It's the NAS (Network Attached Storage) Thread, yo.
- Thread starter Jill Sandwich
- Start date
I've been thinking about doing a NAS setup, but I don't really know much about it and need some advice. All I want to do is a RAID-1 setup. I just want something that I can use as a backup for my files. It's just going to be used for storage. I don't have any plans to use it for a media center or streaming. Any suggestions?
HanzSnubSnub
Member
I had the same problem and went with a 2-bay external enclosure. Loving it so far. Sometimes a simple solution is the best solution.
First time ever looking into getting a NAS and it sounds like something I'd really like to have. I want to be able to primarily,
1) have a place to store TBs of files (re: emulation),
2) have a place to store videos for plex,
3) it would be cool if it had plex built-in, but I am quite fine with running plex server on an actual PC/laptop. This is the part I'm not sure about, are there any good qual NAS that support this?
4) Spend less than maybe $400 on NAS + maybe 6TB storage.
I see that WD has a "Red" line for NAS storage. Good quality? It would also be nice to be able to add another drive later, so having multiple drive bays for that purpose might be nice, but I don't want to break the bank.
Any suggestions for NAS and storage?
1) have a place to store TBs of files (re: emulation),
2) have a place to store videos for plex,
3) it would be cool if it had plex built-in, but I am quite fine with running plex server on an actual PC/laptop. This is the part I'm not sure about, are there any good qual NAS that support this?
4) Spend less than maybe $400 on NAS + maybe 6TB storage.
I see that WD has a "Red" line for NAS storage. Good quality? It would also be nice to be able to add another drive later, so having multiple drive bays for that purpose might be nice, but I don't want to break the bank.
Any suggestions for NAS and storage?
iNvid02
Member
maybe something like a ds216play from synology, 2 drive bays, dsm 6 has a good ui and plex media server app is available from the synology package center. seems to be around your price range too. i have a few wd red's and they have been fine, although the seagate archive and wd greens sitting beside them have been fine too.
I use the DS216j for a couple of month now, but it is really slow to me at converting videos/pictures, streaming and working outside of my own network with it. Was looking for a new one and now have to decide between the DS216+II and DS716+II. Is the difference of power between 216+II and 716+II worth the extra 120€+?
Chances are if stuff is that much slower outside your intranet, its just your internet limiting what you can do. Most people don't have fast enough upload to do much remotely.
Id say its between those 2 models, the price isn't really worth it.
GifGafIsTheBestGaf
Member
what's the easier thing to do for a first timer, buy a NAS or turn my failed desktop (ill buy a better mobo to see if that fixes it) into a NAS?
btw, things on the PC
i5 3570k
16GB Ram
7970 AMD GPU ( i can upgrade to a newer AMD gpu for better hardware transcoding or whatever)
i need it for storage of files, media playback, up speed is shit so everything will be on LAN not off-site
budget $600 max but honestly if i can save some money that would be better
btw, things on the PC
i5 3570k
16GB Ram
7970 AMD GPU ( i can upgrade to a newer AMD gpu for better hardware transcoding or whatever)
i need it for storage of files, media playback, up speed is shit so everything will be on LAN not off-site
budget $600 max but honestly if i can save some money that would be better
Valkyr Junkie
Member
Well it doesn't get any easier than just buying a NAS, but if all you need is to replace your motherboard to get that PC running again, that will certainly be a lot cheaper. I'm not sure what a Radeon 9790 is, but the CPU and RAM are more than enough for a NAS. Do you know what OS and media server you'll be running on it? Plex does not support hardware acceleration for transcoding, but that i5 is more than enough for handling transcoding on your own. Assuming you even need video transcoding in the end.
honestly i would go with upgrading. IMO a lot of the consumer grade NAS's are mediocre at best, and none offer very much flexibility with regard to expand other than 4 slots unless you go up to much more expensive NAS's.
Plus even though you say 600 bucks now, you can continually add more drives down the road.
GifGafIsTheBestGaf
Member
oops i meant 7970 lol.
ive been googling and it looks like FreeNas will do the job? also Win8 (or will upgrade it to Win10 first before doing anything)
im open to suggestions, anything that is easy to use and it runs almost by itself without too much input
yes, that's the plan im just tired of too many external drives laying around and my plan is start small and just upgrade when i need to.
thanks for the input.
just to be clear, do i need a Windows OS to install FreeNas or FreeNas is an OS?
