Hi,
In these times of quarantine, I would like to offer my 90 year old Dad in self-isolation some entertainment in form of old classic movies he'd enjoy.
The idea being, I want be able to send him URL links to movies I have on my NAS and that he could then click on to start playing them on his PC or smart TV.
Or if possible and even better, have him browse remotely from his home a folder on my NAS where I would put all the old movies that interest him. As I'm sure you can imagine when dealing with an 90yo, it has to be VERY simple (point & click).

I have bought a Synology DS215j only to discover after that it won't allow me to share my movies with him (or transcode as I've now learned it's called).
Could you please tell me which NASes would be able to do this? Ideally, I would like to look at the 2nd hand market for this, so some older NAS would be my first choice to keep the cost down (I'm not made of money, especially in these trying times!).

I mainly have 720p movies encoded in HEVC/x265 and x264 in mp4 and mkv container and the occasional avi file.

Until now, I have only researched my options in the Synology DS range and what I came up with as suitable, which might not be exhaustive are the Play series and the Plus/+ series starting from the 215+. And the 715 as well. Are there others? (again, in the same price range and I don't need anything more than a 2 drive bay).

And then there are the QNAPs which I know nothing about so if you could offer some suggestions based on what I've explained above?

From what I understand, these are the two main leading brands when it comes to 'serious' quality NAS offering more flexibility and reliability (once I have one, I would consider maybe setting up a mail server for myself as well as backups for the whole family).

Thanks in advance!
(I would have posted first in the forum but I saw so many unanswered questions, I just thought I'd have better look this way.
Cheers,
Kenneth

Discuss: Software Review of the TP-Link Archer MR600 AC1200 WiFi 4G SIM Router

I have a older pc I built in 2014 for a NAS running win 7 then upgraded to win 10. just runs plex for windows headless. 1gbe cat 7 cable, 4tb NAS Seagate drives in raid 0. its been a good server for me but ever since going to win 10 home the file transfer from pc to server and vice versa has not worked at all. as well the old amd Athlon 5350 is showing its age. inability to transcode anything above SD quality requires a lot more user end knowledge than most of my family has.

I will likely build some new hardware into the box to fix the transcoding issues, however I still am not sure windows 10 (even if I get pro this time) will be my best option for a headless OS. I need somthing that can file transfer seamless but not cost me much in software license. im working on a budget for this file server and don't need to spend for fancy features in a NAS os. Im not a fan of Linux mostly due to poor experiences with the community in the past and low hardware support for special functions like VCE decoding on my amd hardware... What do you suggest? Am I on the right path to just put win 10 pro in for the new hardware next time?

Discuss: WD Red NAS Drives and SMR - UPDATE

Hi there,

First off, great website! Lots of in-depth helpful info!

I have a slightly strange question. I'm running a Synology RS3617RPxs with a bunch of HDDs and 2 x Intel Enterprise class SSDs as Cache, installed in 2 of the drive bays. These SSD's equal around 480GB of Cache.

Is it possible to install the M2D18 card with M.2 drives and use this as additional Cache? Along side the existing Intel SDD cache setup? Or is it limited to one option or the other.

On the Synology website it states:
RS3617RPxs with M2D18 can only support M.2 SATA SSD. M.2 NVMe/AHCI PCIe SSD is not supported.

Would using the M2D18 yield any performance increase when used without NVMe SSDs ?- When compared to the existing Intel SSD configuration?

Many thanks for your advice!

I am simply trying to find out whether I could use a USB to Ethernet adapter to connect my Eero Pro (or any router with an Ethernet port) to an external device (with a USB port).

I want to upgrade the RAM in the Synology DS1618 from 4GB to 32GB.. Did anyone successfully install the compatible memory into the NSA without any issues. I just want know before i purchase the RAM from Amozon. Thanks - Ronald

Discuss: SSD Terminology - Common Terms Explained - DWPD, TBW, NAND, TRIM and More

Greetings,

I’m looking to setup 2 8TB HDDs in a RAIDZ1 for my data files. I don’t mind any loud Read/Write or Startup noises. In fact, I find them pleasant as I find the sound a dial-up modem makes while connecting… nostalgia is most certainly the culprit.
However, I DO mind any idle sounds of any kind. Don’t want to be distracted by clicking, humming, or whining noises while just browsing the Web. This distraction would be too annoying for me in the age of the SSDs.

I currently have 1TB HDDs in a RAIDZ5 that are whisper quiet and a trusty old WD Velociraptor that only makes noise while accessing data but I know that todays larger drives are noisier.

Are there any HDDs you would recommend or settings to apply that would give me a quiet RAID1 while in idle?

Thanks in advance,
AL from California

The big question is about 10TB WD red 10TB WD100EFAX!

By letter 'A' it is a strong index that WD100EFAX is a SMR Disk! - also the cache size is 256MB!!

In contrast WD writes 'above 8TB' all WD RED are PMR, CMR.

Synology lists WD100EAFX as incompatible for a RS2414RP!!!

could you clarify about WD100EFAX is SMR or TRUE PMR?

Thanks
Reto Gfeller