Help me choose a NAS please

Roverno · 24 May 2014 at 16:16

Hi all,

Currently i have an itx WHS 2011 rig with 5 drives in a software JBOD Raid setup. Its great but it can be loud sometimes and its far too large in terms of geometric size.

I would like to get a simple home NAS where i can store my films and music and also backup vital PC files. (wont bother with steam games etc, just documents)

I am considering a 2 bay NAS with a pair of 3 or 4TB WD Red drives in a raid 1 for redundancy.

Would anybody be able to help find me an ideal NAS for my situation? Thanks.

Also worth mentioning that i am on a University network most of the year which has some interesting features. Hope fully this wont cause an issue?

TheVoice · 24 May 2014 at 19:42

Synology, whichever one fits your budget and needs. I've got the DS214se and it's great.

Caged · 24 May 2014 at 20:05

TheVoice said:
Synology, whichever one fits your budget and needs. I've got the DS214se and it's great.

The DS214play is a new product line which has hardware built-in to make transcoding video files work a lot better for playback on DLNA devices such as TVs, Roku boxes etc. So if you can afford that then I'd recommend it.

Roverno · 24 May 2014 at 21:05

So basically you are both saying that synology products are certainly worth the additional outlay and I should just choose what I can afford? Their software and support are both good as well as the hardware?

Caged · 24 May 2014 at 21:31

Yup. Their support is excellent. I wanted to use a networked UPS that they didn't support yet, and they remotely connected to my NAS and set it up for me.

unleashed · 25 May 2014 at 00:09

RAID 1 is ok so long you have regular back-ups elsewhere. RAID 1 is good from a mechanical (disk failure) but provides NO protection against deleted files, virus or fire etc.

KIA · 25 May 2014 at 10:47

Caged said:
Yup. Their support is excellent. I wanted to use a networked UPS that they didn't support yet, and they remotely connected to my NAS and set it up for me.

That's really impressive. :eek:

Roverno · 25 May 2014 at 10:58

unleashed said:
RAID 1 is ok so long you have regular back-ups elsewhere. RAID 1 is good from a mechanical (disk failure) but provides NO protection against deleted files, virus or fire etc.

Don't worry, i know the difference between redundancy and backup

Going to have an off site solution as well.

Caged · 25 May 2014 at 12:22

KIA said:
That's really impressive.

Yeah, they've won me as a customer for life for all situations where one of their products is a suitable fit. I didn't want to forward SSH ports so they were happy to use a VPN (and install the client), connect using a username and password I had made for them, SSH into the NAS and set up the SNMP connection based on the details I had given them. Absolutely faultless service.