EDIT: hmm so according to the FAQ in their site it runs on a USB not the hard drive. like i said im open to suggestions here, easier to use paid or free would be gladly welcome
EDIT2:
ok now that i got the hw aspect
do i need windows?
are NAS programs like FreeNAS an OS by itself or they run alongside windows?
recommendations free or paid (the easier to set up the better)
ill google the rest just need a push in the right direction. thanks in advance!
FreeNAS is an OS unto itself, it does run on the USB. I used to use it, but i just didnt like it. If you used windows you would not be using FreeNAS unless you had it as a VM or something which im not sure why would do that. But i used server 2012 for my NAS and used storage pools, I have itunes installed for music media. Plex for video media for outside the house. But i use CIFS shares and Kodi installed on windows 10 to stream movies and TV shows from the NAS.
If you are familiar with windows already, Windows + Stablebit's Drivepool is as easy as it gets; plus you have all the flexibility of running a full windows OS. You don't have to worry about mixing different size of hdds as much and can even continue to use existing hdds. Performance is probably not as good for file serving but you aren't serving 100s of people on your network. I have mine running drivepool and mysql which contains database for all my media files. Amazon Fire TV/Android runs Kodi using centralized database for media consumption.
TheChewyWaffles
Member
Thinking of getting the DS1815+ ... Thoughts?
Expanding on this, I already have a PC running PMS on it with a bunch of hard drives in it. They are like 2TB each though and I want to consolidate everything on 2 8TB hard drives. Is there a device that's reliable that I can simply attach to my computer via USB3 that will hold a bunch of external drives? Sort of like an enclosure but it should work with the storage space Windows tech.
Expanding on this, I already have a PC running PMS on it with a bunch of hard drives in it. They are like 2TB each though and I want to consolidate everything on 2 8TB hard drives. Is there a device that's reliable that I can simply attach to my computer via USB3 that will hold a bunch of external drives? Sort of like an enclosure but it should work with the storage space Windows tech.
GifGafIsTheBestGaf
Member
i finally have an excuse to do something about my broken desktop just hoping it was a software failure that caused corruption so i can sell the old parts and soften the blow a bit
thank you very much, liking the Drivepool and Kodi combo. i will look up more on the suggestions in the meantime i wait for pc parts to arrive.
The DS1815+ would be great but there are a lot of options in that price range. Don't get anything that doesn't support a next-gen filesystem. The DS1815+ can use BTRFS which is comparable to ZFS.
You're looking for DAS over a single USB connection. I believe they exist but it's certainly not something i would trust. Converting multiple SATA into USB is just not something you really want to do. eSATA would be a better option but even that still uses a split SATA connection which isn't really recommended.
Valkyr Junkie
Member
So in preparation for Sonos beginning to support Plex, I've gone ahead and made the attempt to mount my Synology's music folder, and I'm having a pain in the ass mounting it as NFS on my Ubuntu PMS. I feel like I've followed the same steps as I did when mounting my video directory back in the day.
I've created a local folder in Ubuntu, mapped it to the NFS share successfully (DSM console shows the NFS connection being established), but after mounting I lose all permissions to the local map point. If I try and browse to it in a command line I get permission denied. If I try to access it in the file system GUI I get "You do not have the permissions necessary to view the contents." Before mapping, this folder has the exact same permissions as my other NFS mount point folder. But for whatever reason after mounting, I lose access.
My original NFS mounts work fine. I manually map them after every reboot since I haven't been able to get the syntax correct to map them automatically in fstab.
I've created a local folder in Ubuntu, mapped it to the NFS share successfully (DSM console shows the NFS connection being established), but after mounting I lose all permissions to the local map point. If I try and browse to it in a command line I get permission denied. If I try to access it in the file system GUI I get "You do not have the permissions necessary to view the contents." Before mapping, this folder has the exact same permissions as my other NFS mount point folder. But for whatever reason after mounting, I lose access.
My original NFS mounts work fine. I manually map them after every reboot since I haven't been able to get the syntax correct to map them automatically in fstab.
Well, after many, many hours, it ultimately advanced to the "Adding Disk" phase, which did actually show a percentage. However, my modem lost the internet connection for a few minutes, and now I can't access the web interface anymore. It doesn't respond. I can still mount the NAS in the Finder, though.
