I'm interested in using a NAS to set up a home media server. Can I get some help?

[splash wave]

I just don't trust myself to build out this setup on my own (and consider all the potential pratfalls), so here's what I'm thinking:

I have a large-ish digitized media library that currently sits on a portable hard drive, including movies and many, many precious photos. I don't feel like my current setup is reliable for saving my pictures, nor are they always conveniently accessible, since I have to plug in the hard drive to a laptop any time I want to see them. I'd like for anyone in the house to be able to view them from any device, if possible.

Also, I want to be able to easily view my movies on my TV without quality degradation. I've tried to stream movies to my TV via wifi (stupid in hindsight) and this barely worked. I'll need something powerful enough to stream 1080p BRs without a noticeable drop in quality. Is this even possible? Or would I need to plug the NAS or whatever into my TV via HDMI?

I'd be fine with some sort of storage device that could live under my TV from which I can watch movies on via HDMI if such a thing existed (something with a simple UI and that can play MKVs). Otherwise, I think a NAS would be the right solution? If so, which one would support what I want to do with it? I have a Mac, if that matters.

I should mention that I don't think putting together a cheap PC will work for me (unless it's extremely small) since I don't have the room for it. I like the relative simplicity (I think) that goes along with using a dedicated NAS.

EDIT: Currently digesting all the responses so far. I should clarify that two drive bays is probably sufficient, since I only have ~2TB of data.

 

[Nostremitus]

https://www.amazon.com/TerraMaster-Transcoding-Personal-Storage-Diskless/dp/B07PWDTBJ6/ref=pd_cart_rtpb_2_8/143-4715455-4021046?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07PWDTBJ6&pd_rd_r=2a014020-c765-4265-ac62-dc241c16cce5&pd_rd_w=4BNJx&pd_rd_wg=2Cj25&pf_rd_p=ef160443-36b9-4869-8653-47ba9bde84a0&pf_rd_r=X4WVRMS967W4CD7VCAPE&psc=1&refRID=X4WVRMS967W4CD7VCAPE

Plex is great, I stream to my TV over wi-fi just fine.

 

[DrEvil]

I have a Synology Diskstation DS718+ and I run Plex and all my other server side stuff (SABNZBd, etc) natively on it, it's wonderful. - its able to handle 4K streaming of my media as well. Configurable via a web interface, the device is no bigger than a toaster and it stores two hard drives plus USB storage if necessary.

I watch all my media on my TV via the Plex app on any of my consoles or AppleTV, or if necessary, smart TVs generally have support for the Plex app too.

 

[Rukes]

Go for the best Synology unit you can afford to start. Don't go with any other brand.

 

[Wrexis]

1. Buy the Synology DS918+, or DS920+. 20's newer.
2. Put 4 HDDs into it: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=ironwolf+10tb&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
   The size of these drives impacts the cost, so up to you what range (4-12TB each) you want.
3. Install Plex Server allowing you to stream to your TV.
4. Back your stuff up using Backblaze or S3 Glacier.

Sorted.

 

[Swig]

Can you run VMs from a NAS? I know you can run Plex, but could you buy a NAS and basically use it as a physical host for VMs?

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

Tagging cause I've long been in a similar situation.

I have about 8TB of photos stored across several hard drives and with the important ones in varying public clouds. I purchased a Drobo years ago thinking that was the solution.. but it wasnt; I quickly grew to hate it.

I want 10TB of storage, that automatically mirrors locally so if one drive fails, it works fine, that also automatically backs up to an AFFORDABLE cloud, and that is accessible (read/write) from the Mac, Windows PC, and iPad in my house with no issue and is quick enough for real-time work in Lightroom.

I have almost pulled the trigger on a Synology multiple times, butstill hesitate if it'll solve all my problems WHILE being easy to use.

 

[GearDraxon]

Chiming in with love for Synology: I've had a couple of their units over the last decade, and been really happy with them. Between Plex, a home server for files that my Mac / Windows / Linux boxes can all see, etc... tons of uses for them, and an interface that's pretty intuitive to boot.

 

[Deleted member 21431]

I have a pair of QNAP TS-453A's and they have been flawless and had monthly updates in the 2-3 years I have had them. They work fantastic as Plex servers.

 

[Hooker]

I bought a Synology some year ago, but transcoding 4K HDR with subtitles is impossible on the machine. I put a NUC8i5 next to it to handle the Plex transcoding duties.

My advice, don't expect your NAS to be able to transcode everything; it's typically not build for that kinda stuff (although those new QNAPs with the Ryzen CPUs look mighty promising). For your renderer, go for either an AppleTV 4K or a Nvidia Shield; nothing else.

 

[Wrexis]

I want 10TB of storage, that automatically mirrors locally so if one drive fails, it works fine, that also automatically backs up to an AFFORDABLE cloud, and that is accessible (read/write) from the Mac, Windows PC, and iPad in my house with no issue and is quick enough for real-time work in Lightroom.

Click to shrink...

On demand storage of 10TB of stuff isn't going to be cheap. Do you really need it on demand, or just have assurances that it's there?
All my photos are on Amazon's S3 Glacier Long Term Storage. I only need to access it if all 4 of my NAS drives die - say the house burns down or whatever.

I pay $15 a month for the Glacier Storage, but retrieving that data will cost me $300 if I do need to. I accept that cost as if my house burns down or my hard drives get stolen I have other issues.

 

[splash wave]

1. Buy the Synology DS918+, or DS920+. 20's newer.
2. Put 4 HDDs into it: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=ironwolf+10tb&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
   The size of these drives impacts the cost, so up to you what range (4-12TB each) you want.
3. Install Plex Server allowing you to stream to your TV.
4. Back your stuff up using Backblaze or S3 Glacier.

Sorted.

Click to shrink...

Would the DS218+ be powerful enough for my purposes? The price works a lot better for me given the added cost of hard drives.

 

[Wrexis]

Would the DS218+ be powerful enough for my purposes? The price works a lot better for me given the added cost of hard drives.

Click to shrink...

Either will work. You do need a good network connection though, Ethernet's preferable.

EDIT: I misread you. I don't recommend the two HDD option. The best option to set the drives up is using RAID or similar.
If you do that in a 2 HDD setup and one drive dies, you're in danger of loosing all your data. At least with 4 drives if 1 dies you have redundancies.

 

[splash wave]

I bought a Synology some year ago, but transcoding 4K HDR with subtitles is impossible on the machine. I put a NUC8i5 next to it to handle the Plex transcoding duties.

My advice, don't expect your NAS to be able to transcode everything; it's typically not build for that kinda stuff (although those new QNAPs with the Ryzen CPUs look mighty promising). For your renderer, go for either an AppleTV 4K or a Nvidia Shield; nothing else.

Click to shrink...

What about just plugging a hard drive into an NVIDIA shield? Would that at least allow me to easily watch my video collection on my TV?

 

[splash wave]

Easily. It's what I have at home. You do need a good network connection though, Ethernet's preferable.

Click to shrink...

So I'd need the NAS itself plugged in via ethernet, but then the device plugged in to my TV could sufficiently play the file over wifi? What sort of device would be adequate for my purposes?

 

[Mirado]

Would the DS218+ be powerful enough for my purposes? The price works a lot better for me given the added cost of hard drives.

Click to shrink...

It has a Celeron J3355 in it, which is probably going to choke when it comes to transcoding 4K. As long as you don't need to do that, it should be alright for your purposes, although I always prefer more muscle in my boxes so I usually just build my own (although I understand why you can't if space is a premium).

 

[splash wave]

Either will work. You do need a good network connection though, Ethernet's preferable.

EDIT: I misread you. I don't recommend the two HDD option. The best option to set the drives up is using RAID or similar.
If you do that in a 2 HDD setup and one drive dies, you're in danger of loosing all your data. At least with 4 drives if 1 dies you have redundancies.

Click to shrink...

But I think two would be enough for me, storage-wise? I only have about 2TB of data as it is and I'm not constantly expanding my collection. Maybe I'm mistaken on how this works.

