Hi
I currently have a Western Digital My Passport 2TB exrenal hard drive connected to my tv which houses a lot of movie files for the family.
I would like to upgrade it to something a bit faster and more able to cope with bigger file sizes. Would I be right in thinking I need some kind of media server and if
so, could anybody please give me some recommendations based on what they use
Thank You
John
I have Plex media server running on a regular desktop PC with a few SSD drives holding around 1200 movies. Works great and you can stream to smart tvs, tablets, phones etc including when away from home. It costs a few quid a month if I recall.
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A Synolgy of some type. Depending on the model you can run a lot of media s/w.
I have a QNAP NAS running their media server and plex connecting dvd files to the TV and FLAC files to the hifi.
Simple to set up and I’m a Luddite with stuff like this.
Buy a Synology Box and two Western digital drives. There are specific WD drives for NAS. 2 drives gives you some failure protection, but means buying twice the capacity.
They even have a "selector" page to help you choose. https://www.synology.com/en-uk/support/nas_selector
The very basic models have crap chips and can't transcode (convert) files well, but their others stuff is fine.
I don't run plex, you don't have to, their own apps serve files very nicely to any devices in the house.
I currently run a Synology NAS with 2x4tb Seagate Ironwolf Pro HD's for my music using Roon. Agree with the above, for me it's fine for audio output,however, for video you may be looking at a faster chip/more ram for video purposes . For hard drives, the recommended ones are Seagate Ironwolf or Western Digital Red as these are designed to be run constantly.
Only thing I will add, if you go down the NAS server route then make sure your unit is locked down as much as possible, due to a nasty ransomware attack a couple of months back on Qnap Nas Drives due to a security vulnerability. That doesn't mean any other make is not vulnerable, so just make sure you disable guest accounts, passwords are not obvious, and enable any anti virus /vpn packages. Once you get to know how your NAS drive works, then change the ports they use. I known this sounds like a lot but I was a complete novice when I bought my NAS drive and once you get the hang of it, it's reasonably straight forward.
Last edited by zippy; 18th October 2021 at 18:45.
If you are going to buy drives for these systems just be aware of the CMR and SHR issue. Particularly with what WD sneakily did with their Red drives.
Also worth thinking about how you’ll back up the data given the hours of drudgery that ripping your disks is
I moved away from WD products after the debacle of their My Book Live's being breached all round the world leaving many thousands unable to access their storage and everything on them being wiped. This through a security loophole that WD knew about for years yet failed to plug even though the fix was known to be quite a simple one. Whilst that in itself was seriously bad, the way WD handled and continues to handle the situation was even worse....
https://community.wd.com/t/help-all-...unknown/268111
I migrated everything from my WD My Book Live, (I was one of the fortunate few who wasn't hacked), and my WD My Cloud devices, (there are known security issues with My Cloud too), to a Synology 220+ with a pair of Seagate Iron Wolf drives running Synology's own, (improved?), version of RAID. All works so much faster than on the old WD kit and the apps that are freely available work on all platforms.
Personally, I wouldn't touch anything from WD ever again!
Last edited by Griswold; 18th October 2021 at 14:47.
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
Honestly, unless you're very tech, just buy a Synology or, if you're slightly tech buy a QNAP.
I work in IT for a living, could easily (and have) run my own server etc but Synology really is worth the money. I bought one 3 years ago and wouldn't go back. It sits there, does its job with no supervision, backs up everything for me and emails me every week to let me know it is ok. I run HomeAssistant, Plex and a proxy off it too.
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Originally Posted by Griswold
And this is but one reason why a nas of any type isn’t a replacement for backup.
Agreed, if you have spent mind numbing boring hours ripping your whole CD collection to your NAS drive, there's no way I'd entrust one kind of computer HD drive to hold all my data. A Nas Drive (or similar) can be a good way to access a large library in a relatively small space and in relative cost effective manner. One thing I love about my synology (and I dare say other's can do this). Is that I can access my music library anywhere that has an internet connection using a simple app.
