It's true there's nothing "special" about a NAS - it's just a computer running a thing (typically storage / file sharing) which is certainly possible in Windows or whatever other PC you're already using.I say this after having posted MANY times in the PC-help threads about setting up my home network, so take this with a whole pile of salt...
(TLDR: The solution to my issue was to refresh my window, basically.)
Windows 10 (and 7) will automatically do anything you could ever possibly want to do with a NAS, plus more, and better, for free.
It just takes five minutes to set up (plus a whole ton of trouble-shooting, if you make a basic mistake like I did), and then it will work forever, effortlessly.
At the moment, I have five computers, all on the same network:
My main PC - 2 tb
My side PC - 4 tb
Wife's PC - 4 tb
Guest room PC - 1 tb
Living Room PC - 25 tb
They can all read/write to each other, but the only one that ever really gets touched is the Living Room PC, which the rest of the machines use as a media center.
When I couldn't figure out how to make the network work, I ended up getting PLEX as a potential solution.
It absolutely did not do even remotely what I wanted it to do, but it did actually end up being really useful for watching my own media from other devices while on the go; so I kept it.
Do you find much benefit in streaming your music from home rather than loading up on your device? I've not found much use for it myself. What I listen to regularly I can easily load up on a memory card. I've looked into it, trying to find a reason to do it. I do have it available in Emby, but I don't think anyone in my family really plays music that way and it's not great in Emby.I have a Synology DS920+, upgraded to 20GB of RAM (initial 4GB + 16GB stick) and a 2TB NVMe cache. 4x 8TB Seagate IronWolf drives. This thing is an absolute beast.
I have a lot of cool applications I use this for, but the ones that get the most use are definitely my media apps:
Komga
I use this as a web interface for my digital manga and comics collection. It keeps track of what I've read, what I'm reading (what page I'm on), etc. I kept buying a bunch of Humble Bundle comic bundles and needed a way to sort and organize them, this fits the bill perfectly.
Airsonic Advanced
A music server that works with subsonic-compatible mobile apps. I used to use Google Music, but it shit the bed when it became Youtube, so this is what I use now, and I like it a lot.
Jellyfin
Movies and TV shows. This is similar to Plex, but I like it a lot more than Plex because it's not mucked up with all their subscription garbage.
Audiobookshelf
Serves up audiobooks. Think of it like your own self-hosted Audible library. In fact, that's still where I get my audiobooks from - I just have an application that rips them from Audible into M4B format which I then load into Audiobookshelf. Newest release also manages podcasts. I was previously doing this with Airsonic but have moved my subscriptions over to this.
Calibre-Web
Web-based version of Calibre. Excellent for organizing digital books. Similar to Komga but geared more for stuff like ePub instead of CBZ files. My general rule of thumb is that if it's text, it goes in this - and if it's pictures it goes in Komga.
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Tons of other stuff I have runs on this: Sickchill, Sabnzbd, Zoneminder, filestash, PhotoPrism, WordPress, Whoogle, Invidious, etc.
Personally yeah, but mostly because the phone apps make it a completely seamless experience. Like - if I know I'm going to be hiking or something (without data or wifi) I can just push the "pin" button on my subsonic player and it will download those tracks to my device so I can play them offline - which gives you the same type of experience as just downloading the files and putting them on an SD card or something.Do you find much benefit in streaming your music from home rather than loading up on your device? I've not found much use for it myself. What I listen to regularly I can easily load up on a memory card. I've looked into it, trying to find a reason to do it. I do have it available in Emby, but I don't think anyone in my family really plays music that way and it's not great in Emby.
The one thing that's kept it on my mind is having unified ratings and playlists across all my devices, but I'm not sure paying for more data is worth it for that.
Do you need the storage to be accessible to other computers? If so, do you keep your PC running 24x7?I always thought about doing one but never knew why I would. Why not just drop the drives into a computer? Serious question
I was just about to buy a Buffalo Link station. I had no idea about any prevailing security issues.I have a Buffalo NAS but due to Samba security issue and lack of updates, I had to stop using it.