 

[Hooker]

I want 10TB of storage, that automatically mirrors locally so if one drive fails, it works fine, that also automatically backs up to an AFFORDABLE cloud, and that is accessible (read/write) from the Mac, Windows PC, and iPad in my house with no issue and is quick enough for real-time work in Lightroom.

Click to shrink...

Cloud solution quick enough for real-time work in Lightroom? Prepare to spend some money!

I backup to Gsuite (Google Services). Unlimited storage for $10 a month. It's typically limited to 1TB unless you have more than 5 people/accounts in your organisation, but the limit is not enforced, so all accounts are unlimited storage.

I actually rsync my Plex library to it (encrypted, naturally). I keep the new/most used stuff locally; and after a certain period it's offloaded to the Gsuite. 4K HDR takes about 30 seconds to fully buffer, then no more problems (transfer speeds starts low then ramps up).

Much cheaper than continuously adding drives to the NAS.

 

[splash wave]

It has a Celeron J3355 in it, which is probably going to choke when it comes to transcoding 4K. As long as you don't need to do that, it should be alright for your purposes, although I always prefer more muscle in my boxes so I usually just build my own (although I understand why you can't if space is a premium).

Click to shrink...

I don't foresee myself needing it to transcode 4K. Now, what device would I need plugged in to my TV that could properly interface with the NAS and play MKVs?

 

[Ding Dong Daddy]

What about just plugging a hard drive into an NVIDIA shield? Would that at least allow me to easily watch my video collection on my TV?

Click to shrink...

Yes

 

[Hooker]

What about just plugging a hard drive into an NVIDIA shield? Would that at least allow me to easily watch my video collection on my TV?

Click to shrink...

I wouldn't know. I went for the AppleTV. I don't know if the Shield can act as a server.

Part of the benefits of Plex is that you're able to access it from a myriad of devices and locations (like my parents or siblings in their respective homes). If this is something you also want to entertain, I'd guess you'd want a stand-alone server.

 

[impingu1984]

Whatever you do don't fall into the trap of raid being a backup.... It's not the clue is in the name

Redundant Array of Independent Disks

its redundancy not a backup...

 

[Wrexis]

But I think two would be enough for me, storage-wise? I only have about 2TB of data as it is and I'm not constantly expanding my collection. Maybe I'm mistaken on how this works.

Click to shrink...

NAS's typically work off a concept that your HDDs are pooled into one big drive with built in redundancies.
In your case, if you add two 2TB drives it doesn't mean you get 4TB - it means you get a guaranteed 2TB, and if one drive dies you can swap in a new one and keep on going without loosing anything.

There's a calculator here: https://www.synology.com/en-global/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=2 TB|2 TB|2 TB|2 TB
In the example I selected, I added 4 2TB drives, giving me a usable storage of 6TB, not 8TB.

Now if you say 4 drives is overkill, that's ok. But remember you don't have to fill all of them in day 1.
You can start with 2 drives, and in a year or two add another 1 or 2 if you want to.

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

On demand storage of 10TB of stuff isn't going to be cheap. Do you really need it on demand, or just have assurances that it's there?
All my photos are on Amazon's S3 Glacier Long Term Storage. I only need to access it if all 4 of my NAS drives die - say the house burns down or whatever.

I pay $15 a month for the Glacier Storage, but retrieving that data will cost me $300 if I do need to. I accept that cost as if my house burns down or my hard drives get stolen I have other issues.

Click to shrink...

Cloud solution quick enough for real-time work in Lightroom? Prepare to spend some money!

I backup to Gsuite (Google Services). Unlimited storage for $10 a month. It's typically limited to 1TB unless you have more than 5 people/accounts in your organisation, but the limit is not enforced, so all accounts are unlimited storage.

I actually rsync my Plex library to it (encrypted, naturally). I keep the new/most used stuff locally; and after a certain period it's offloaded to the Gsuite. 4K HDR takes about 30 seconds to fully buffer, then no more problems (transfer speeds starts low then ramps up).

Much cheaper than continuously adding drives to the NAS.

Click to shrink...

Sorry - to be clear - yeah, I just need assurance that there IS a cloud backup of everything. Ideally, with auto replication on the Synology, I'd only be fucked if there was a house fire or something... not just from one drive dying.

99.99% of the time, I'd ideally be working in my house, on a computer or iPad, from the local drives in the Synology.

can the Synology backup nightly, iteratively (only the new stuff) to something like glacier?

 

[Chessguy1]

A NAS is mainly used to serve files over a network.

Then you'll need a media player such as a shieldTV to read the files over your network to play them.

 

[Post Reply]

Can you run VMs from a NAS? I know you can run Plex, but could you buy a NAS and basically use it as a physical host for VMs?

Click to shrink...

You definitely can on most of the QNAP NAS products. The user experience on those VMs will vary though due to the range of specs their products have, so that's something to keep in mind.

I have a QNAP TS-453a and I upgraded it to have 16GB of RAM in it and it can create and startup VMs with no issues, but they run like garbage due to its Celeron processor. You can run Docker containers from it as well though and in my experience, those run much better.

 

[Wrexis]

can the Synology backup nightly, iteratively (only the new stuff) to something like glacier?

Click to shrink...

It can, with a bit of tweaking.
Synology can upload to Amazon S3 out of the box, but you need to go into the S3 Console on Amazon and set a rule that after x days the files are converted to Glacier.

 

[splash wave]

So I just impulse bought the "QNAP TS-251B-2G-US 2 Bay Home" on Amazon since it was the last one and all the comparable Synology NASes were sold out/more expensive on Newegg. I also like that it has HDMI out.

Happy to cancel the order if anyone thinks I made a mistake!

 

[splash wave]

NAS's typically work off a concept that your HDDs are pooled into one big drive with built in redundancies.
In your case, if you add two 2TB drives it doesn't mean you get 4TB - it means you get a guaranteed 2TB, and if one drive dies you can swap in a new one and keep on going without loosing anything.

There's a calculator here: https://www.synology.com/en-global/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=2 TB|2 TB|2 TB|2 TB
In the example I selected, I added 4 2TB drives, giving me a usable storage of 6TB, not 8TB.

Now if you say 4 drives is overkill, that's ok. But remember you don't have to fill all of them in day 1.
You can start with 2 drives, and in a year or two add another 1 or 2 if you want to.

Click to shrink...

Got it, thanks. Given how long it's taken me to fill (not even) 2TB, I'm guessing 4TB total space would serve me well for a long time. Is there any disadvantage to using two larger drives rather than four small ones?

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

Sorry - to be clear - yeah, I just need assurance that there IS a cloud backup of everything. Ideally, with auto replication on the Synology, I'd only be fucked if there was a house fire or something... not just from one drive dying.

99.99% of the time, I'd ideally be working in my house, on a computer or iPad, from the local drives in the Synology.

can the Synology backup nightly, iteratively (only the new stuff) to something like glacier?

Click to shrink...

Synology has a built in tool for this. I use it to back up Backblaze B2 which is like Glacier but slightly cheaper. It's costs me 3-5 a month for around 400GB. I used it once to recover my music library and even that barely pushed it above $10 for that month.

Cold storage pricing functions of you parking the data and only retrieving in an emergency. So your costs are based on what you store plus any transactional costs ie downlaoding a back up

 

[Hooker]

Sorry - to be clear - yeah, I just need assurance that there IS a cloud backup of everything. Ideally, with auto replication on the Synology, I'd only be fucked if there was a house fire or something... not just from one drive dying.

99.99% of the time, I'd ideally be working in my house, on a computer or iPad, from the local drives in the Synology.

can the Synology backup nightly, iteratively (only the new stuff) to something like glacier?

Click to shrink...

Something like this? https://www.synology.com/en-uk/dsm/feature/cloud_sync

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

Got it, thanks. Given how long it's taken me to fill (not even) 2TB, I'm guessing 4TB total space would serve me well for a long time. Is there any disadvantage to using two larger drives rather than four small ones?

Click to shrink...

The theory is the bigger the drive the more it has to spin/read. So people theorize an 8TB will take longer to rebuild and thus during that rebuild could technically fail whereas a 2-4TB will be faster to build.