However, all computer HD's fail eventually even the best ones, so it's preferable to use the 3-2-1 method of backup with one source being offsite, then if something does go wrong, or there is a 'zombie apocalypse', you can always get access to your data somehow.
I have a Synology NAS with 4x6TB Toshiba N300 drives.
I can't believe I ever survived without it. I have my Plex server on it and it also runs my CCTV system. It backs up my photos from my phone, and my laptops. It does all sorts and is accessible anywhere in the world.
Thank you to all for your replies and advice.
Although I am struggling a little to understand all of the specs etc used, I think that a Synology could be the way forward for me to graduate from just a 2TB HD plugged into the back of the TV, to a much more stable whole-family used piece of tech
Sorry to ask again, but could any of you point me towards the basic model that might work for me, as I’m struggling a bit with the Synology selection tool
Thank you again
John
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The simplest would be the 2 hard drive models. So the DS218 or DS218play in the value series. The latter being more suited to media playback. If you want something with a bit more oomph then go to the Plus series. If you get a 4 drive model you don’t have to populate it with all the drives right away.
Indeed. As someone who set up the Disaster Recovery service for a high street bank I have 3 separate backups of everything plus the original. A NAS is simply a way of creating easy global accessibility, neither more nor less. RAID, in it's various forms, adds a degree of reliability/redundancy to a NAS, again neither more nor less. RAID is NOT in itself a backup. There is no substitute for backups. But then, backups are only of any use if you prove that they work - too many people take backups but only try to restore them once they experience problems, which is often too late. All backups should be tested on a regular basis, but few people do this.
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
Ho yus.
Real world testing of backups (not only that backed up data can be read but that it can be restored into a working form successfully) is critical and is very often forgotten. It can be time consuming, potentially costly, and hard work to really test but it does need to be done.
And the is above is true even in a SOHO environment where costs are the key constraint. If you care enough to backup your data at all (which you should), care enough to make sure that the backups can be usefully restored in all scenarios (i.e. not just minor failure or loss of one or two files but in the case of complete system failure).
Could be worth looking at a Seedbox. This is what I used to use for media storage before succumbing to Prime, Netflix and YT Premium!
Seedboxes can resolve the backup issue, are scalable, and often include a Plex setup out of the box.
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Yep been there, walking around the empty dr site could often feel quite spooky.
I recall the “fun” days when a bad batch of fw on some hdd lead to multiple raid array failures when rebuilding.
Yep a minimum of three copy’s of data you care about and a known tested restore plan.
Maybe of use if you are thinking of a Synology to see what is involved
If you can afford it I'd go for a DS920+ and put four drives in it to take advantage of the redundancy. How much storage you'll need is up to you.
If you get a 2-bay, chances are you might want to replace it for a 4-bay in a couple of years. Consider spending the cash up front.
Word of warning: you might find it annoyingly noisy if it's in your living room. 4 big 3.5" hard drives rattling away 24/7 can be an issue. I wouldn't be able to live with mine there.
It's worth mentioning that if you know someone else with a Synology you can back up each other's data to each other, providing off site security for your data.
O do this with my sister, I back up mp3/flag and photos to here, she sends photos and docs to my NAS.
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I've a previous model, DS916+, from few years ago. Using 3xHDD + SSD cache. Any idea if the cache really speeds things up?
Never found it too noisy in the living room TBH (an Mrs K would let me know) though now in garage.
I have a 918+, which I guess was the predecessor to yours.
I've looked into buying cache but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't gain much. It suits a certain type of use.
Okay, my gut feeling is it's not that useful - what type of use does it suit? I do have a 4th disc as a spare I could install but don't need the storage yet.
You need to be constantly accessing the same data over and over. It will cache that data without going back to the drive again and make it (more) instantly accessible.
Thanks, I’m not! If I could easily do it I’d change Raid from SHR and use my spare disk instead of SSD.
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