So at the moment I have a very old (slow Xtreamer) NAS with 3Gig of space. I put my media content on this, and run Plex on a little Dell i5 3010 Optiplex PC which then dishes it out.
I'm looking to replace/improve on this, and I believe leaving my Optiplex PC as the "server" makes sense - It runs plex and Logicech Media Server too (music stored on the Optixplex, but I guess I could put it on the NAS).
The NAS
So I need a nice quiet (as it's in my study) efficient NAS. I'm guessing as I'm happy to run regular backups of its content, it wouldn't have to be RAID, so if I could put say a 4TB drive in it, and later on put another 4tb drive in too? And I'd then want all that storage (eg: all 8TB of it) to be a single seemless blob. Not two locations?! Or as a rule, would different drives be shown as distinct individual storage locations?
It would be lovely run Plex on the NAS, but a couple of smaller TVs around the house are wired via homeplugs and cannot cope with native 1080p footage, so need it transcoded to 720p. I suspect the Intel I5 PC will do that without thinking.
Note 1: I have gigabit lan between the NAS and PC
Note 2: I'd like the NAS to powerdown and powersave when not in use, but boot up quickly when required. My existing NAS with toshiba drives is very slow to start up!
Backing it up
Bit confused what to do here!?
Given I'll then have 4-8tb, what's the best way to back that up. ie: At the moment I have a 3TB drive I put in a caddy and mirror my existing 3TB NAS. And while that would be possible to do with 4TB on the new NAS, when it's 8TB in size, what then?
OR if I have two 4TB drives on the NAS and both these are shown as distinct disks/locations, I guess I could do what I currently do then, and just backup each drive to another 4TB drive in a caddie? I'd just split my media filling up the first drive, and then start filling up the second etc... and point Plex to both sources.
So how do people backup 8 or more TB of data?
USB3
Does it make sense to plug the NAS into the PC also via USB3 to get even better performance? Or are the USB3 ports simply to plug in child devices?
I'm looking to replace/improve on this, and I believe leaving my Optiplex PC as the "server" makes sense - It runs plex and Logicech Media Server too (music stored on the Optixplex, but I guess I could put it on the NAS).
The NAS
So I need a nice quiet (as it's in my study) efficient NAS. I'm guessing as I'm happy to run regular backups of its content, it wouldn't have to be RAID, so if I could put say a 4TB drive in it, and later on put another 4tb drive in too? And I'd then want all that storage (eg: all 8TB of it) to be a single seemless blob. Not two locations?! Or as a rule, would different drives be shown as distinct individual storage locations?
It would be lovely run Plex on the NAS, but a couple of smaller TVs around the house are wired via homeplugs and cannot cope with native 1080p footage, so need it transcoded to 720p. I suspect the Intel I5 PC will do that without thinking.
Note 1: I have gigabit lan between the NAS and PC
Note 2: I'd like the NAS to powerdown and powersave when not in use, but boot up quickly when required. My existing NAS with toshiba drives is very slow to start up!
Backing it up
Bit confused what to do here!?
Given I'll then have 4-8tb, what's the best way to back that up. ie: At the moment I have a 3TB drive I put in a caddy and mirror my existing 3TB NAS. And while that would be possible to do with 4TB on the new NAS, when it's 8TB in size, what then?
OR if I have two 4TB drives on the NAS and both these are shown as distinct disks/locations, I guess I could do what I currently do then, and just backup each drive to another 4TB drive in a caddie? I'd just split my media filling up the first drive, and then start filling up the second etc... and point Plex to both sources.
So how do people backup 8 or more TB of data?
USB3
Does it make sense to plug the NAS into the PC also via USB3 to get even better performance? Or are the USB3 ports simply to plug in child devices?
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