Reply With QuoteHaven't looked into it for a while but we used to use synology at work at it got a good write up
Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk
Hi all
I'm looking for recommendations for a NAS drive for home use, mostly for streaming music files,
one that is simple to set up and easy to use and hopefully quite running so that I cant hear it in use as it will be near the TV.
2 TB enough capacity for now.
Thanks
Ed
Haven't looked into it for a while but we used to use synology at work at it got a good write up
Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk
When you say 'mainly for streaming music', what are the other uses? I ask as if it's just for streaming music you could do that from a portable USB hard drive if your router has a USB port. Even if it hasn't it would probably work with a USB to Ethernet cable though I'd test this first using a USB memory stick. I use a very old (12 plus years now) Thecus N5200 Pro for streaming music and video and for backups and found that with a RAID 1, 5, 10 etc. that there was an irritating delay before selected music would play. I set two disks as a RAID0 (extremely fast but no redundancy) for the express purpose of streaming music and it's been great. The other 3 disk are set as a RAID 5 for back-ups.
For a simple 2-bay NAS look at Synology, QNAP, Thecus.
Where is the media coming from?
I mean how many other copy’s exist / what would happen if the hdd in the nas went pop?
Are you likely to do more over time, like backup your computers to the nas, store priceless photos and home moves, store tax documents etc?
The more important the files on the nas are and the less tolerant to data downtime you are informs how robust a solution to use.
So if it’s definitely just music you have stored elsewhere then almost any nas will do. If you think you’re likely to expand its usage then you’ll likely want to consider a mirrored nas and how you back the data up.
Latest or last years Synology with some WD reds. Job done
Thanks for your help
Flac files on external HD at the moment. But bit slow and clunky so looking for something faster
If you just want music..then look at terramaster nas. I have one that I bought earlier in the year which I use for movies and has been faultless. Good value and a little cheaper than sonology or a nap etc...
Also if it is for music you could just look at getting Audirvana. It’s a very good bit of software with a one off price, store music on a computer but then have “remotes” from other devices like phones or tablets that can play the music.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I have a 4 bay Synology 918+. Hard drives are noisy - I certainly wouldn't want a NAS in my living area.
If you just want to stream a music collection a NAS is probably overkill - an old PC running Plex will do.
Lots of NAS info to be found on YouTube.
I bought a QNAP TS230 enclosure and two 2Tb Ironwolf CMR drives for mirroring FLAC music.
£270 all in by shopping around.
I've a 916+ in living room and don't find it intrusive TBH. Occasionally chunders away but not a problem, obviously depends on drives installedOriginally Posted by Tony
I have a NAS (Ubuntu with a ZFS 4-disk volume to avoid bitrot for archiving) but if it was just for music, I would throw in another option that is often overlooked. Apple Music. Wait! No not for the streaming music (though that is excellent) but because it also offers a cloud-hosted copy of your own ripped music. Which is then available on any device, anywhere.
It's fantastic. I rip a CD (lossless for my home systems) in iTunes or Apple Music if you have a Mac and then it automatically appears as a 256kbps AAC file on all my devices (via the Cloud - it takes no space on the device). From these, you can Airplay or Bluetooth to anything or of course listen on whatever device you have at hand.
This used to be called iTunes Match (because it "matches" your own music library with Apple's own digital copies - it doesn't need to upload them into the cloud) but it got folded into Apple Music at some point. It certainly meets the "easy" criteria, as you don't have to do anything. Also acts as a last-resort backup of your music library if by any chance you (foolishly...) don't have copies elsewhere.
If you don't mind copying your music library to a NAS then Synology or one of the other brands are fine, but I suspect the age of each person keeping disks spinning at home with music files on is near over. When my NAS finally dies, I won't replace it.
Last edited by Tokyo Tokei; 21st December 2020 at 11:28.
You can also do this with YouTube music if you're not into apple
Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk
Probably more to do with personal noise tolerance. All HDDs will make a noise when they're spinning, and mine are spinning 24/7.
I look forward to NAS SSDs being a practical option.
Never hear a whisper from my HDD (video) recorder either.
Not what the OP wants but you can make a simple nas from a Raspberry Pi.
Fanless it will be silent and it uses next to nothing leccy wise. Pi 4GB will even stream Plex 1080p to a single device.
https://youtu.be/LOg4xfDQafc
Pretty much anything you cobble together will stream music.
As has already been suggested, the cheapest and quietest option will be to simply plug a USB drive into the rear of your router. Most routers have some built in NAS functionality.. For the lowest power / quietest/ cheapest option use a suitably sized USB stick. For your application this will be ideal. No noisy spinning drive, no requirement for additional hardware, no problem with write wear out of the FLASH (your application is write once / read many), USB 2.0 Flash will easily handle
Dedicated NAS boxes take multiple dives and use RAID to organise the data on them. This can be used to either protect against the failure of a drive (or drives) or to combine smaller drives to make a single larger drive. Or to do both.
