I have an original ReadyNAS duo from about 2007 and its been great but recently its been rather unreliable so i copied all my data to my external drive and now i want to get a new up to date enclosure. Now im not flush with cash so i was thinking about £200 limit. My initial idea is a Synology DS218j as it gets decent reviews, does anyone have experience with that device? Or do you have any other recommendations?
Budget NAS enclosure ideas? Synology DS218j?
- Thread starter chickadee
- Start date
If power is not a problem and you don't want to spend much money then use an old PC with something like Open Media Vault or FreeNAS (this one requires a more beefy PC). You can still get low powered motherboards although their performance won't be as good. Will require some work but you can then customise it how you like (lots of plugins and features to enable if you need them) and then spend the money on the parts that matter like drives for storage. The install is pretty straight forward even for Linux, just the same as installing an OS. I've used OMV for 2 years installed onto a cheap USB flash drive and it's been pretty solid ever since. The motherboard is even faulty but hasn't given me any issues. You can also use it as a general server for anything else you may need (IPTV, web server, etc).
I've had a Synology for quite a few years, it's been great. I'm not a heavy user but it runs Plex, Transmission and acts as my media storage/backup solution as well.
Mine is a 214se so it's starting to feel a bit slow, so go for the best one you can with the budget. I'd imagine they'll be announcing the 219 range fairly soon.
Mine is a 214se so it's starting to feel a bit slow, so go for the best one you can with the budget. I'd imagine they'll be announcing the 219 range fairly soon.
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I have the 218j, and if you just want something to store files on it is fantastic. fast and reliable. it is not suitable for plex transcoding, but I use it as a file server to an HTPC and am very happy with it. via gigabit lan I get sustained transfer speeds of about 104mb per second.
I use my main pc for everything including a media server, I just use "Air Video" and "Servio" servers So all apple and DLNA devices can access my media drive thoughout the house. Also I set my pc to go to sleep after 20mins of no network access and people can wake my pc up remotly.
I might buy a NAS box somtime as people access my pc most of the day watching films and stuff and a NAS box would use a lot less power.
So the Synology box wouldn't be able to share and stream media.. is that right?
I might buy a NAS box somtime as people access my pc most of the day watching films and stuff and a NAS box would use a lot less power.
So the Synology box wouldn't be able to share and stream media.. is that right?
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