Where would you recommend I purchase a pre-made, ready-to-use NAS device and which one should I get? I am a teeny bit tech-savvy but rely on YouTube videos way too much to be able to set one up myself. Thanks in advance xo
Nas
- Thread starter IFUSEEKAMY
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I would look into Synology as it has the clean management interface that is easy to use to configure sharing and etc,.
https://www.synology.com/en-global/products
They have the J series for entry level, and then it scales up to the professional series with (8-12 bays)
You can check out a live demo of the interface here: https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/live_demo
Should be able to find it at Newegg, or at Dell.CA
https://www.synology.com/en-global/products
They have the J series for entry level, and then it scales up to the professional series with (8-12 bays)
You can check out a live demo of the interface here: https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/live_demo
Should be able to find it at Newegg, or at Dell.CA
This guide might help also: http://nascompares.com/2017/08/02/c...nology-qnap-drobo-thecus-netgear-and-asustor/
Had an LG for a while and now use a Synology. Switched to the Synology after the hard drive in the LG crashed and I lost everything on it. It was my only back up of the data. The Synology has 4 hard drives and RAID so it has more than one copy of data. If a drive crashes, I lose nothing. It was easy to set up, and is easy to use. It also runs all the time as my torrent device. Easy to access shows in the house, as well as anywhere else in the world with DS File.
My only complaint - I have a J series as well, and the processor is not strong enough to convert videos on the fly for streaming. Just means I have to have a slightly stronger device on the other end for watching torrented shows.
Overall, I really like the Synology. Piece of mind of the RAID system, and a very friendly and easy to use interface.
Chris
My only complaint - I have a J series as well, and the processor is not strong enough to convert videos on the fly for streaming. Just means I have to have a slightly stronger device on the other end for watching torrented shows.
Overall, I really like the Synology. Piece of mind of the RAID system, and a very friendly and easy to use interface.
Chris
Thank you for the added info! I’ll have to take a look through. I was looking at the QNAP TS-251A.
You sure you don't want to piece together something? I use unRAID. I usually have lots of pieces lying around so it's no big deal to piece together another computer but if you don't and are buying all new maybe not a great solution for start up costs. Mine has ~24TB of storage and is single drive failure tolerant. Even if you lose a drive you can still access the data. Doesn't sound like what you're looking for but maybe another option to look into.
With all the awesome feedback I’ve received from this thread, yes, I’m aware I should be piecing it together myself. Le sigh. It’s a tad intimidating at the moment. I may bug you once I have enough saved up for what I want hehehe
I'm definitely not an expert on it. It's a linux based system but I've just followed tutorials to get it set up. I'm not that good at all with linux but it wasn't too bad. Compound that with it's nearly maintenance free so I don't deal with it often... less than once a year. If you have questions let me know if you go this route.
Do you intend to have multiple users using the NAS and therefore require policy management, etc. Or is it just for your use around the house for storing and streaming data?
Another option is to either build a inexpensive PCor buy a reconditioned PC with RAIDed disks . You can buy used/reconditioned PCs on the wholesale market for $.20-.25 on the dollar and buy a couple of 4TB (or larger) drives from Canada computer for much less than than a retail SAN. The PC can be configured to do daily backups from one drive to another (if it doesn't have RAID) or to an external drive. You can set it up as a streaming server, media server (Plex Server or Kodi), android box, gaming server (via Steam, Flash, android or downloaded games), home audio system and a ton more.
In summary, unless you need specific NAS features, there really isn't anything a NAS can do that a cheap PC can't also do (there is even freeware NAS software for PCs).
BTW I suggested a back-up strategy, but those all suck. A proper backup involves a separate platform, preferably off-line when not in use. In the past I used rewritable DVDs and before that tape. Now I back-up my PCs to my media PC and just make a point of always having two copies. For critical things like family pictures, I put those on thumb drives and store them at my mom's house. It's not good enough to be on seperate media, that media needs to be geographically redundant.
Just go with QNAP or Synology. As easy and cheap as FreeNAS is, the prebuilt solutions, in addition to being even more user friendly, have customer support if needed. That being said, pretty much any issue you hve with FreeNAS has probably happened to someone earlier and the community is great. I love my Synology unit; as simple or complex as I want it to be.
I had set up a QNAP machine a couple of months ago and it was a medium level of difficulty.
Get the appliance, slot 4 drives in it, follow the fairly easy instructions. All of the software is included and very aware.
Not cheap, but it did the job.
I went a bit overboard with the protection using RAID-6. That steals 2 of the drives for parity bits so that I can have a drive die and still be able to replicate the data. In fact, I can have 2 drives die and be able to restore it. Sure, I only have 8 of 16 Tb available for storage, but that's 4 times more than I was used to before so I think I'm good.
Get the appliance, slot 4 drives in it, follow the fairly easy instructions. All of the software is included and very aware.
Not cheap, but it did the job.
I went a bit overboard with the protection using RAID-6. That steals 2 of the drives for parity bits so that I can have a drive die and still be able to replicate the data. In fact, I can have 2 drives die and be able to restore it. Sure, I only have 8 of 16 Tb available for storage, but that's 4 times more than I was used to before so I think I'm good.
