We are a small dental office that has about 1TB of patient data. Our dental management software is accessed by 10 workstations directly from the network shared drive on the server. We would like to accomplish the following:

1. Increase storage capacity
2. Improve performance of the data access and write
3. Be able to backup the data locally and securely

My initial thoughts are a NAS with SSD drives configured in RAID1 (2) or RAID10. It has been a long time since I have worked in IT and am rusty on benefits of the different RAID configurations. Initially I have looked into the Synology D920+ solution with 4 SSD drives. Any advice is appreciated!

I'm an advanced user, have had many servers and various boxes over the years. In this case, I just want a simple RAID1 or RAID3/5 NAS for local backup (time machine) of family computers. That's it.
Seems easy, right? But I want to avoid, if possible, the dreaded scenario where the box or raid fails and you are left with a proprietary junk and can't rebuild your drives or recover your data.
I don't want plex, or any other server apps for this usage.
Based on your writing on this site, it seems like the Asustor LockerStor 2 AS6602T might be the best bet-- but I never heard of them, don't know how realiable their hardware is, and if it will last 4 years minimum (that's my usual tech replacement timeframe).

Thanks!

Thank you for all the work you do in sharing what you know about NAS. Your videos are very informative. I have been watching your youtube channel and my desire for an synology xs+ and my budget do not co-inside. Also hardware could be a savings if you already have it. So I really like the Synology features, Photo management, backup, media server and VM. However the reason I have been watching your show is because I am looking for a NAS system I can continuously upgrade and provide great hardware features cheaper over time.

So my question for you: Is there a way of installing Synology software on a multiple hard drive PC? Do you recommend this approach if I am comfortable with building PC's?

I have been looking at FreeNAS/TrueNAS, but their software is not as user friendly as QNAP or synology. I would love your opinion or honest advise of controlling my own hardware and leveraging Synology software. I am interested in the DSM 7 and the AI integration. If this is not a good approach. I was going to try out the 920+ but waiting for the price to drop back down into the $400 range as seen on black friday.

Thanks again.

Hi,
Just came across your site and videos. It's a mine of information, and I'm fairly new to NAS in general.

I'm currently running a self built Windows Server for file backups and plex. It's from 2012 and has started showing its age... computationally it might be ok, or even upgradable, but the 4TB in raid-0 really needs more, and I thought a NAS might be an interesting option.

I work in software, so am quite capable technically. I'm looking for:
1. Backups of several laptops, LOTS of photography (including raw file) backups.
2. Would be really good if I could run Windows VMs with GPU offloading. My main work machine is Linux, and some photography software runs on Windows only, and the issue with VMs tend to be around very limited capabilities to offload discrete GPUs. I could do photo processing work in a VM.
3. Plex or other media server with 4K streaming. Ideally gpu accelerated.

I'm looking at 6 bay machines, and was thinking of Raid 10 to keep things simple. Is there anything in particular that you can recommend? I'd really appreciate any guidane.

Cheers,
Ashic.

Synology's SHR/SHR2 is a compelling feature in that it offers a lower cost of entry with regard to the size of disk drives initial configuration. As storage requirements increase, larger drives can be added without breaking the basic raid configuration.

With QNAP's hero OS does their products now support a mixed drive size configuration like SHR for raid-z and raid-z2

o-*

Discuss: Synology DS920+ NAS TimeTec 8GB and 16GB Memory Test <br><iframe width='560' height='315' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/I8M7d_JScIs' frameborder='0' allow='accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture' allowfullscreen></iframe>

Good Morning,

I find your work very helpful and professional.
I would like to ask your opinion for my scenario: I never had a Nas before, and I am looking to buy one, upgrading the ram and use it for:
- backup for PC
- backup for Mac, compatible with Time Machine
- Hosting virtual machines for Pihole, Unbound and VPN
- Hosting VM for OpenStack as it is a subject for my degree

Looking at your reviews, I was tempted to buy an Asustor Nimbustor 2 that recently is discounted, adding 2 Seagate IronWolf of 2TB each and changing the ram with 8GB Crucial module.

Do you think that with the same budget I could get a better setup? I don't mind waiting 1-2 months, after the Christmas period.

Many thanks in advance for your contribution.

Best regards and Happy Holidays.

Mauro

Hi!

First of all I LOVE your videos! Recently I found them and francly I spent half of my vacation watching them!

Why I'm doing that? I want to bay a NAS for my home (flat) where I'll do some home automation, setup a Home Assistant and stuff like that (I know VM can run Home Assistant but I'm planing to buy a separate hardware for that - an ODROID).