I'd start with 4TB drives if I was going from a cold start. It took me a few years to reach a point of needing more space.

Just be warned rebuilding an array takes a LONG time as your disks get bigger. When I moved my 4, 4TB drives to 8TB it was probably a week long process.

 

[Wrexis]

Got it, thanks. Given how long it's taken me to fill (not even) 2TB, I'm guessing 4TB total space would serve me well for a long time. Is there any disadvantage to using two larger drives rather than four small ones?

Click to shrink...

If one dies you basically need to get in a car and go out ASAP to replace it otherwise you're in serious chance of data loss.
It depends on what hardware you use, but you also might be locked in writing to that drive until you replace it.

 

[Deleted member 24079]

Oh boy, you're really in for it now lol. There's so many ways to do NAS and plex. I scoured for answers and went with using a spare pc, installed proxmox on a 500 GB Virtually running FreeNAS setup on two 1TB mechanical drives. Then I use the plex add-in container for FreeNAS. Super fun and frustrating. Enjoy!

 

[imbarkus]

Go for the best Synology unit you can afford to start. Don't go with any other brand.

Click to shrink...

Yeah but I got a Dell credit account with enough room for the buy so I don't have any choice but to go with Western Digital. Like maybe one of those four bay My Cloud Pro units from 2018 that will still mount like a regular network drive (not their new My Cloud line which needs internet connection to access even over a LAN?!?).

Think it'll be ok?

 

[Hooker]

Synology is just the most user friendly with the nicest interface and all these ready-to-use modules to install through it's user interface (DSM). It also carries a hefty price premium. It's not necessarily better at saving/keeping your data.

If you have the opportunity to arrange your home setup with different brands, go for it.

 

[bionic77]

Is there any NAS that lets you back up your iPhone to it?

I have external drives for my Macs and a time machine. But I wish there was a way to backup my iPhones wirelessly at least once a week without paying for iCloud.

 

[iareharSon]

The $12 Gsuite monthly subscription gives you unlimited storage. It's not supposed to, but they don't enforce the "fewer than 5 users" baseline for unlimited storage. Just saying.

I moved away from local storage to this about 2 years or so ago.

 

[Mirado]

I don't foresee myself needing it to transcode 4K. Now, what device would I need plugged in to my TV that could properly interface with the NAS and play MKVs?

Click to shrink...

I haven't tried it with anything too extensive on my TV as i primarily use Plex to serve my music and movies on the go, but I just have a Chromecast Ultra which I cast to via my phone or laptop. My usecase is a bit different than yours as I am using my NAS for far more than just Plex (I'm using Freenas and I run a number of other plugins in addition to Plex and obviously using it as actual Network attached storage), but that serves my needs just fine.

Be somewhat wary with that method for yourself, though, as while I'm pretty sure the chromecast can handle MKVs if the video codec is H.264, it may not if it's H.265 and you could be looking at a lot of transcoding if that's the case. Hopefully someone else can chime in with a similar setup as my box has more than enough muscle to transcode anything so I'm not sure if some of the products you are talking about would work the way my more modular setup does. I don't have any experience with premade NAS boxes so the entire configuration/user experience/limitations of such a device are out of my wheelhouse, but if you want advice on building something yourself, I got years of pitfall avoidance knowledge to lay down.

 

[splash wave]

The theory is the bigger the drive the more it has to spin/read. So people theorize an 8TB will take longer to rebuild and thus during that rebuild could technically fail whereas a 2-4TB will be faster to build.

I'd start with 4TB drives if I was going from a cold start. It took me a few years to reach a point of needing more space.

Just be warned rebuilding an array takes a LONG time as your disks get bigger. When I moved my 4, 4TB drives to 8TB it was probably a week long process.

Click to shrink...

What about just getting a single 4TB drive to start since I'll already have data redundancy with my other hard drives? And then, once I mess around with it and confirm it functions like I need it, then add the second drive later as a backup?

