Spec me a New NAS

psd99

psd99

psd99

Soldato
Joined
7 Sep 2008
Posts
5,834
Hi, so I have a Synology DS416j NAS storing my files, data, and videos on four drives: 2x 16TB and 2x 4TB in RAID 1 and SHR respectively. All drives are seagate.

The specs say it maxes at 16TB drives, so two questions:

1. ⁠What happens if I replace the 2x 4TB with 2x 20TB—would it only see 32TB total, wasting the extra ~8TB (or less)?

2. ⁠Second, how easy is migrating to a newer NAS? I’ve read newer models need specific drives (Seagate might not work), so which models do you recommend? My current NAS struggles with 4K streaming, so the next needs to handle that well. Is it as simple as plugging in the drives to import the RAID? Or would I need to restore my entire hyper backup to the new NAS?

I did wonder about the configurational side too. Ie settings users metadata etc

Thanks for reading
 
I heard Synology now allow third party drives in their latest NAS but you may want to look at other makes such as UGreen.

You could upgrade your 4 bay NAS with another 4 bay one, install the 2 x 20TB drives in SHR or raid 1, migrate the data off your 16TB ones onto them and then add your 16TB ones in another SHR configuration. Seems to be a waste though having two separate volumes so you could instead buy 2 x 16TB ones and then add the other two 16’s to make a 4 disk SHR-1 volume with one disk being redundancy so you would have 3 x 16TB total available space.

You would just need to backup the data off the 16’s beforehand somehow.
 
Last edited:
I was looking to set one up a few weeks ago until RAM prices skyrocketed, an i5 14600k and 32GB of RAM would have probably been cheaper than a synology and miles more powerful.

If you're more into DIY look into running https://unraid.net/ on any machine you like. Unraid specifically supports missmatched drive sizes, whereas a lot of other RAID software requires drives of the same size or you'll lose the extra. You can also run whatever virtual machines / docker containers you want on it, use it for CCTV capture etc. I haven't used unraid, but it's meant to be very user friendly.

If you need more SATA drives than your motherboard supports you can buy PCIE SATA expansion ports but from what I've read they tend to be quite unrealiable and slow and you're best off buying a SAS HBA card with cables to allow SATA drives to be connected. E.g., an LSI 9211-8i and two SFF-8087 cables give you 8 extra SATA ports and costs about the same as the cheap SATA expansion things.
 
Last edited:
So i like the software and ease of use that synology have to offer

Plus, i need something that will allow me to easily import my two raids/data and not have to worry about copying/restoring data over
 
ok got it

so how does synology rank vs ugreen NAS's?

I fear with all of the configurations and meta data it would be far easier to migrate to a newer Synology NAS, I am looking at the DS925+ has anyone got one of these?
 
The M.2 slots can have various uses. I use them as the boot drives and for day-to-day storage to keep the HDDs from spinning up too often. The M.2 data is mirrored to HDD overnight. Backups of our PCs go straight to HDD. The other use for M.2 slots is as cache for the HDDs. Individual slots can't be both data and cache but the slots can be split between the two functions. So instead of having four SSDs in RAID10 I could have two in RAID1 and two as cache.

The DS925+ seems a poor copy of the cheaper Asustor AS6804T which has the same CPU, 16GB DDR5 rather than 4GB DDR4), twice as many M.2 slots, two 10Gbps and two 5GBps LAN ports instead of two 2.5Gbps plus better USB ports. Okay, ADM may not be as polished as DSM but I find it serves well enough. As is often said, you don't buy Synology for the hardware, you buy it for DSM.

Ugreen and Terramaster have some good hardware - the Terramaster F4-425 Plus is a possible alternative to the DS925+ - but their OSs have a long way to go although I look forward to seeing TOS 7 when it's released. Some people also have a reasonable worry about having a Chinese OS on their NAS.
 
psd99 said:
I fear with all of the configurations and meta data it would be far easier to migrate to a newer Synology NAS
Click to expand...
It would be easier just to keep your existing NAS and fit bigger drives.
In terms of struggling with Transcoding, then there are two choices. Either reencode content to a format that clients can play without Transcoding, or separate out the compute side to a mini pc leaving the NAS just to deal with storage.
Either a Chinese mini pc or an ex corporate mini pc e.g. dell optiplex micro, hp mini or Lenovo tiny are ideal.
 
If it's struggling to play 4k, it could be because whatever player is forcing a transcode rather than your NAS not being able to deal with 4k video playback.
 
I have tried various offerings from a Synology DS918+ to an Unraid self build and a Freenas self build. I now have an Orico 5bay DAS and its about as simple as it gets
 
psd99 said:
so what is the solution?

I have the NAS connected on a wired network - 1GB
Click to expand...
Any of the following:

- reencode media to a format your clients can deal with
- get better clients
- add a mini pc or similar to do the transcoding and leave your NAS just for file storage
 
And if it’s transcoding then upgrading won’t help because the vast majority of consumer NAS devices lack the ability to transcode.
 
Armageus said:
Any of the following:

- reencode media to a format your clients can deal with
- get better clients
- add a mini pc or similar to do the transcoding and leave your NAS just for file storage
Click to expand...

get better clients... what does this mean? I got a state of the art TV. I also have a decent specced PC

And to re-encode imagine how much disk space and time that'd take, we're talking 4TB+ of 4k data
I dont have the spare space to accomodate this.
 
psd99 said:
get better clients... what does this mean? I got a state of the art TV
Click to expand...
It means get clients that support more file formats without transcoding. TVs rarely support more than the bare minimum, do ideally you'd want a more fully featured client like an Nvidia Shield or an AppleTV.

Also things like subtitles (or the wrong type of subtitles) can cause transcoding, so again making sure you are using the correct options or upgrade to a client that supports them
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom