I'm setting up a streaming system at home. Going to need something for network storage. I'm pretty certain I want to use a NAS. Question is: Which one? WD, Synology or QNAP?

Been researching it, and, near as I can tell it looks like a Synology DS218j, starting out with a single 4TB WD Red (5400RPM) drive, would be the best compromise between cost, reliability and power consumption. Later add a 2nd, identical drive for RAID 1, if the system worked satisfactorily.

Thoughts?

I'd do Western Digital.

I have a Synology DS1010+ and I've been through two drive upgrades with it. I started with five 1TB drives, upgraded to five 2TB drives, and then maybe a summer or two ago upgraded to five 4TB drives.

I've lost 1 drive in 9 years (which speaks to the drives probably); however, I've never lost any volumes or data through those 9 years and multiple power failures and OS updates/patches.

Its solid. VERY solid. I blow it out every 2 years or so. The time it takes to come out of low power standby is very minimal. I use 1 of the gigabit ports and service my Wifi, various SONOS devices (MP3 share), 3 or 4 HTPCs, 2 Apple TVs and a PLEX server, and I never seem to tax it very hard at all.

I've used Drobo, WD, LaCie, QNAP, and all the rest through various deployments at work. Synology is far and away my favorite. The 5-bay units are fantastic and I almost always recommend the "buy once cry once" DSXXXX+ units.

YMMV, this is only my experience, etc etc.

I have been running a Synology DS211J for 7 years. I upgraded to 2 4TB in RAID 0 about 3 years ago. It has been great for me. I store docs, music, and movies. I can stream them anywhere in the house.

Another vote for Synology, then QNAP, no to WD.

I wish I had done more research back in 2012 when I purchased a Drobo FS 5-bay. It's a fine unit for a NAS, but very limited / to no applications that you can run on there for streaming media. I ended up having to install a Plex server on a computer and pointing it to the Drobo for files. It works, sure, but that means the computer always needs to be on.

I've got a got a couple of Synology devices I backup Windows machines to, then backup those files to removable drives in USB connected bays. Had to replace a couple of internal drives over the years, which was easy. I needed support a couple of times, and was able to get it.

No complaints here.

I've been using the Synology boxes in my business for 8-10 years. On the second one, ran out of slots on the original and had to go bigger. It's used for a network backup storage device and runs with a RAID config. accessed with large volumes of backup data daily. I can recommend that. Don't recall off the top whose drives I have in it.

quote:

Originally posted by Gear.Up:
Another vote for Synology, then QNAP, no to WD.

I wish I had done more research back in 2012 when I purchased a Drobo FS 5-bay.

Oh man I had so much trouble with my Drobo! I'm so glad I sold it when I did.

I decided maybe 6 months ago that I was tired of doing separate cloud backups for all my different computers. I decided to get a NAS, back up everything to the NAS, and then cloud backup just the NAS.

I did a whole bunch of research. I was leaning towards building a FreeNAS system, before ultimately conceding that I just don't have the time any more to futz with all the little bits like I used to.

In my research, it pretty quickly came down to Synology and QNAP, and ultimately, I decided Synology was the best choice for me. If I recall correctly, the deciding factor was that it seemed like there was a pretty clear consensus that Synology's software was better, more up-to-date, and easier to use.

I have quite a bit of data to back up, and am going to generate a lot more, so I wanted plenty of storage and the ability to expand in the future.

I also decided that while, initially, I was mainly interested in getting a NAS for backup, I might also want to try other NAS stuff in the future, so I wanted a reasonably high-performance unit.

I ended up buying a DS1817+, a fairly high-performance 8-bay Synology unit, and 4, 8-gb WD Red NAS drives. I figure that will give me plenty of room to grow - and if it doesn't, Synology makes 5-drive expansion bays, and you can connect up to 2 of them.

It was very easy to set up. The software is pretty straightforward and lets you do a basic setup with almost no input or lets you get into as much minutia as you want.

One example - by default, there's no access to the NAS from outside your LAN. There's an almost one-button setup process to set up remote access through a web service (to avoid having to set up port forwarding on your router). There's another almost one-button setup process to allow direct access at you_pick_a_subdomain.synology.me (although you do have to set up port-fowarding on your router). Or you can do it all manually - generate an SSL certificate for a domain you own, install it on the NAS, configure the DNS record for that domain to point to your router (which you set up to port forward to your NAS), etc. If you don't have a static IP from your ISP, there's even a tool on the NAS that will watch your router's IP address and automatically update the relevant DNS record if the IP changes (your domain host has to support DNS updates using HTTP queries, but most of them do).

The software is straightforward enough that if you already know what you're doing, it's pretty obvious and intuitive, and if you don't, Synology has excellent instructions for pretty much everything on their support website.

It also seems to be a pretty secure setup if you do it right - e.g., regular updates, an admin account with two-factor authentication used only for management, user accounts with limited permissions restricted to specific parts of the file system, etc.

I am surprised you just don't build a little Linux server/nas box - that's pretty much all these guys are anyway > right? Just a different Kernel/flavor?

