NAS Question

[Mitsu3000gt]

I was looking at getting a NAS to hook up to my router. Something basic, 2-4 drive bays.

Now, I see that lots of NAS' offer tablet apps for streaming content from the NAS to the device. That seemed appealing to me, but my question is does your computer need to be on to do that? I am guessing not, because it would be plugged into my router's USB 3.0 port (or ethernet?) and I can't see any need for my PC to be involved, but I am not 100% sure.

My goal is to stream content to my tablet or WDTV without having to have my computer on. I also want remote access from anywhere, kind of like my own cloud. Plus it never hurts to have some more storage backup.

I haven't done much research (yet) but was looking at things like this:

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX33812

[schocker]

I have a synology 213J and I can stream off the nas when it is on to my tablet/phone via the synology android apps. Network wise I need a new router, but it works through VLC for the most part. Want to see if it works better with a better router though ie R7000. As long as the nas is on, the content can be accessed via tablet at least, not sure on WDTV as I have never networked that. I would assume there is some way to access it through only the router.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Yeah I would be using it with my R7000. Basically I just want the following:

1) Full access to my movie/music library from my tablet (N7 2013) via wifi. If the streaming app can use VLC or MX Player on Android, then I should be good to go there.

2) Access via my WDTV to my movie and music library (I assume it can connect to a NAS just like it can a PC).

That's all I really care about. I think they all have cloud services, so that isn't a big deal.

Currently I have all that, but my PC needs to be on as well obviously since I am just running it off of there.

Are you better off hooking it up to the router via USB 3.0 or Ethernet?

[schocker]

That should work then. Look up the synology app, it works great. They have different ones depending on what you want to do ie, music, video, control the NAS. I researched a bunch before and felt that the synology was worth the extra money, especially with all the apps. The movie then asks for a program to open in so I use VLC and it works well but choppy due to the network. These are all 720p mkv I was trying. I would assume though there is some way of seeing the NAS via wdtv through the router. I use the ethernet connection as it should be faster.

[Mitsu3000gt]

That sounds pretty good. I will check out that app too. The R7000 can read just under 60 MB/s over USB 3.0 which is unheard of compared to pretty well every other router I'm aware of. I think that would be faster than Ethernet in this application, but I am not 100% sure. Write speed is just under 40 MB/s.

[schocker]

The app to control the nas is also nice to monitor stuff and turn on and off of WOL is on. I am not sure then I always thought gigabit ethernet was fastest, I know it is very fast from my pc to the nas wired through the router. Didn't know usb 3 was that fast.

[Mitsu3000gt]

USB 3.0's theoretical max speed is 5 Gbps, but the HDD is always going to be your weak link there. Also processing power of the router. Ethernet might be faster, I am not sure, but USB 3.0 can be extremely fast.

I will look more into these Synology NASs, thanks.

[schocker]

No problem. I believe there is a new 214se or something but it is slower and worse than the 213J. Note though that plex doesn't work on some of the synology I believe with the arm processors so I am out of luck to use plex and chromecast.

[spike98]

You need a dns-323 with 2 x 1tb drives...

Now that I think of it I know of one not being used and would be for sale lol.

Pm me if your interested

[firebane]

Don't bother with a NAS that uses USB they never work well when plugged into a router.

Get a good decent 2 or 4 drive bay NAS and hook it up via ethernet port.

That is what my next purchase is going to be.

[schocker]

Originally posted by firebane
Get a good decent 2 or 4 drive bay NAS and hook it up via ethernet port.
I made sure to get the 2 bay so I can have 2x 3tb wd red in raid for in case one hdd poops

[Mitsu3000gt]

These Synology NASs look great.

Reading elsewhere seems to suggest either the 213j, 214, or 213+ (which may have been replaced with a 214+ based on their website, not sure).

[schocker]

I think the 213J is above the 214SE, not sure if there will be a 214J but there was a 212J, but I waited for the newest version as it was only a few weeks away from when I looked into a nas. I liked the apps alot, the reliability and also the control panel/interface and available apps for the nas itself. I know this one at least is well suited for home use, is super quiet, only hear the drives spin up, and is cool I think with its one fan.

Just checked, the 213j is faster and has double the ram over the 214se.

[Xtrema]

Synology has many protocols out of the box. You limiting factor is the 1Gbps, as with all NAS.

But if you are going for direct attached USB 3 for performance (like AV editing), you may want to find something that has SSD write cache option.

[revelations]

DO NOT cheap out on the drives - I highly recommend enterprise-level storage devices.
DO NOT purchase Seagate drives.

The 323 has had better days but works for the most part - esp after firmware upgrade.

[Mitsu3000gt]

What do you guys recommend for drives? The problem seems to be everyone has bad experiences with certain brands haha, myself included.

Me personally, EVERY WD drive I've owned has failed very prematurely (1-2 years, light use, storage only). Those were both WD Green and WD Caviar Black's. Every Seagate drive I've owned is working perfectly, including the 7 year old one in one of my first computers, with heavy use as an OS drive.

WD Red seems to be a good choice, but I am hesitant to buy WD again. Looks like WD and Seagate make 2 or 3 "enterprise level" HDDs.


As for the Synologies, I think the 214 is different than the 214 SE. It seems to go 214SE > 213J > 214 (not SE) > 213+ (possibly now the 214+)

[RawB8figure]

Anyone here use Qnap? they also have a plex server app and you can update the memory, if that matters?

[revelations]

Backblaze did a test recently outlining the results of 10,000s of different drives they have tried. Basically confirmed what I knew already. Older drives (seagate) tended to perform better as they lacked the silly power down feature.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/


Dont buy WD green/blue - or eco anything. You WANT the drives to be spinning 24/7 as this significantly increases its life. Make sure Windows also disables drive spin down for your desktop as well.

My recommendation is enterprise-level hardware inside the NAS:

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX31343

[BrknFngrs]

Originally posted by RawB8figure
Anyone here use Qnap? they also have a plex server app and you can update the memory, if that matters?

I've been using a Qnap for 2ish years and it's been great. I believe the model is the TS439 Pro. Don't have a single complaint about it; interface is good, feature set is really good, integrates well with my other components (UPS, etc)

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by revelations
Backblaze did a test recently outlining the results of 10,000s of different drives they have tried. Basically confirmed what I knew already. Older drives (seagate) tended to perform better as they lacked the silly power down feature.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/


Dont buy WD green/blue - or eco anything. You WANT the drives to be spinning 24/7 as this significantly increases its life. Make sure Windows also disables drive spin down for your desktop as well.

My recommendation is enterprise-level hardware inside the NAS:

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX31343

Based on that blog, should I not be looking for Hitachi Deskstar drives? Maybe these?...user reviews aren't good though.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145561&nm_mc=OTC-sho6b0tCA&cm_mmc=OTC-sho6b0tCA-_-Hard+Drives-_-HGST-_-22145561

I hate buying HDD's haha, it's such a crap shoot.

[schocker]

I would get WD Reds. They are basically made for NAS and are much cheaper than that. That is what I use currently, 2x 3tb

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by Mitsu3000gt
I hate buying HDD's haha, it's such a crap shoot.

Everyone got their dark days.

IBM Deathstars.

Seagate Moose.

Now it's WD Cavier Intellipark fiasco.

So it's will soon circle back to Hitachi/IBM the have the next big issue.


Originally posted by RawB8figure
Anyone here use Qnap? they also have a plex server app and you can update the memory, if that matters?

Plex on appliances usually lack the horsepower to transcode.

Which is fine if everything you own is x.264 and your end point device and the bandwidth between it and Plex can deal with it.

But I love transcoding to pack the stream down to 2-3Mbps for mobile network streaming.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by schocker
I would get WD Reds. They are basically made for NAS and are much cheaper than that. That is what I use currently, 2x 3tb

I certainly like the price better than Hitachi or the Enterprise drives.

This article seemed informative:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7258/battle-of-the-4-tb-nas-drives-wd-red-and-seagate-nas-hdd-faceoff/2

This article suggests the Seagate NAS drives are faster and is rated for twice as many load/unload cycles as the WD red. The downside being it's a new drive. WD Red's have apparently been revised once already.

WD Re drives seem to be the way to go if you want to spend $300+/drive which I don't.

WD Se drives are cheap, and have a higher TB/year rating but a lower MTBF of 800K hours.

[D'z Nutz]

Originally posted by Xtrema
Everyone got their dark days.

Pretty much this. I find when you're looking for hard drives, just look for what's the flavour of the day for your specific capacity. Don't commit to brands or models and start from scratch when you're shopping, no matter how good and reliable they were in the past since technology moves so quickly.

[Mitsu3000gt]

^^ That's good advice, I tend to agree with that. The WD Reds have been revised once already, which I see as an advantage.

The Seagate NAS drives haven't been around very long, which could be seen as a disadvantage, but it performs better and spins faster.

Here's what the article found performance-wise:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7258/57945.png

[Mitsu3000gt]

Regardless of the drive, my research has pointed me to the Synology DS214 NAS. The DS213+ is more expensive, older, lacks the hot swappable drives, and has slightly slower transfer speeds. Anything I'm missing?

Could probably do with a 213J but I'm willing to pay for faster speeds.

The Synology NAS' in general get excellent reviews.

I figure that plus a couple 3 or 4 TB WD Red's and I'll be good to go.

[Mitsu3000gt]

I'm going to buy a Synology DS214 and 2X WD Red 3TB HDD's this weekend.

Would you guys run the drives in RAID 1 or in a 6TB configuration? I have 3 other hard drives for backup redundancy, so it's not the end of the world if one of these NAS drives die. I was leaning toward the 6TB solution. Thoughts?

The usage will be entirely storage + media streaming to WDTV and my tablet.

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by Mitsu3000gt
I'm going to buy a Synology DS214 and 2X WD Red 3TB HDD's this weekend.

Would you guys run the drives in RAID 1 or in a 6TB configuration? I have 3 other hard drives for backup redundancy, so it's not the end of the world if one of these NAS drives die. I was leaning toward the 6TB solution. Thoughts?

The usage will be entirely storage + media streaming to WDTV and my tablet.

How much data you got and how often you back up? How long does it take to restore?

Usually it's how much of hassle you want when it fails.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by Xtrema


How much data you got and how often you back up? How long does it take to restore?

Usually it's how much of hassle you want when it fails.

I'd say I have around 2-3 TB of music, video, photos, and files. The reason it varies a lot is because as I watch movies, I delete them after, so sometimes I have a ton, or sometimes I have hardly any. I could deal with 3TB if I decide RAID1 is the way to go. I am not going to buy 4TB drives, $200/drive is just too much for my casual use.

I was going to just buy the cheapest possible high capacity HDD's with IPR and run RAID1 on the assumption that if one drive fails, who cares, it's cheap, but everything in the 3-4 TB range is basically the same price so I might as well get the WD Reds.

The hassle factor if it fails is a valid point, it would probably be super annoying, even though its unlikely. A restore shouldn't take that long, the DS214 is good for over 100MB/s write speeds.

[Kinjou]

What is your budget? Some NAS systems come with HDDs already in them. I've had my DX (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=610) for over 2 years and I have found it to be pretty good. The remote access is a plus. I picked mine up when I found that amazon had it for a ridiculous price and PM'ed at Memex. Total 4TB set up ended up being around $470 with tax included.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by Kinjou
What is your budget? Some NAS systems come with HDDs already in them. I've had my DX (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=610) for over 2 years and I have found it to be pretty good. The remote access is a plus. I picked mine up when I found that amazon had it for a ridiculous price and PM'ed at Memex. Total 4TB set up ended up being around $470 with tax included.

Looking to spend around $750 including drives. I'm attracted to Synology as they seem to be unanimously recommended as the best bang for the buck (specifically the DS214), have the transfer speeds of much more expensive units, and from what I can tell, unbeatable software & app support. I'm pretty much sold on that unit unless there is something radically better. I will look into the WD Sentinel though. $470 with drives is pretty good. I see the 4GB one is $777 on newegg, and the 8TB is $1200.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Got it all set up, this thing is the tits (DS214 w/ 2X WD Red 3TB) . User interface is unreal compared to pretty much any other device. Definitely has that "just works" characteristic. Drive installation takes 2 minutes tops. Setup is dead simple, streaming to my N7 (2013) is flawless in 1080P, and MX player will handle DTS with a 2 second codec upgrade, for an all-in-one solution attached to DS Video. VLC will play DTS natively if you prefer, but you need to uninstall MX from your tablet if you want a choice of app. The apps are also amazing, especially DS Video, which sorts all your videos, downloads cover images automatocially, provides IMDB ratings, synopsis, etc. It even sorted all of my TV shows into seasons and episodes with images and synopsis' for each individual one. I am extremely impressed so far, lots more to explore still. It runs silent with no noticeable vibration. Thanks for everyone's help, especially Shocker for turning me onto Synology products. The only thing I'm upset about is I didn't buy one of these a long time ago haha. :thumbsup:

[schocker]

So with a decent network you can stream hd properly. That is good to know now. I used ds video also but it will sometimes tag things incorrectly but you can update it yourself. The weird thing is the cover url which you need to kind of figure out on your own.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by schocker
So with a decent network you can stream hd properly. That is good to know now. I used ds video also but it will sometimes tag things incorrectly but you can update it yourself. The weird thing is the cover url which you need to kind of figure out on your own.

Yeah I have no issues streaming 1080P movies w/decoded DTS sound a few rooms away in my bedroom. Audio is synced perfectly, and the quality is excellent. That doesn't have much to do with the NAS I don't think, but the router.

[schocker]

Yeah, still haven't picked up a new router .......:rofl:
Wanted to make sure there was nothing wrong with the app.
Now the asus ac87u is almost out too!

[?????]

I have a couple of these 4 gb NAS drives for sale if anyone is interested. :D Well just passing on the savings really. Just looking for what i paid $315 for both. If no one is interested i'll just return them.

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX46058

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by ?????
I have a couple of these 4 gb NAS drives for sale if anyone is interested. :D Well just passing on the savings really. Just looking for what i paid $315 for both. If no one is interested i'll just return them.

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX46058

Shit I'd of been all over that a few weeks ago. Are they brand new?

[bart]

Originally posted by schocker
I would get WD Reds. They are basically made for NAS and are much cheaper than that. That is what I use currently, 2x 3tb

i bought 8 recently, 2 died in 2 weeks

also i read, reds are just greens with different firmware

next time i will pay twice as much and buy the wd RE's

http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=73417

[schocker]

Today the ds video synology app was updated to add Chromecast support! Works great but can't play DTS or ac3 audio. Very impressed though with it. No lag at all. Tested out some top gear and now this feature makes the nas perfect. This requires the latest 5.0 firmware

[Mar]

Why not just get some cloud storage instead? It'll be cheaper and more reliable, I use one.ubuntu.com which also has a music streaming application and web portal. I can stream any of the songs from my desktop onto my phone and anytime I add new music to my desktop, it gets auto uploaded to my cloud storage incrementally. Movies would be the same.

As a better alternative you could just use Pandora for your music streaming, I prefer it over my library as it introduces me to new music instead of the same old stuff I already have. Get yourself set up with a US proxy and go to www.pandora.com.


Originally posted by Mitsu3000gt

Would you guys run the drives in RAID 1 or in a 6TB configuration?

The usage will be entirely storage + media streaming to WDTV and my tablet. I have 3 other hard drives for backup redundancy

Backup and redundancy aren't the same thing. Backup means you can restore everything after a drive failure, you have an additional copy of everything. Redundancy means your system will keep going through a drive failure and you won't have any downtime. If I were you I'd set it up in RAID5, that way you have backup and redundancy, if a drive fails then the system will continue as if nothing happened and allow you to replace the drive when you get a chance. If you set everything up in RAID1, that'll give you a backup but no redundancy. The other downfall of this is everything is duplicated so if something gets corrupt on your main drive, it'll copy the corruption to the second drive and then they're both useless. With RAID5 this shouldn't happen as it isn't a direct mirror.

I shouldn't have to add a disclaimer for this but I've been wrong in the past and I don't want someone freaking out if I got one small detail incorrect but this is how I understand it. Someone with more server knowledge might correct one or two things I mentioned if I got them wrong.

[schocker]

Originally posted by Mar
snip
I prefer a local solution. I do use Dropbox/Drive/Box/OneDrive etc., but for these volumes of data you would be paying per month, not have local access to the files and it would use up a ton of bandwidth. For music I do keep it locally, but away from home I use google music at the office and on my phone. I believe I can also access my NAS through the internet now so I can use that for files or video.

Not sure about the redundancy. I think the worry is not about corruption but of a drive failing and losing all data. I have 2x 3tb in Raid 1 to protect the 3tb of data.

[yellowsnow]

I just used an old Core 2 duo PC lying around as my NAS. installed Freenas, and bought a couple 3tb WD red drives. Great alternative if you have an old PC. The only downside is that it's not a nice compact case like the dedicated NAS systems.

freenas is a great piece of software. it's free (duh), supports multiple file transfer protocols (AFP, SMB, CIFS, etc). if you want it to be in the cloud, you just download a plugin from the web interface and it's ready. Streams 1080p seamlessly via my wifi network.

ZFS is also very easy to integrate if you're interested in doing that instead of RAID.

Other plugins i have installed include transmission, sabnzbd, couchpotato, sickbeard, firefly, plex etc

i'll also be installing the crashplan plugin soon too... it basically allows me to upload my data encrypted to my parents' house automatically. i just need to install a freenas server at their house first.

[rage2]

Originally posted by schocker
I prefer a local solution. I do use Dropbox/Drive/Box/OneDrive etc., but for these volumes of data you would be paying per month, not have local access to the files and it would use up a ton of bandwidth.
The bandwidth usage is exaggerated. Just because you have a couple of TB's stored over the cloud doesn't mean you access all that data monthly. The most cloud usage I use are my movies, I have about 200 purchased on iTunes, average of say 10GB each, or around 2TB of movies. I sure the hell don't pull anywhere near that monthly since I can't possibly watch every single movie in the collection.

The pricing for TB's of storage is still a bit high for my tastes, but it's dropping quickly. The only thing I have left on my NAS are my photos and archives of crap in the last 20 years. I'm just waiting for the cost of cloud storage to drop before I move the rest of it off for good.

[benyl]

Google just dropped their prices. 1 TB of storage is $10 / month. Cheap for a baller like you. haha

[schocker]

Maybe I watch movies all day :rofl:
The initial upload would be huge though, if I have 2+ TB to back up at once, that would be 5 months on shaw bb50 (400gb transfer per month) without any other internet traffic. Google drive for example is now:
15gb Free, 100gb $2/m, 1tb $10/m, 10tb $100/m, 20tb $200/m, 30tb $300/m which is pretty cheap

[RawB8figure]

If you go with a 4 bay NAS can you use 2 bays for media (Raid 0) as one volume. Then use the other 2 bays for docs,picse, etc (Raid 1) as another volume.. So on your network it will show as 2 separate volumes?

[macman64]

Originally posted by RawB8figure
If you go with a 4 bay NAS can you use 2 bays for media (Raid 0) as one volume. Then use the other 2 bays for docs,picse, etc (Raid 1) as another volume.. So on your network it will show as 2 separate volumes?

Yes with most products. Not sure why you would want to do that as you don't gain any performance on the RAID 0 with a standard home network. RAID 1 is excessive for docs and pics.

[sputnik]

Originally posted by macman64
RAID 1 is excessive for docs and pics.

Why would you say that?

I have all my pictures and documents in a RAID1 array because they are the only things I would hate to lose.

[EK69]

Exactly movies and mp3 can be downloaded again. Docs and pics can't.

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by sputnik


Why would you say that?

I have all my pictures and documents in a RAID1 array because they are the only things I would hate to lose.

I think he meant picking RAID1 over RAID5 (or mirroring over anything with parity) because of performance.

[sputnik]

Originally posted by Xtrema


I think he meant picking RAID1 over RAID5 (or mirroring over anything with parity) because of performance.

I would sooner have the simplicity and performance of RAID1 at the cost of some disk space than have to deal with RAID5.

[firebane]

Originally posted by sputnik


I would sooner have the simplicity and performance of RAID1 at the cost of some disk space than have to deal with RAID5.

RAID isn't meant for speed its meant more for a storage means and I'd rather have a RAID 5 than a RAID 1 array any day.

At least with RAID 5 if you lose a drive you can how swap it and continue on. And if you lose a couple of drives your still ok.

RAID 1 you lose 2 drives and your array is toast.

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by firebane


RAID isn't meant for speed its meant more for a storage means and I'd rather have a RAID 5 than a RAID 1 array any day.

At least with RAID 5 if you lose a drive you can how swap it and continue on. And if you lose a couple of drives your still ok.

RAID 1 you lose 2 drives and your array is toast.

Both 1 and 5 will be toasted if you lose 2 drives in an array. If you have more than 2 drives in RAID1, it's RAID10.

The only difference between 5 and 1 is usable space. 5 has more usable space but bad write performance. 1 has better write performance but less space. Read is almost identical.

1 also loses 50% to parity. 5 loses as much as 33% and go down from there depends on how many drives you have in the array.

[sputnik]

The other problem with RAID5 is rebuilding the array.

Some NAS devices force you to format your drives before you can use them in the enclosure. Should you have a NAS enclosure fail and have a RAID5 array it may be a much more difficult process rebuilding your array without losing your data. Especially if they no longer make your type of enclosure.

With RAID1 you can just take a drive, throw it in a single drive USB enclosure and read it from there.

[macman64]

Originally posted by sputnik


Why would you say that?

I have all my pictures and documents in a RAID1 array because they are the only things I would hate to lose.

For a home NAS I would rather run all the drives in a single array using SHR (if using a synology) since you get far better performance and still can loose one drive, and since we should have backups up any items that you don't want to lose then the slightly higher chance of having a catastrophic failure doesn't outweigh the usability of a single array. To top it all off if you use SHR performance is almost the same as RAID 0 but with being allowing for a single drive failure and on the fly expansion.