Need a NAS but which one?

JaseUK · 22 Mar 2015 at 12:37

There is a decent range on OcUK but I cant decide which one is best for my needs.

My needs are as follows:
1. A NAS that will hold two HDD's.
2. Stream movies to Smart TV and networked Blu Ray player
3. No more than £120.00 ish mark.
4. Gigabit LAN
5. USB 3.0

I was looking at the WD My Cloud EX2 as it seems to tick all the boxes. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-480-WD&groupid=46&catid=2125&subcat=2962
I love the idea it has a My Cloud thingy, does this mean I don't need to use a picture hosting site such as Photobucket?

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks

KIA · 22 Mar 2015 at 12:53

Can you stretch to £150?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-078-SY&groupid=46&catid=2125&subcat=2962
https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/DS215j#spec

bledd · 22 Mar 2015 at 12:54

Synology with WD Red drives

JaseUK · 22 Mar 2015 at 13:37

That is a very nice bit of kit. It appears Synology is the preferred NAS. Would you agree?

Rackerz · 22 Mar 2015 at 16:46

I would. Easiest of the lot.

StevieP · 22 Mar 2015 at 16:51

JaseUK said:
That is a very nice bit of kit. It appears Synology is the preferred NAS. Would you agree?

+1

Randall8686 · 22 Mar 2015 at 21:29

They are very user friendly, and I have one. However their UK support now sucks beyond belief. However I would still recommend the hardware. The software is very good but limiting at times but for what you have said you want to do it's more than perfect.

JaseUK · 24 Mar 2015 at 09:34

Ordered myself a DS215j and a couple of WD Red 3TB HDD's.
Thanks guys

bledd · 24 Mar 2015 at 09:42

3 ways of setting it up...

1x3TB volume (mirrored)
1x6TB volume (striped)
2x3TB volumes (standalone)

--

With a 4 bay unit, you could have a mirrored setup, then add more 3TB drives to get more space.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator

2x 3TB = 3TB mirrored
3x 3TB = 6TB (raid5)
4x 3TB = 9TB (raid5)

Currently I've got a 4 bay Synology with a single 6TB drive in. If I reach that limit, I'll add 2x 6TB drives to get 12GB of space.

As with any data store, keep a backup of your data on other hard drives too.

JaseUK · 24 Mar 2015 at 10:03

I intend to set the 3TB HDD's up in RAID 1

Furyus · 28 Mar 2015 at 07:22

Are you able to add more ram to the synologys?

bledd · 28 Mar 2015 at 08:59

Some of them, there's generally no need to though. They don't run Windows.

The only time I'd give one more team is if it's used as a virtualisation host

olivier renault · 28 Mar 2015 at 15:25

Synology are braindead easy. That's why I got one.

If you don't mind doing it yourself, you should probably build your own, but it's a lot of hassle.

JaseUK · 31 Mar 2015 at 09:30

Have been using my DS215j for a few days now and I agree its very user friendly. There are a lot of options and if you are unsure about something there is a help function for pretty much every application.