Being a QNAP Partner > that is the one I'd recommend.
Depending on your use you would be surprised on how little computing power will go a long way.
QNAP has a ton of apps albeit I mainly use it for backups and ISCSI sources for my clients.
Mine own I deploy it for that and a DLNA Music server.
As far a what drives to deploy WD Red or Red Pro (faster 7200rpm) are the ones I use specifically made ( or well marketed) for NAS units.
QNAP has a ton of models to choose from.
Mine is 4 years old (got on demo program) and is 3gb RAM / Intel Adam Processor.
Havn't had any problems, performs great and they regularly keep on top of the firmware updates.
If you want to use it as a desktop (I don't) or want to use it for multiple iterations of Virtuaized OS's then look to the more powerful units with more RAM and CPU cores and forget about the AMD models.
Otherwise it has been an asset and a good one.
YMMV

One thing I failed to mention that maladat brought up was cloud backup. One of my two Synology Diskstations automatically backs up to google drive, in addition to and external USB drive.

That has worked well, too.

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:

In my research, it pretty quickly came down to Synology and QNAP, and ultimately, I decided Synology was the best choice for me. If I recall correctly, the deciding factor was that it seemed like there was a pretty clear consensus that Synology's software was better, more up-to-date, and easier to use.

Not knocking the Synology but I would not say it is better, more up-to-date and easier to use is just a matter of opinion.
Surely no consensus in the IT field.
YMMV

I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes, and it was a while ago, I may be misremembering the reasons. I probably should have just left it at having decided on Synology.

Thanks for the feedback, everybody!

So far it's looking like 1:6:1 WD:Synology:QNAP

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
I am surprised you just don't build a little Linux server/nas box - that's pretty much all these guys are anyway > right? Just a different Kernel/flavor?

Yeah, but, for what these little NAS' cost I can't do it any cheaper. Or not enough cheaper to make it worth my while. Not and it be a low-power device. The Synology DS218j itself costs only $150 and idles at about 7W. It doesn't draw much more than the drives are consuming running full out.

So I spent a bit of time doing a bit of (admittedly superficial) research on building my own NAS. It might make sense if I wanted a powerful transcoding engine and to heck with the power, but, otherwise: I can't build one from scratch any more inexpensively than I can buy one. (Probably not as inexpensively.)

This thing's going to be running 24x7x52. In addition to it there'll be a 5-port switch, the HDHomeRun tuner and a small UPS. Low power consumption is paramount.

(The small UPS is to both protect the equipment and because I'll be using the Ethernet run to the alarm system for the network connections for the HDHR and NAS. In the event of a power failure that switch has to stay up as long as the main LAN switch, border router and cable modem.)

Besides: With all the electronics running full-time in this house, already, we've already been getting little love notes from the power company about how we use X% more power than our surrounding neighbours

And that's with every energy-savings effort we can think of, from improved insulation, to higher-efficiency appliances, to LED lightbulbs, to you-name-it.

I hear ya on the money - build vs buy never comes out even.
I never cared much about the power consumption issue except for how it affects a UPS draw, my house has several servers, computers, ups units, switches, etc all running 24/7 so that ship has sailed.
I do build a lot computers, servers and use mitx boards and small foot print chassis quite a bit for a variety of applications from desktops to single purpose devices and even full-fledged servers.
However, the reason is generally purpose driven rather than cost oriented.
Sometimes I save some money but generally not especially on the low end.
$150 NAS units fall below what I generally use but I am sure they can be effective.
So I understand the dilemma.

Synology or QNAP over WD any day of the week. Synology has easier to use graphical interface and setup, while QNAP usually has more powerful hardware for a similar price.

I personally have a Synology DS916+ and couldn’t be happier. However, I could easily go with a QNAP and have no reservations.

If I was buying a new one I'd go with Synology. I have a DS214 and it's been trucking along for several years without a hitch. I am barely scratching the surface on what it is capable of. It's fast - it's secure - it handles my front door security camera, stores all my photos, and I use it to download torrents. I backup my files that I care about on it to an external USB drive - all the software for doing that is included. I used to use it for storing content for Plex - but I acquired a free Dlink Readynas 4 disk unit that I've been using for Plex lately.

DO you have an old PC around?
Load up UNraid & check it out.

I'm assuming you took my advice on plex? You'll want something quicker for the server than a NAS. It will work on a NAS, but a Core i-something with a SSD will be much faster & give a better user experience

quote:

Originally posted by snidera:
DO you have an old PC around?
Load up UNraid & check it out.

Nope. And if I did, and wanted something that power-hungry running full time, I'd load Linux on it and use Linux RAID.

quote:

Originally posted by snidera:
I'm assuming you took my advice on plex?

Don't recall that, but no. I'm using a Silicon Dust HDHomeRun network tuner, SD's DVRing service and a NAS that can run their software.

quote:

Originally posted by snidera:
You'll want something quicker for the server than a NAS.

Quicker than something that can hit 90% of the network's theoretical maximum bandwidth?

quote:

Originally posted by snidera:
... a Core i-something with a SSD will be much faster & give a better user experience

I looked at SSDs. Just 1TB of SSD would cost twice the 3 or 4TB of disk I'm looking at, so that's a non-starter. Something running a Core i-whatever would gulp many times the power. Don't need it. Not transcoding on-the-fly.

Thanks for the suggestions, however.