Anything I can do? Restarting is not an option, as it's still not finished adding the new disk. I don't think I turned on SSH, unfortunately.
edit: Yep, no SSH. So I guess my only option is to wait until it stops making noise and reboot it using the power button. Damn.
edit 2: Well, as I was able to access my files, just not the web interface, I assumed the HTTP server was down and removing the LAN cable and plugging it in again wouldn't do anything. But it did actually work.
Head of Vengarl
Banned
This seems to be the right thread for this IT question:
I have a NAS device, and everything was peachy on Windows 7. I upgraded to Windows 10 and now I can't connect to it through programs.
Here's a screenshot showing that my QNAP NAS shows up on Windows explorer:
Ok, now here's the missing path on my (really important business) software:
Worse yet, if I manually enter the path, my software gets borked and then refuses to open, with Event Viewer displaying one of those vague Event ID 1000 errors, "the process was terminated due to an unhandled exception." I have to reinstall the software in order to be able to open it again.
Does anyone know how to get software to recognize a path that it should be able to see?
I have a NAS device, and everything was peachy on Windows 7. I upgraded to Windows 10 and now I can't connect to it through programs.
Here's a screenshot showing that my QNAP NAS shows up on Windows explorer:
Ok, now here's the missing path on my (really important business) software:
Worse yet, if I manually enter the path, my software gets borked and then refuses to open, with Event Viewer displaying one of those vague Event ID 1000 errors, "the process was terminated due to an unhandled exception." I have to reinstall the software in order to be able to open it again.
Does anyone know how to get software to recognize a path that it should be able to see?
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Maybe you need to update your PATH variable in your environment settings?
Either that or mount it as different network drive?
You may also need to update the NAS config to use a Windows protocol more appropriate for Win10? I remember a setting in the Synology configuration that had options that would work for Win 7, 8, or 10.
Valkyr Junkie
Member
What do you mean in more specific terms? Those aren't mutually exclusive things.
A NAS is a dedicated network-based data storage device, whereas Plex is just an application to host media files (videos, music, images) to various clients.
You can run Plex on a NAS, assuming the hardware in the NAS is powerful enough for any potential transcoding.
my readynas wont let me see whats on my drives
raidar sees them , shows them in good health but i cant access the shares.
weird part is , i have another bay hooked into that nas with usb 3 , and i can see those fileshares no problem
i really gotta look into a check disk or something , ive had it for 2+ years no issues , dont hear the drives making noise etc , theyr both mostly full with 2x3tb wd red drives
really dont wanna lose the datas
is there a way to run a disk check with raidar?
edit seems you need to putty to it , kinda stupid you cant just do it in raidar , ill keep lookin
raidar sees them , shows them in good health but i cant access the shares.
weird part is , i have another bay hooked into that nas with usb 3 , and i can see those fileshares no problem
i really gotta look into a check disk or something , ive had it for 2+ years no issues , dont hear the drives making noise etc , theyr both mostly full with 2x3tb wd red drives
really dont wanna lose the datas
is there a way to run a disk check with raidar?
edit seems you need to putty to it , kinda stupid you cant just do it in raidar , ill keep lookin
Vire
Member
Sorry, I should have clarified, I meant why use a NAS vs a dedicated Windows Server for something like Plex. If that makes sense?
Just trying to figure out if there are any advantages?
iNvid02
Member
well they're more plug n play, easier to maintain and better compatible with mac. cheaper initially, although not as customizable in the long term. for basic plex use/storing files/backups i'd go with NAS, unless you already have a spare box lying around
Gotta give needs or usage scenario's for anyone to give a good recommendation.
No new Synology or QNAP is a bad NAS imo.
The Dutch Slayer
Member
Its finally happening 
Home server upgrade.
Now all I'm doing is setting over 20 TB from about 10 smaller hard drives to these 3 and then when I have money again buying some more 8 TB for backup + more storage.
Home server upgrade.
Now all I'm doing is setting over 20 TB from about 10 smaller hard drives to these 3 and then when I have money again buying some more 8 TB for backup + more storage.
Head of Vengarl
Banned
Thank you for the reply. I Googled what a path variable and environment settings were... it seems a little over my head.
Edit: I talked to a family friend who works in IT, and he told me to just revert my work PC back to Windows 7.
Edit #2: I was about to reformat my PC again to revert back to Win 7, but I wanted to try one last time to figure it out. And I figured it out. I had mapped the network drive in Windows explorer (actually my NAS comes with a utility that does it automatically for you), but I didn't realize you can do that from within the software's explorer. So yeah that fixed it. Phew...