About the NAS - I don't need big storage but need something that will co-work with maximum of 2 security cameras (2K or 4K) and will play 4K movies.

As I mentioned in the subject - I'm leaning towards the DS720+/DS920+. I'll be able later ont to add 8-16Gigs of additinal RAM and SSD for cashing to improve performance.

I completely trust your advice and would invest in the hardware you would recommend.

Thanks you!

Hi there. I am finding your tutorials really helpful for a beginner!. I have just bought a Synology DS1520+ with five 8TB Seagate Pro Iron Wolf Hard Disks.

It is basically just my wife and myself using this NAS and I moved to using NAS as I have an array of external disks, two of which failed along with their back up. So I thought it time to grow up!

My wife and I want to share documents, but I also want to access my photo library using Lightroom which is notorious for being slow if the images are not on the same drive. So read/write speed is important above capacity and cost.

I do also like the idea of SHR and the option of adding larger disks later on, but after my recent experience redundancy is also very important.

Obviously I realise that my NAS is not a back up and will have external back up, offsite and in the cloud for key documents.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

Quent

Robbie:

I found your incredible YouTube channel & website by searching for PLEX help topics. What an excellent resource!!

I'm hoping you can weigh in on my questions!

I have an extensive movie and music collection scattered among 4 Netgear ReadyNAS's:

RN516: Total volume 18TB, which holds 17TB of BluRay movies, in MKV containers; No 4K movies yet; RSync backups pushed to RNDP6350.

RNDP6350 ReadyNAS Pro (running OS6): Movie backup NAS (18TB total volume) with files at 17TB

RN214 - Approx. 2TB of high resolution FLAC music files feeding a SonicOrbiter ROON Server (https://www.smallgreencomputer.com/collections/audio-server/products/sonictransporter-roon-server-hqplayer?variant=31106712502341); this NAS also contains digital photos; Total volume of 11TB

RN102: 4TB NAS is Music NAS backup; 2TB in backup files

As you can see, this unwieldy setup has grown over the last 10 years. I'm rapidly running out of space on the ReadyNAS movie NAS's and have ordered 2 16TB drives to expand each NAS for extra space on an emergency basis.

I'm running X-RAID in a RAID-5 configuration. At one time, I ran Plex Media Server from the RN516 but have since moved this to the SonicOrbiter i9.

The Sonore SonicOrbiter i9 is really built for ROON but is also promoted as a PLEX Server. That was a mistake as I'm having issues running PLEX from it.

I only run Direct Play to the various screens in the house. I'm still experiencing a lot of buffering. If Direct Stream is checked off, movies simply will not play on the Plex clients.

I also plan to buy a NVIDIA Shield Pro at some point as a PLEX client/Netflix/Amazon streamer for my LG OLED screen.

So, I'm thinking it's time to replace all 4 Netgear NAS's with a new QNAP TVS-h1288X as it seems that QuTS Hero is the future OS for QNAP. I want a NAS that is most suitable for future-proofing.

The ReadyNAS will permit me to swap out one 4TB drive with a 16TB drive at a time. It will take several days to resync each drive but I will eventually have an expanded volume. This is a great feature as it makes volume expansion affordable.

Can you tell me if QNAP has the same ability as ReadyNAS? I'm hoping I can start with 4 bays with 4 TB drives and 2 bays with 16TB drives, slowly adding more 16 TB drives as budget permits. Would that work?

I'd like to replace using the STi9 as a Plex Media Server. I know it will be a nightmare moving PMS again ... this time from a Linux box (STi9) to QNAP NAS. I had no luck moving the metadata files from the ReadyNAS to the STi9 so ended up MANUALLY rebuilding the Collections library, etc ... what a headache.

Regardless, I am prepared for more pain ahead moving PMS from SonicTransporter to a powerful NAS that won't run out of space and has plenty of horsepower to play 4K files in the future.

The ReadyNAS's have been super-reliable workhorses for the last 10+ years. I'm hoping an investment in a new NAS, designed to run PMS, will do the same.

One more question: There are many advocates out there who recommend building your own NAS and PMS using UnRaid. While I'm proficient with hardware, I am very green with Linux systems. Regardless, I would appreciate an objective opinion about this.

Lastly, once a new QNAP PMS NAS is built and setup, what do you recommend for backups? Do I retain the RN516 and use it purely for backups from the QNAP, via RSync? Or, do I build a Unraid server from spare old PC's, etc for the backups only?

Anyway, I look forward to your opinion on this. Much appreciated.

All the best during the Holiday Season!

Cheers,
Herb ...