I am thinking of purchasing a QNAP TVS872xt 8 bay NAS, but I am wondering if this model, which is two years old, is due for an upgrade. If so, any idea how far off it is, and if it's worth waiting for? I am a still photographer buying a NAS for archiving and access of digital photos, and while this device seems like overkill, it also seems like the best option.

Hi Rob, I have been watching a lot of your videos in the last couple of months and thank you for sharing such good information - it really helps.

I have been using a NAS for about 10 years now (NASDeluxe 7bay, 2700T), to house and store my pretty large collection of movies - mostly 1080p, mkv. Since it has had very poor speeds during the last months, and I can't even watch a 720p movie without stopping the movie about 5 times during the entire movie (and I need to restart my Popcorn hour C200), I thought it was time to get a new NAS. Transcoding the movies sounds nice, but I'm not sure if that is smth for me, as I usually always work from home and in the off chance I am on the road and want to look at a movie, I am in the airplane, so I have no connection to the Internet anyway.

In reading and looking on Youtube, I found that I can also edit straight from the NAS, provided that my Lightroom catalog is on my computer. I have a self-built WIN10 machine with loads of HDD's inside to house my photos and edit them usually off an internal SSD (not M.2 yet, as my PC is about 7 years old). I never thought about putting my images on my NAS, to edit them directly, as I found the speed lacking - but this suddenly became an option.

In my house, I have almost everything wired with cat5e UTP, gigaswitches, an ASUS AC-RT5300, ASUS AC-RT68u and two ASUS AC-RT86u to have enough Wifi coverage in the house - but no 10 Gbe connections or wiring, nor on my PC. I do not have a thunderbolt port in my PC either. My other machine I work off of, is a Dell XPS15 (9550), which does have a thunderbolt, but the machine is so bad for editing, that I'm usually only using it in a pinch, despite it having an M.2 Samsung EVO Plus 1TB SSD and the specs being the best Dell offered at the time of purchase.

Since I am a professional photographer, I want things to run smoothly and would be great to edit off the NAS from both my laptop and my desktop. Next to that, it would be great to share specific folders with clients, so they can download their images too and I can use it during client meetings to show my work, slideshows, etc.

Since I want to futureproof, I would like a NAS with 8 bays, so I have lots of storage going forward. Ideally, I want something fast enough to edit from, that can house my movie collection (and going forward also 4k content). In the future, I might also want to add security cameras outside the house, but I heard that it would not be good to use the same NAS for that, as it would bog down everything?

Although I always thought I would go for Synology (no real reason, just liked the pricepoint and options), I think Qnap has a lot faster performance from what I read, obviously at a much higher price. I had a chat with a Qnap rep, who was suggesting the TVS-873E (8GB) or the TVS-872XT-I5 (15GB). I am not bound to QNAP, I would just like to find the best option for me. I would also go for the biggest affordable HDD's and insert an M.2 SSD.
Not sure about the 10 Gbe connection, or the Thunderbolt - I have been looking for an adapter to USB3.1, as I don't think I can easily get Thunderbolt now (unless I buy a new Mobo, with everything around that). It's usually just me using the NAS, but maybe my girlfriend would want to use it too for viewing pictures and edit Premiere Pro movies of our daughter (though this is limited, certainly not even a weekly operation). If 10 Gb is vital, I can think about upgrading parts of the UTP's and switch in the coming year(s), or can I get to acceptable speeds using linkover from two (or more) cat5e UTP's?

I am paranoid about loosing data, so I have about 5 backups of all my pictures, also off-site and everything is also in a Backblaze account.

Is there something you can recommend or for me to not care about/steer clear of? My current NAS houses about 10 Tb worth of movies and my photo library in my PC is around 15-20 Tb.
Also please make recommendations about the 10 Gbe and Thunderbolt connection.
The TVS872 is over €2.200 and am wondering if it is really that much better (for my needs) or that it is overkill...
Is there an easy way to measure the speed of my current NAS, to see if that really is the bottleneck, not the cables after that? I did a test with Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, which showed 14.3 MB/s write and 25.9 MB/s read speed on my desktop pc, which is downstairs, the NAS is housed on the top floor (3 stories).

Thank you in advance.
Best regards,
Robert

I currently have a DS214Play and am contemplating replacing my existing NAS for a device that can transcode 4K files. The research I underaken so far would suggest that could go for a Synology DS920+. However I'm not getting any clear indication form Synology on this matter since they refer me to a list is of devices which does include the DS918+ but not the DS920+. Given that the DS920+ is a more up to date device than the DS918+ I'm a little confussed on this matter. I'd like to buy a suitable device but it's not clear to me what I should go for. Can you give me some further guidance on this matter please ?

Hi there!

I've just begin researching into setting up a Plex Media Server in my house. I only intend to use the content stored on the media server as part of my Samsung Q80T Smart Tv Plex Client App (not for mobile or laptop streaming). I'm not too familiar with video codecs or transposing video content. I'm hoping to find the closest "out of the box" NAS solution without breaking the bank. I believe the DS220+ would be a good NAS for the above requirements, but would appreciate your input if possible.

Thanks in advance!

Hi
i am planning to buy synology ds220+ and wd red 6tb drive , i will mostly use it for plex and access data from my phone and laptop, photos ects,

i wonder do i really need to care about CMR and SMR wd red drive ? i plan to use only 1 drive at the moment and i do not care if i lose some movies if drive fail, for backup of important data i will have usb drive connected to nas and i plan sync some important folders every night,

if SMR is not good for raid, do i really care if dont plan to use raid ? and disk is much cheaper

thank you

Hello, I have huge issue with my Qnap settup. I have TS-251D with single NIC. All manuals over the web are saying to use the container in bridge mode with virtual switch. Since I have only one NIC and if I create a virtual switch, I lost connection to the NAS. Do you know why ? Maybe I need second NIC ? If yes, can I use a cheap usb to Ethernet dongle ? QNAP expansion cards are pretty expensive so can I use 3rth party pcie Lan card ?

Thank you !

Discuss: Synology DSM 7 Beta - Try It Online WITHOUT a NAS <br><iframe width='560' height='315' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/5t7t70ixB5w' frameborder='0' allow='accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture' allowfullscreen></iframe>

Good morning. Do you know if the QNAP TVS-872-XU-i3-4G is a good enough rackmounted NAS for 4K plex server or is there a better one. I know people stating the desktop TVS-1282T3 is the best
9not sure if thats outdated or not anymore)
but I wanted a rackmount given space. I want the best one thats out now so no issues in transcoding or streaming 4K video to my home with serval 4K TVs and mobile devices. Thank you in advance. Your videos and website are extremely helpful .

I am looking for a good price on a NAS to use as my Plex Server. Remote and local streaming in 480p, 720p, 1080p, and 2160p. Also the memory should be upgradable to 32GB (at least).

Hi!

I use Apple TV 4 for multimedia at home, I´m planning to jump from a WD My Cloud (single drive) where I store my movies and series, to a Synology solution, preferably with two bays, to handle backups, photo storage and multimedia server.

As an iOS user, I had it with Apple One, and I want to handle mobile backup by my own, thus, the need to have RAID system. But I´m also interested in stream mkv files to my Apple TV, currently I have to keep a PC on running iTunes to stream MP4 files (I have to convert the files too ).

I want to fork on two 8TB HDD to setup a RAID environment, with the least expensive Synology solution capable to convert on the fly the multimedia. I´m aware of the Synology solutions for DLNA stream at home too, and surely want to use them too.

I had a hard time deciding for a brand, and spent hours watching reviews, where I found yours to be VERY detailed. I decided to adopt Synology, as I felt the Western Digital environment very short for user support. Thank you for your time!