Strictly for backing up and redundancy. I'm restoring a ton of data from old backup tapes and the like, and need a more accessible way of getting to it. No streaming or plex or any of that
Save money and get the DS416.
KeyboardThug
Member
Its finally happening
Home server upgrade.
Now all I'm doing is setting over 20 TB from about 10 smaller hard drives to these 3 and then when I have money again buying some more 8 TB for backup + more storage.
That setup looks great. Do you mind posting the components?
the 916+ can use BTRFS, another next-gen filesystem like ZFS that will provide snapshotting and is self-healing.
KingoftheRing
Neo Member
As a new owner of the 916+, it's a fantastic unit. I've got all my backups and downloads going there automatically, and it still has speed to spare during those operations. BUT....it's still not a great PLEX unit if you are planning to use it to stream video. I've had some success with 1080p video, but it's a bit of a toss up as to how well it'll handle it, not to mention the CPU will usually be nearly maxed during that process. Let me know if you have any other questions about it.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
Hey all, hoping someone can set me on the right path here.
I've got a very large video archive I am managing at work, it is approximately 30 TB at the moment, and expands at about 500-750 GB (or more) a month depending on how much video comes in and if any special projects come about that require larger allotments.
So far, I have 2 NAS, one is 10 TB, one is 2 TB, and a plethora of external hard drives hooked up to 2 different computers and shared over the network. The externals all have backups with only the newest drives on a real time sync. The older drives are synced every couple months as I have time to go through and back them all up. For the 10 TB NAS, I have that backed up to two hard drives that are not connected to anything. The 2 TB is backed up on some random internal drives I was able to find.
When I hit around 60% on a drive, I get another set of two drives and start using that for "new" video, but I still use the older drives as those folders keep expanding depending on what sort of projects come about. I'm trying to keep drives at a max of 85-90% of max drive space.
Right now, I have the 2 TB NAS I use as a "master archive" that contains shortcuts to all of the different drives so its easier to find the folders we need. Right now that Master Archive is very old and needs to be retired, so I'm going to be putting them on mirrored externals similar to the others.
so my situation is i have 9 sets of hard drives, 2 NAS, and every few months I get another set of 2 external drives (now 5 TB each). The external hard drives are taking up a lot of physical space, but considering the computers I even have access to are old (they're running Vista) I don't want to rely on using internal drives in case their hardware dies randomly. I like the idea of external drives because I can hook it up somewhere else and share it if needed even if it breaks shortcuts.
Moving forward, though, I'd like to know "better" ways of doing what I'm doing. I can discuss the nuances in what I deal with but won't get specific as to what all of the video is for, other than they are work-related.
Is what I'm doing pretty much the best way? Is there some other relatively low-cost solution to having high capacity, large archives of video, always available that are theoretically backed up?
I think we are past wanting to use normal NAS machines because they are thousands of dollars each.
Sorry for all the text but its a bit complicated
I've got a very large video archive I am managing at work, it is approximately 30 TB at the moment, and expands at about 500-750 GB (or more) a month depending on how much video comes in and if any special projects come about that require larger allotments.
So far, I have 2 NAS, one is 10 TB, one is 2 TB, and a plethora of external hard drives hooked up to 2 different computers and shared over the network. The externals all have backups with only the newest drives on a real time sync. The older drives are synced every couple months as I have time to go through and back them all up. For the 10 TB NAS, I have that backed up to two hard drives that are not connected to anything. The 2 TB is backed up on some random internal drives I was able to find.
When I hit around 60% on a drive, I get another set of two drives and start using that for "new" video, but I still use the older drives as those folders keep expanding depending on what sort of projects come about. I'm trying to keep drives at a max of 85-90% of max drive space.
Right now, I have the 2 TB NAS I use as a "master archive" that contains shortcuts to all of the different drives so its easier to find the folders we need. Right now that Master Archive is very old and needs to be retired, so I'm going to be putting them on mirrored externals similar to the others.
so my situation is i have 9 sets of hard drives, 2 NAS, and every few months I get another set of 2 external drives (now 5 TB each). The external hard drives are taking up a lot of physical space, but considering the computers I even have access to are old (they're running Vista) I don't want to rely on using internal drives in case their hardware dies randomly. I like the idea of external drives because I can hook it up somewhere else and share it if needed even if it breaks shortcuts.
Moving forward, though, I'd like to know "better" ways of doing what I'm doing. I can discuss the nuances in what I deal with but won't get specific as to what all of the video is for, other than they are work-related.
