A few Synology questions

[V4NT0M]

I'm looking to replace my current HP Microserver with a Synology but have a few questions about features/adding drives.

First off I understand some models have '4k transcoding' does anyone have experience with this? The microserver is far to weak for anything similar but was hoping with the synology I could use plex and stream media from the NAS to wherever I am, Is this possible?

Secondly I currently have 4 drives in my HP server and wouldn't mind re-using some of those drives but I'm not sure how the Synology OS handles adding new drives and pooling:

If I bought a 4 bay model and put in two of the disk I already have can I mirror those for redundancy? At a later date can I add another pool by adding more drives?

The scenario would be:
1. have two drives mirrored.
2. Add a third drive with a non mirrored second pool.
3. Add a fourth drive to increase the second pool size.

I am not too bothered about redundancy as most of my critical data is in 2 or 3 cloud services so I could just go for a two drive enclosure. Am I able to start out with one drive and then upgrade the storage with two drives without mirroring?

 

[V4NT0M]

Thanks @Rainmaker that is really helpful

Hmm fair enough, sounds like you are correct.

Although I still stand by what I said, best to avoid the need to transcode where possible.

There usually exists a client/device that can direct play without transcoding.

Are you a Plex pass subscriber? I read somewhere that some of the hw transcoding stuff using that was locked behind plex pass.

I definitely try to avoid transcoding, tried emby and plex but always ended up with some things that would not directly play.

I do not have plex pass and I did read somewhere else that the pass was required too, not sure I would use it enough to justify the cost. Most of the time I am currently playing directly via SMB locally. I'll probably give emby a go again.