Hello mate. In a nutshell, very good.
I'd research NAS drives up to my back teeth but in the end it was the Plex supported appliances list that detailed the QNAP Pro and upwards were the only models where I was going to get transcoding and the standalone/PC turned off Plex server was exactly what I was after with long term storage.
So I've got it running now with 2x 3TD WD Reds in RAID 5 which was just big enough to transfer all my data from my RAID 10 array on my desktop. As a result, I've managed to pull 2 x 2TB drives out now and get them in there too and after copious work and research, extended the RAID array to include these. The Reds are 6Gbps and the 2TBs are 3gps but I'm having no issues at present and I'm genuinely surprised at the speed. I've recently added the no-brainer 30 quid 8GB memory stick in there too.
The applications are generally very good, I've already run the cloud sync app to link certain data to my dropbox and set a schedule for that sync. Plex is running wonderfully and I've had no issues there. It's exactly as I wanted/expected.
HD Station is setup and it's nice to have that keyboard and mouse interaction on my big screen telly although I've done little there other than surfing for the novelty. I have setup Kodi though and intend to play with that a little further.
Virtualisation station will be next as I want to get at least Server 2012 if not more VMs up and running but I've not had the time as yet.
That's one negative here, I've sunk a lot of time into the box so far. It's far far more technical than I expected in an IT professional kind of way, rather than the Apple ease-of-use crew. Maybe that's because it's linux based and thus people who know better have made assumptions on it's use. For example... I've been trying to get a Plex plug in channel to work. I've downloaded the zip to place in the Plex installation folder, which is detailed on the Plex site. However I couldn't find that at all in the File Manager or when mapped to the box from my PC.
In the end, after a lot of frustrating searching, I found a very old forum post that detailed I needed to SFTP to the box to get access to that folder. That peeved me off!
Other than that, it's been a very good purchase. Much more expensive than I ever wanted to spend I think but my objectives of an always on, quiet, Plex server with long term storage and more than 2 bay RAID has been achieved. Now I can butcher my gaming PC a lot more often without pooping it about what's going to happen to the RAID array in it!