Do not confuse RAID protection with a backup. Some RAID configurations will allow you to access your data in the event of a drive failure. They will not allow you to retrieve data that you have inadvertently deleted, or if the NAS box itself dies. Even if you have a dedicated NAS box, you would be foolish not to have your precious data backed up elsewhere.
Just so you know, I'm a storage engineer, I design enterprise storage systems. My employer also produce desktop NAS boxes.
You're no doubt right, but when you have a large capacity available to you you end up with large amounts of data to back up and it starts getting very expensive.
What service would you recommend for, say, a 10tb off-site back up please?
Assuming you are a home user...
Honestly, I wouldn't. I am not a fan of entrusting data to cloud services. I'd buy a (couple of) large drive(s) and look after it myself.
If nothing else will convince you, run a quick internet speed check and see what your upload rate is. Then do a quick calc and see how long it will take you to upload 10TB.
Ookla just clocked my upload speed at 18Mb/s. It would take me 1234.567 hours (isn't that a pleasing number?) to upload 10TB at that rate. It's not just an upload problem, you'll need software to take a snapshot of your data as the dataset will probably change as you're uploading.
Look for software that will handle snapshots & incremental backups and manage it yourself.
You'll probably realise that most of your data isn't vital and doesn't need to be backed up.
If you're a business, then there are advantages to going off site & you'll likely have faster pipes. Or if you don't you now have a business case for getting them. I'm afraid I can't recommend a supplier, it's not an area I work in. I design the disk boxes themselves. I only get a little involved in the firmware that runs in the boxes, I've even less to do with the host systems and I'm not even sure what a user might look like.
I have an a Raspberry Pi 3 in beside my switch and patch panel. It has 2 USB 8Tb drives attached. It streams all my music and video with no problem.
If yours is running fine, kudos to you for putting it together!
If you're using a Pi as a NAS, the Pi4 is the one to go for. The Pi 3's four USB 2.0 and it's 100Mb Ethernet all share a single connection to the processor. In a NAS, the data has to traverse this one link many times for a read or write operation. It gets bottlenecked very quickly.
On the Pi4 the USB and Ethernet are not only faster, they have separate links to the processor. For a NAS, there's no contest between the two boards.
Mine did, and I haven't.
Raspberry PI
Can these be obtained ready made ?
My electrical diy skills are about zero
Yes, they are fully constructed. No soldering required. Ideally you need a case and a will need a PSU. Pi 4GB model.
I just followed a YouTube tutorial similar to the one posted.
I have a Pi4 and a Pi 400 performing other tasks in the home. The Pi3 is handling the task fine but will rebuild with a 4 (or better if it’s out) when it fails.
Thanks for the reply.
You've reminded me why I've never got round to it. I'm not keen on throwing even more money at the situation for another onsite back up, and of course you're right about the feasability of uploading massive amounts of data.
RAID may not be a backup, but it's a very good insurance policy. It will have to do for now.
I wasn't trying to suggest that you should. Just trying to point anyone considering starting a Pi based NAS project to pick a Pi 4 over the 3.
You're very welcome Sir. As long as you realise the difference between redundancy and having a backup. The two are not the same. Also consider that a home NAS protects you from disk failure. It does not protect you from failure of the RAID card. When that goes, you might get lucky & be able to buy another NAS that can read the RAID set on the disks, but if you're not lucky the data is gone. Single controller RAID systems do not provide redundancy.
I guess what I'm saying is, RAID systems protect you from the most commonly failing component, the disks. They are not a panacea, they will not protect you from accidental deletion or failure of the eventually obsolete RAID controller. It's up to the individual to decide whether to use a RAID system, & whether or not they back up. I'm just trying to provide a bit of education as to the protections offered by the various bits of kit.
Personally, I see waaaayy too many failures to trust my data to a single box (we're talking digital photos & home movies, I don't care about ripped music, that can be replaced.) But then I used to design IBM's enterprise storage kit, so I'm professionally paranoid. I do still work in storage designing hardware, just for a different employer.
so whats the answer then for a home user with back up
Backblaze or Crash Plan imo. Cloud based so not a NAS but for the off-site element and the house burns down scenario you're covered.so whats the answer then for a home user with back up
Tried cloud back-up but is so slow and not cheap either. Now plan to have have stuff on my PC, on NAS in garage and leave 1 or 2 hard drives with video/photos with my son when he moves out in January.
Might still use iCloud and/or OneDrive for documents in addition to the above.
