Storage Spaces VS NAS

Robert

Robert

Robert

Soldato
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So I'm looking at options for increasing my storage, generally for media/music/photos. I use my Apple TV 4k and plex. My options so far:

1) Buy a Synology 418 play and fill with 4TB drives

2) Buy 2 8TB drives and install in my Corsair 350D and use Win 10 storage spaces (mirrored), eventually getting a bigger case and increasing amount of spinny disks.

FWIW, option 2 will be my main PC. I currently use this for everything...games, plex server etc.
 
Personally I'm using storage spaces in a 6 drive 3 column mirror using Refs and it's been faultless. Why pay more for another box if your current hardware is good enough for your needs. Yes a dedicated nas has some nice features if you need them.
 
If you have only one PC you really use or anyway have it running then adding storage to it gives it at low cost.
Again if you have multiple PCs/devices you use then NAS starts giving return for its price.
 
Storage Spaces is complex to manage, is not very flexible after you've set it up, and if you set it up incorrectly (there are several decisions you need to make) it will impact you down the line. In my experience (under Windows 2012 R2 and 2016) it is also extremely slow, and the worst thing for me (may be better in Windows 10) was that there is no visibility about what is happening under the hood without PowerShell. So if something goes wrong, you could potentially be blissfully unaware until it was too late. Also, Microsoft has removed Storage Spaces Direct (the newest feature set) from Windows 10 1709, which implies they are backing away from it, at least from the consumer point of view.

Using your day to day PC as a household storage device introduces the risk of you accidentally destroying all your data when reinstalling Windows or replacing a video card.

If you can afford it, a dedicated storage device is the way to go. It is purpose built, the software is designed for that single purpose, and you get expandability, monitoring, reliability all built in, and you aren't going to be fiddling with it after you set it up. Software updates are a literal single click.
 
Have been using Stablebit Drivepool on my Windows 10 Pro Home Server for years and it has never caused any issues or corrupted files. https://stablebit.com/drivepool

Was thinking about switching out to Synology from this as need to expand the hard drives and only 1 slot on motherboard left, but have decided to get a PCI-E card and stick with it. The system sits in the corner and "just works" day or night.
 
I’ve been using a synology ds210j and been very happy for it but am low on space and need to upgrade for one with more ha. 2 bays. The 418 is a tempting proposition as I’ll be able to use both lab ports on it.
 
I use a tiered, mirrored storage space of 2x256GB Samsung 830 SSDs, and 6x6TB WD Red Pros. It works really well, I would not want to go to a NAS as I'd still need the server anyway (for processing and transcoding) and I would lose much of the performance.
 
NAS for me, I have Xpenology and a HP Gen8 Microserver (which sorts me out with PLEX/, RADDAR,Sonarr, DOCKER etc) I don't think I could go back to HDDs in my main PC now, the bit of local storage I need is all SSD
 
I spent a long time considering this a while back and came to the conclusion that a second PC offered a more flexible route. I massively updated an old i5 660 ( generation 1 ) PC with a new case, psu and so on, and used it as a combined media and NAS PC. Thing is that it was cheaper than a dedicated NAS because I mostly had all the parts lying about and ultimately it's proven to be far more flexible. I mean make sure you aren't buying a dedicated NAS because it's novel! Adapting an old PC is more boring but it does have advantages.
 
bledd said:
Never looked back since I went to the Synology direction.

Yes it's expensive, but it's awesome!
Click to expand...

I've a DS418play and a DS416play all full of 6Tb drives. One backs up to the primary.

Works brilliantly. I'd never go back to traditional external drive models.
 
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