 

[MrKlaw]

I have a HP micro server that I bought for like £100 years ago. Crammed full of drives and using unraid as the software

fine as a Plex server but not for Plex transcoding. So a few years ago I bought a tiny IBM PC - like the size of a paperback book. Just runs plex server for transcoding and is wired into my network and i dial into it with VNC from my iPad if I need to

 

[Darknight]

What about just plugging a hard drive into an NVIDIA shield? Would that at least allow me to easily watch my video collection on my TV?

Click to shrink...

People are telling you wrong information.

A Synology will be perfectly fine with hosting and streaming to your Shield TV. The notion of transcoding is where things are getting mixed up. Transcoding is needed if the client cannot natively play something back so the server would need to convert on the fly to a format that the client can play back. The Shield TV pretty much plays back most things that are thrown at it so transcoding isn't needed and it doesn't take any processsing power to stream 4K UHD BRs or 1080p BRs. The only bottleneck there is your network bandwidth and if you're going wired or WiFi.

 

[Darknight]

So I just impulse bought the "QNAP TS-251B-2G-US 2 Bay Home" on Amazon since it was the last one and all the comparable Synology NASes were sold out/more expensive on Newegg. I also like that it has HDMI out.

Happy to cancel the order if anyone thinks I made a mistake!

Click to shrink...

I would cancel it. I would get a Synology since it tends to be more user friendly for novices and Synology is a popular choice. QNAP is fine, but I think coming from your position, a Synology probably would suit you better.

 

[Chessguy1]

My current setup is 3x 2TB external hdds shared over my network by my gaming PC with an nvidia shield playing the media using kodi and i've been meaning to upgrade to larger capacity since they've been filled for a while.

I've been considering getting a NAS as well, but I think i'm just going to buy a 12TB hdd and plug it directly into my router or shield and transfer files to that HDD over the network from my PC.

Can't really see why I need a NAS, but it just seems nice to have.

 

[splash wave]

People are telling you wrong information.

A Synology will be perfectly fine with hosting and streaming to your Shield TV. The notion of transcoding is where things are getting mixed up. Transcoding is needed if the client cannot natively play something back so the server would need to convert on the fly to a format that the client can play back. The Shield TV pretty much plays back most things that are thrown at it so transcoding isn't needed and it doesn't take any processsing power to stream 4K UHD BRs or 1080p BRs. The only bottleneck there is your network bandwidth and if you're going wired or WiFi.

Click to shrink...

I appreciate you clarifying. This is what I was sort of starting to figure out as I kept doing more research, but I'm glad to have it confirmed.

I impulse bought the QNAP TS-251B because the Synology model in my price range was out of stock, and this may have turned out to be the better purchase, actually, because it has HDMI out. I'd need to sort out the logistics but I may be able to just plug the thing directly into my TV.

edit: just saw your edit. I'll play around with it and see if it isn't user friendly enough, as I can easily return it. Nothing else was available anyway.

 

[hom3land]

Can you run VMs from a NAS? I know you can run Plex, but could you buy a NAS and basically use it as a physical host for VMs?

Click to shrink...

I run a windows vm from my unraid server. It sits next to my tv so I use the vm to play pc games.

Missed the buying nas part.. though technically I think you can buy a prebuilt unraid server

 

[Darknight]

Is there any NAS that lets you back up your iPhone to it?

I have external drives for my Macs and a time machine. But I wish there was a way to backup my iPhones wirelessly at least once a week without paying for iCloud.

Click to shrink...

It kinda depends what you want to back up. There are ways to easily and automatically back up your photos and videos which is what the bulk of the data is. So yes a NAS can do that and it can back up certain data, but it won't do everything nor will it be a simple restore like iOS does with iCloud. However, if you can work with your photos and videos on the NAS and then back up everything else to iCloud, that's a completely doable combination with a NAS.

My current setup is 3x 2TB external hdds shared over my network by my gaming PC with an nvidia shield playing the media using kodi and i've been meaning to upgrade to larger capacity since they've been filled for a while.

I've been considering getting a NAS as well, but I think i'm just going to buy a 12TB hdd and plug it directly into my router or shield and transfer files to that HDD over the network from my PC.

Can't really see why I need a NAS, but it just seems nice to have.

Click to shrink...

The thing with a NAS is it would consolidate those drives into a single storage pool so you don't have to keep going back and forth between drives and you'll get things like redundancy in case of drive failure. That's not even breaking the surface of all the additional functionality like auto backups to the cloud and other stuff that you can use. I find a NAS to be a lot cleaner, a lot easier, and more functional than just using multiple external drives where it's problematic if a single drive fails. It's not proper back up nor is it really safe.

I appreciate you clarifying. This is what I was sort of starting to figure out as I kept doing more research, but I'm glad to have it confirmed.

I impulse bought the QNAP TS-251B because the Synology model in my price range was out of stock, and this may have turned out to be the better purchase, actually, because it has HDMI out. I'd need to sort out the logistics but I may be able to just plug the thing directly into my TV.

edit: just saw your edit. I'll play around with it and see if it isn't user friendly enough, as I can easily return it. Nothing else was available anyway.

Click to shrink...

Heh there's probably a good reason why the Synology systems are out of stock and not the QNAP =) One thing to consider with the QNAP is despite it having HDMI, you have to consider the performance and limitations of what the internal hardware is capable of when it comes to video. Relying on the guns of the hardware inside the NAS to be able to handle everything is probably not a good way to go so you should probably do some research on the performance and capabilities that it can do with trying to play back media internally and how well it will run something like Plex or Kodi on it to do the play back. Personally, I would keep the separate, especially if you do already have a Shield TV which is very capable.

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

What about just getting a single 4TB drive to start since I'll already have data redundancy with my other hard drives? And then, once I mess around with it and confirm it functions like I need it, then add the second drive later as a backup?

Click to shrink...

Just buy two drives, it's pointless to buy a RAID capable device and not use it as RAID. 4TB drives are cheap as hell now relative to when most of us got into this. Heck, if you're patient enough you can find 8TB HGST refurbs for ~170 a drive.

And to clarify here on redundancy, having a drive in a PC and then a NAS with 1 drive is technically redundant but it's not in the way of how we've all been talking. Copying stuff from a PC to a NAS to be redundant is more of a backup task. With redundant RAID configurations it's redundant because if a drive fails there's 1 drive there to still work with. If your PC fails you lost that drive until you can get it in a case provided it's not dead.

 

[CreepingFear]

1. Buy the Synology DS918+, or DS920+. 20's newer.
2. Put 4 HDDs into it: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=ironwolf+10tb&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
   The size of these drives impacts the cost, so up to you what range (4-12TB each) you want.
3. Install Plex Server allowing you to stream to your TV.
4. Back your stuff up using Backblaze or S3 Glacier.

Sorted.

Click to shrink...

Yep. I have the 918+. I don't know how I lived without a NAS for so long. I bought 4 10 TB WD Elements and schucked them. I've used like 20/25 available TB's! I need more storage!

 

[splash wave]

Heh there's probably a good reason why the Synology systems are out of stock and not the QNAP =) One thing to consider with the QNAP is despite it having HDMI, you have to consider the performance and limitations of what the internal hardware is capable of when it comes to video. Relying on the guns of the hardware inside the NAS to be able to handle everything is probably not a good way to go so you should probably do some research on the performance and capabilities that it can do with trying to play back media internally and how well it will run something like Plex or Kodi on it to do the play back. Personally, I would keep the separate, especially if you do already have a Shield TV which is very capable.

Click to shrink...

In fairness, there was only one QNAP left in stock, so I'd also be happy with second place! :)

And I hear you. Running an HDMI cable all the way to my TV would likely not be ideal from a cable management perspective, so I may dispense with that idea. Ultimately, I'm trying to find the simplest way to access my media library on my TV, hopefully without a dip in video quality, and a NAS *seems* like the easiest way to do this. I don't like having to plug my work laptop into my TV via HDMI. Having a backup solution and something that my wife can access via her laptop in bed would be a huge plus.

Otherwise, maybe a cheap, tiny PC would be the better solution? I could leave this under my TV but using it to run windows doesn't seem ideal for media playback either.