Well for photos I treat my NAS as the backup. The primary files are transferred from my camera to my PC. Once in a while I copy everything to the NAS drive (and to a large USB drive 'cus I'm paranoid about data loss). Like I say, I'm not that clued up on backup solutions for home users.so whats the answer then for a home user with back up
I use a Synology DS220+, which acts as a music server for my home. Inside it has 2 4tb Seagate Ironwolf in a RAID 1 configuration for 1st level back up . So far it works great and is relatively easy to set up. Synology also have a few free apps for your phone/tablet which means you can stream your own music on the go, anywhere in the world, as long as you have internet access. So no need for Apple or other propriety cloud/music based subscription services.
If you wanted to do more e.g. complete media server including TV/Films and/or CCTV coverage, you may want to look at a better spec with bigger memory
I agree with other's in that you should never rely on a server as your only back up and the DS220+ has a a direct USB slot where you can just press and it will copy your files onto a USB or other drive directly for a 2nd /3rd level back up if required.
Also consider Qnap servers as they are more or less on the same par as Synology and do not skimp on the quality of the hard drive. eg ironwolf or similar.
Last edited by zippy; 24th December 2020 at 20:55.
Great post so just to add that it kinda plays down the risks of fire, theft or flood destroying your data
Also consider that when a drive does fail and you replace it the remaining mirror is now working its hardest to replicate the data to the replacement drive, double disk failures of this nature are much more common that you expect. Be that because of hardware or firmware faults or age related failures
Storing a copy of data off site is a very good idea be that cloud or a desk drawer at work
Thanks,
You're right. Storing offsite is about protection from the elements. Personally I feel the risk of that is low and the pain of implementing is high, so I don't bother. But you're spot on to spot my bias.
As for a second disk in the set failing during rebuild (the process of recreating the data that was on your failed drive and writing it to a replacement drive.) Yes it happens and yes you are exposed (oo-err missus) whilst rebuilding. In a small home array, your chances of a a second disk failing whilst rebuilding are slim. Your array probably has a maximum of five disks. In an enterprise box you might have twenty or more drives in an array, so the chance of two failing together is much greater.
In the enterprise array, you'd implement RAID 6. It's capable of keeping going when two disks are down. But you lose 2 disks worth of capacity. No biggie if you have 20 disk arrays and 60+ disks behind your raid controller. However in a 5 disk home NAS box, losing 2 of them to store the redundant data is a bigger hit.
If you're worried about getting a second failure during rebuild, here are some things you can do to mitigate:
* Make sure your NAS does a background scrub. Whilst the array is idle, the RAID controller keeps reading the array looking for and correcting any bad blocks.
* If you only use your NAS occasionally, leave it on for 24hrs each time you use it to let it scrub.
* Don't choose huge 10TB drives. The bigger the drive, the longer it takes to rebuild. It can easily take a week to rebuild a 10TB drive and you're exposed to data loss whilst rebuilding.
* Buy a spare drive. If your NAS box holds 5 drives, buy 6. You're not just exposed whilst the rebuild is in progress, you're also exposed whilst you're waiting for the spare drive to arrive.
* Be very wary of SSDs in your NAS. Depending on how your RAID controller works you may find that all the drives fail at pretty much the same time. It's to do with the limited number of write cycles and the way that data is written in a RAID stripe. There are SSDs out there that simply stop working when you reach their write limit. Annoyingly the stop you reading as well as writing. The majority just inhibit writing, so you can still get your data back. If you're using SSDs pay regular attention to the write limits in the SMART data.
Whilst we're talking about drives for NAS, avoid shingled (SMR) drives. They don't work so well in arrays.
Also the most notable difference between an enterprise drive and a desktop drive is that the desktop drive will often attempt more error recovery than the enterprise one. The enterprise drive is designed to work in an array, if it can't read data from a block, no biggie, the RAID controller constructs the data from elsewhere and rewrites it to the struggling drive. This is better than having one drive disappear up it's own backside whilst it attempts 60 seconds worth of recovery, during this time your array has fallen over, host interfaces have timed out etc. etc. But on a desktop, the drive probably has the only copy of that data, so most users would probably prefer that it tried everything before giving up.
ETA: Jesus! Don't I waffle?
Regarding shingled drives, it seems that some manufacturers (e.g. Seagate and WD) don't specify whether their drives use SMR, which makes them tricky to avoid.
Getting back to a NAS for home use as a music streamer.
Buy the one that has the most jargon free setup.
Store the media files in the format that offers max compatibility.
consider if you'll really use it. Our music collection CD and vinyl was all carefully digitied some years ago. We hardly ever stream any of it! putting on an album is far preferable.
Seagate Ironwolf website show the cmr/smr type for NAS drives.
I set up my ts230 + Ironwolf cmr yesterday and it was a breeze. Took a few hours to synchronise the drives but once the data pool was set up you can begin migrating data while it builds in the background.
Enabled the media server function and my media appeared on the network instantly.
So it does, thanks.
Posting Permissions