back up your NAS!!! External offsite drives FTW.

#47 4 years ago

Simple 4TB Unraid setup. Don't use many plugins / dockers / vms. Only Plex and Pi-Hole. Just a good spot to keep all my physical media and watch it through Plex.

Family likes to be able to send me pictures for a bit of backup. But I know only have one is not true redundancy.

#48 4 years ago

Supermicro with 128gb ram, 24x6tb. Solaris 11.3 (zfs - raidz).

#49 4 years ago
Quoted from orangestorm87:

Family likes to be able to send me pictures for a bit of backup. But I know only have one is not true redundancy.

My friend, 1 is no redundancy. Learn from my fail, back up your NAS. I lost 2 years of cute kid pics. Don’t be like me.

#50 4 years ago
Quoted from swampfire:

My friend, 1 is no redundancy. Learn from my fail, back up your NAS. I lost 2 years of cute kid pics. Don’t be like me.

Hah no, absolutely not. Your NAS can be a backup for all of your data from everywhere. But at least one other complete copy needs to be somewhere else, like kept on the drives of the original computers where they came from. Yes in theory the NAS raid setup will allow a recovery from a single drive failure and let you swap the drive and rebuild everything (if it is set up that way). But I wouldn't rely on it.

And, you still also need a separate backup of everything off site. Somehow, cloud or otherwise.

As a supposed computer tech person for years (which nowadays I do my best to hide from anyone and everyone but family and friends still know) I get people coming to me all of the time with their problems. So many times I have seen people lose data forever, things like photos, videos, etc. I have seen them lost due to hard drive failures, mobile device failures, etc. I always have to tell them, with no backup there is nothing I can do for you. If you have a hard drive failure there are companies that will take it in and perform a forensic recovery and they can probably get most of your stuff. But you have to pay thousands. This type of recovery was developed into an art for rustbucket spinning hard drives. Now with everything moving to SSD, there might be fewer failures. But SSD can still fail, all at once and with no warning, then you are in the same boat if you don't have a backup.

I have also seen more people than I can count who keep stores of things like photos on a single USB drive or SD card. Those things were never meant to be permanent storage reservoirs for important data, they will fail for sure. Then, everything is gone again. Although again often things can be recovered.

But I don't know how exactly so don't ask me...

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