NAS purchase and help

Capitano · 2025-12-23T22:09:00+0000

I have never owned a NAS but I feel like the time is coming where I need one more and more as my storage needs are increasing as of late!
At this current moment I am using 2x 14TB Exos drives (28TB in total) from Seagate that were both shucked from external drives a few years back, both of which are just in my PC as 2 individual drives. Both are still at 100% health and running with no issues but I am getting to the point where there is only about 2TB of storage left between the pair.

I'm thinking of getting my media onto the NAS that I can access from anywhere (like using Plex for example) and be able to store any photo backups, PC backups etc all on there too. Im not sure what the best way to proceed is, ideally I want to be able move these drives into the new NAS without losing any data (or spend extra unnecessary money) but I suspect once you start building a new RAID it wipes the current drives which I cannot do sadly.

To put it plainly, I need some help with the following:

1) What brand NAS is generally recommended? I hear Ugreen is new in the space and doing good things but may lack some functionality? Synology is also supposed to be a standard, but not sure if they will accept my current drives after their recent changes?
2) How many bays would work best for me? I have almost 28TB of data across 2 drives at the moment of just media, so im not sure 4 bays would be enough? 6 bays or maybe even 8 bays might be the solution but I need some help on what RAID to have it setup in?
3) If I setup 4 drives in a RAID 10 in a 6 bay NAS, can I think add my 2 extra drives in there (given they are same size capacity) and they can slot in with no issues afterwards?I ask this so I dont need to spend extra money on new drives when I can essentially re-purpose my current ones and get them moved into a NAS box
4) I have some 4K video files I intend to put on there, so will transcoding be an issue? If so how will I be able to that, would I need a NAS with a powerful CPU?

Extra info:
I have gigabit ethernet connection and within the next year will be upgrading to 2.5gb fibre line, so internet speed not really an issue.

Any help would be appreciated!

ChrisD. · 2025-12-23T22:32:48+0000

I'm not sure if UGREEN do a hybrid raid like Synology, but you could buy a 4 bay Synology NAS, set up SHR with a single drive, copy data over, the add a second, then third etc. And it will grow the volume without losing data. It will take some time to grow the volume after adding a new drive.

Capitano · 2025-12-23T22:44:57+0000

ChrisD. said:
I'm not sure if UGREEN do a hybrid raid like Synology, but you could buy a 4 bay Synology NAS, set up SHR with a single drive, copy data over, the add a second, then third etc. And it will grow the volume without losing data. It will take some time to grow the volume after adding a new drive.

Looks like I have a lot to learn, I dont even know what a hybrid RAID is?

Issue with synology seems to be that I likely wont be able to use my current drives and can only use "their" ones

ChrisD. · 2025-12-23T22:58:52+0000

Capitano said:
Looks like I have a lot to learn, I dont even know what a hybrid RAID is?

Issue with synology seems to be that I likely wont be able to use my current drives and can only use "their" ones

They have relaxed their drive policy with the recent updates. Be sure to check though. If they aren't proper NAS drives, you may want to find some though as RAID/rarity calculation and 24/7 running is more brutal on drives compared to running them as a singular drive in a PC.

Capitano · 2025-12-23T23:05:53+0000

ChrisD. said:
They have relaxed their drive policy with the recent updates. Be sure to check though. If they aren't proper NAS drives, you may want to find some though as RAID/rarity calculation and 24/7 running is more brutal on drives compared to running them as a singular drive in a PC.

Okay I will give that a check! Well my drives are 14TB Exos drives which are the server grade ones, a step up from the Ironwolf so I assume they are fine to be run 24/7 as thats what they are intended to do.

So - going with a Synology 6 bay NAS, I can initially start with 4 drives (4x8TB), get it setup with SHR-2 (Raid 6 equivalent) - move over my current data onto there. Then wipe my current 2x14TB drives and add them into the NAS as well for the extra storage without causing any issues? Ideally i think that would work the best for me

AyeAyeAhoy! · 2025-12-23T23:15:17+0000

Mixing and matching is weird... Can work well if that's what you want, but storage doesn't scale like you may expect.

Have a play with the calculator and see

RAID Calculator | Synology Inc.

Use this interactive tool to estimate the storage space of your Synology NAS when paired with different size hard drives and RAID levels.

www.synology.com

Capitano · 2025-12-23T23:28:39+0000

AyeAyeAhoy! said:
Mixing and matching is weird... Can work well if that's what you want, but storage doesn't scale like you may expect.

Have a play with the calculator and see

RAID Calculator | Synology Inc.

Use this interactive tool to estimate the storage space of your Synology NAS when paired with different size hard drives and RAID levels.

www.synology.com

Thanks! Judging by this, ill be better off buying completely separate drives all the same size and then selling my current ones then to at least recoup some money.

In which case would it be better to go for 4x14tb or maybe 6x8tb drives for the redundancy? I suppose if its a 6 bay one I wont need to worry as much for space even with the redundancy and I can run a RAID 10? Though the fear is that if 2 of the drives in a pair fail, then I am screwed. I currently have around 23/24tb of data which makes it a bit tricky on how to go forward

AyeAyeAhoy! · 2025-12-23T23:33:36+0000

Another option would be to buy new drives and keep the 14tb's as backups. RAID isn't a backup, and all that. Send them off site if you like.

Or yet another option would be to buy a 6 bay, put 4 new drives in for your main array, then add the 2 x 14tb in the final slots and make them their own pair. So 2 arrays.

Capitano · 2025-12-23T23:46:54+0000

AyeAyeAhoy! said:
Another option would be to buy new drives and keep the 14tb's as backups. RAID isn't a backup, and all that. Send them off site if you like.

Or yet another option would be to buy a 6 bay, put 4 new drives in for your main array, then add the 2 x 14tb in the final slots and make them their own pair. So 2 arrays.

this seems like a decent idea, can I set up 2 different arrays in a single NAS and treat them as if they are different? So I can essentially have a backup within the same NAS

ChrisD. · 2025-12-24T00:04:49+0000

Capitano said:
this seems like a decent idea, can I set up 2 different arrays in a single NAS and treat them as if they are different? So I can essentially have a backup within the same NAS

You can, but it would be pointless. That’s not really a backup. At a minimum you need the backup copy elsewhere in the house, but ideally offsite or in the cloud.