Is what I'm doing pretty much the best way? Is there some other relatively low-cost solution to having high capacity, large archives of video, always available that are theoretically backed up?
I think we are past wanting to use normal NAS machines because they are thousands of dollars each.
Sorry for all the text but its a bit complicated
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
at any given time old video might be required, its at the will of our clients and is essentially random from my standpoint. there is no way to anticipate what is coming other than to store it all and have it accessible.
the other huge ripple is that the video must be stored in HIPAA compliance (actually its SSAE something or other) so in researching crashplan (which i was looking into anyway) you have to do some agreements and all that stuff, not to mention upload it all. We have what is essentially home internet at the office (something i'm trying to push for a higher cap on but i'm not involved in the financial stuff). Some other gears are in motion that are limiting the amount of action I can do with that at the moment -- i'm not opposed to the idea at all, just that i can't plan for something like that to actually happen when it is up in the air.
its entirely possible I just go with crash plan and have a local copy of everything... i just don't know if thats the best way or not. i'm essentially the only person who knows about this stuff in the office
i hadn't heard of backblaze, will look into that.
unless you get some sort of corporate deal that is unavailable to standard users i can't advise using crash plan, for what you want to do.at any given time old video might be required, its at the will of our clients and is essentially random from my standpoint. there is no way to anticipate what is coming other than to store it all and have it accessible.
the other huge ripple is that the video must be stored in HIPAA compliance (actually its SSAE something or other) so in researching crashplan (which i was looking into anyway) you have to do some agreements and all that stuff, not to mention upload it all. We have what is essentially home internet at the office (something i'm trying to push for a higher cap on but i'm not involved in the financial stuff). Some other gears are in motion that are limiting the amount of action I can do with that at the moment -- i'm not opposed to the idea at all, just that i can't plan for something like that to actually happen when it is up in the air.
its entirely possible I just go with crash plan and have a local copy of everything... i just don't know if thats the best way or not. i'm essentially the only person who knows about this stuff in the office
i hadn't heard of backblaze, will look into that.
I have roughly 14tb of movies and tv shows all ranging from 10gb to 30gb files. When i download my nikon camera photos to my NAS crashplan backs those 50-80mb files up at 5Mbps, but when it goes back to doing the big files it drops to 1.5Mbps. I've been backing up for over a year and a half now and i still dont have my "initial backup" complete. And i have a stack of blu-rays i haven't even bothered to rip yet because i would like for it to finish.
I would look into a enterprise solution like Azure backup or VEEAM cloud service or whatever its called.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
i've looked at Amazon storage before, and plugging in some numbers for the Azure backup (i think i'm doing it right) it comes up with like 700 bucks a month for cloud storage just for 30 TB. which wouldnt even consider the ever-increasing costs as we get more video. definitely not feasible for our company. that's why we were going with hard drives to begin with and not new NAS machines every year.
i'm guessing its not feasible to go with a cloud storage service like that considering the amount of data... i suppose the best hope is something like crashplan/backblaze that have unlimited plans for cloud backup.
i understand that it would take a long time to upload, and i'd have to keep our existing backup infrastructure in place until that's uploaded to some sort of service.
at the same time, if cloud backup isn't possible due to the cost/security restrictions/upload throttling, i'm guessing SAN/NAS/Raided drives on a local computer is the only way to move forward? other than what i'm already doing.
i'm guessing its not feasible to go with a cloud storage service like that considering the amount of data... i suppose the best hope is something like crashplan/backblaze that have unlimited plans for cloud backup.
i understand that it would take a long time to upload, and i'd have to keep our existing backup infrastructure in place until that's uploaded to some sort of service.
at the same time, if cloud backup isn't possible due to the cost/security restrictions/upload throttling, i'm guessing SAN/NAS/Raided drives on a local computer is the only way to move forward? other than what i'm already doing.
The Dutch Slayer
Member
Thank you
Its because of the poser of the mastercase this is the best case on the market if you want/need lots of HD in your case.
So much better then all the nas solutions that you can buy they almost never have more then 3/4 slots for HD's.
I will this weekend because super busy this work atm and once its completely done I'll post more pictures as well.
There's so many options out there. You seem to have the freedom to not have the requirement of high-availability which allows you to use all consumer based solutions.
Do you have a rack? What is your budget? Is there a reason besides price that you havent just gone with an SMB solution from Qnap or Synology?
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
We have a server with a server rack. Wouldn't really know where to start for that or how it works, that's something that our IT guys deal with. We are going to be hiring an actual IT company to run our stuff, so that's another reason why we were waiting for them to be put into place before thinking about an actual "video server" and get advice from them on how to proceed. Its taking forever for that to happen, if it even does.
I looked at Qnap/Synology but they dont have prices for anything listed that I can see on the server rack things. We had an aversion to getting another NAS because they were thousands of dollars to buy -- especially as we were unsure if that is the "best" way to do it in our situation. i was also told to "figure out a solution" that didn't involve NAS, so this is where I'm at now. I'm a manager now so I have more weight in this regard.
Our budget is kind of whatever gets approved. But if i make the case its worth going with a certain solution its possible they just go for it.
as for an exact "reason" its because I just don't know how it works at that level. I'm doing what I basically would do at home, but applying it here with the tools available.
Thanks for advising/helping everyone. I appreciate it
I'm pretty sure whoever is giving you instruction has a fundamentally misunderstanding of what a "NAS" is.
A windows box with hard drives and CIFS is nothing more than a NAS. I give them the benefit of the doubt and just assume they don't want to purchase a dedicated unit for this function.
You could just take a spare PC, put all the drives in it and use something like Drive Bender to pool the drives. Enable CRC and possibly enable 2 copies of all files for some redundancy.. It's super cheap and it should work the same as what you are doing now except .. not as crappy.
You could always ask to build a ZFS based system and then show them what a SAN would cost as an alternative..
I'm trying to find an HA solution for less than $40k
A windows box with hard drives and CIFS is nothing more than a NAS. I give them the benefit of the doubt and just assume they don't want to purchase a dedicated unit for this function.
You could just take a spare PC, put all the drives in it and use something like Drive Bender to pool the drives. Enable CRC and possibly enable 2 copies of all files for some redundancy.. It's super cheap and it should work the same as what you are doing now except .. not as crappy.
You could always ask to build a ZFS based system and then show them what a SAN would cost as an alternative..
I'm trying to find an HA solution for less than $40k
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
that's basically what he meant, but i don't think he had a full understanding of much of this stuff anyway -- he thinks a RAID is sufficient for backups (I know it isn't, which is why i have backups now)
I do have a spare Vista computer, I can try messing around with that program on the spare drives I have in it and see how it works in the meantime before pitching to get a bunch of internal drives for it. That would be good for expanding what my current system is, at least. Maybe grow it from there.
I'm not the only one who needs access to all of the video, we have like 6 people total who need access to our archive.
my guess is i would need to have like 2 or 3 "spare" PCs hooked up with a bunch of hard drives with the Drive Bender thing at some point. the archive is going to just keep growing :\
D
Deleted member 12837
Unconfirmed Member
Looking to pick up a 4-bay Synology on Amazon. Do I want the 415play, the 416, the 416j or the 416slim?
Also, seems like the 5400 RPM 3 TB Western Digital Red drives are a sweet spot for price and storage? Any reason to go larger, or would it pretty easy to replace them over time individually with larger drives?
Also, seems like the 5400 RPM 3 TB Western Digital Red drives are a sweet spot for price and storage? Any reason to go larger, or would it pretty easy to replace them over time individually with larger drives?
What is it that you want to do with it?
3 TB Reds are fine but we are approaching the point where larger drives are almost the same $/GB. Look here http://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#sort=a7&page=1 and sort by Price/GB. Mostly just stay away from any 7200RPM 3TB drives IMO.
WD Blue's are a fair amount cheaper and depending on how you use your NAS will be fine, and can essentially be "turned into" a Red by using wdidle3 to modify settings like how often the heads are parked.
Spike Spiegel
Member
I'm planning to build a wired network in the home later this year or early next year, so I'm looking at potentially adding a NAS solution to the equation. I think a 2-drive setup in RAID 1 with >=3TB storage would suffice, backing up files/photos/music/video from my PC to share them with other devices on the network. I don't have plans to access these files from outside the home, or at work; I just want to move these files off my PC and external drives, and be able to access them from a central location with my laptop, Fire TV or whatever.
At this point I'm almost committed to the DS216j from Synology, but I'm wondering what if anything the plain DS216 does better that warrants the extra $100.
At this point I'm almost committed to the DS216j from Synology, but I'm wondering what if anything the plain DS216 does better that warrants the extra $100.