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Upgrade from my old WD Nas to?

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Dutchman

New Around Here
Hello all
Let me introduce me a bit. I'm Rini from The Netherlands. Sorry for the bad english.
Married, father of 2 daughters. Some days our house is like a chicken farm. Then I escape to the attic to play a bit with a few old computers.

Around 5 years ago I bought my first Nas to store our familie pictures / videos. And did use it as backup for my laptop. On that Nas there is an external usb drive that daily backup the Nas during the night.
It is an WD Live book duo 6tb that we have in mirror state so effectivly we can use 3 tb. In the 5 year 1 time an hdd gave up.
We replaced it and we were ready to go again. Not losing any data.

A bit later I decided to use the Nas as time machine for my both macs. That didnt really work well. I stopped with that.
We all did use iPhones at that time, most of us still do btw. We use the WD tool my cloud to backup pictures / videos to the Nas.
I'm using an Windows 10 mobile phone, lumia 950. And that phone is not supported by WD, at least it has no apps.

For our family we are using office 365 family, this is an paid service for 69,- per year. With that we have 1 tb space.
And to be honest it works very well. If I need to reinstall my laptop everything is placed back as it was. If I create an favorite from an internet website it is showing up on all devices.
We use the office apps on our phone for documents review / edit.
Since our Nas is lets say 5 years old now, it feels like each day the thing is alive is an miracle. That is why i'm here for a bit advise for the next step.
Perhaps it can run for another year or longer, or it dies in a minute.

With our old Nas there is basically not much you can do with. It does what it has to do, it does it slow (20 MB speed on gigabit), for us not real problem the speed to be honest.
I'm a bit looking around for another Nas as replacement for the old WD. And the choice is enormous. Bit overwhelming.
Most likely the first question would be, what are you going to do with the Nas.
I grouped it a bit.

What is an deal breaker:

+ Must have an app for my Windows 10 mobile phone. As far I understand iPhone / iPads are covered with all brands.
+ Must have access on the go, when not at home be able to upload the pictures / video's.

Nice to have:
+ Stream to 2 ipads at the same time, so our oldest daughter and wife can watch Ncis / Peppa Pig :)
+ Stop with the paid office 365 and contiue just with an Nas. Means that we create an document on our mobile devices, and save on Nas.
+ For dad play a bit with the apps on the Nas ( have a few old pc's to play with) when the girls are watching shows on there tablets, as far I understand a Nas these day come with apps. If the rest stays stable, and not jeopardy data loss.
+ Creating Favorites (website) on computer shows on mobile devices to

I was attracted to these devices, since they fit in my budget for around E300,-:
Synology DS216+II: People are liking the software
Qnap TS-251A : where I would like the usb port on the front, since our laptop has just 100mb ethernet)
WD My cloud ultra ex2 : Same price,but populated with 2 drives. Most likely no go, no windows 10 phone apps.

Perhaps there are much better choices for me, perhaps cheaper. I hope you can advice me a bit.
Would be nice if the new Nas can remain another 5 years.
thank you very much in advance.

br,
Rini
 
I don't think any NAS has Windows phone apps.

If you want a lot of add-in apps for the NAS to play with, then go for Qnap or Synology.
 
Thanks for your reply Tim.

On my mobile phone I did an search, and found Qnap apps and Synology apps. So these 2 are possible.
 
On my mobile phone I did an search, and found Qnap apps and Synology apps. So these 2 are possible.
I'm surprised, but thanks for letting me know. Good luck with your choice. I think you'll be happy with either one.
 
Hi,


Just to let you know, via this forum my attention went to xpenology. On the attic found an old hp 8470p laptop with 6gb ram and 1 tb drive. Have installed the software, and i'm now in a test phase if I like the synology software. Have enabled some packages I want to have. And currently i'm using 10% of the memory. Bit over 600 mb pretty constant. Cpu power is really low. Most time under 5%.
I have learned that I should be better go for an nas with 2gb of memory. Cpu usage is pretty low, so that is no bottleneck for my needs.

Knipsel.jpg


Knipsel.jpg


Speeds I get with this test case is 110 MB with large files, so that is looking good. Coming from 40 mb with the WD nas. It is now fully adopt to our network, meaning I'm already streaming from it. I have disabled the mediastreamer from our WD nas. Yesterday we watched already an movie on our ps3 in the bedroom (wifi), and it worked as it should be. It is in sync with our OneDrive. Access is much faster as on our old WD nas.
Now exploring a bit what is possible with the software, and it is a lot.

My goal is to keep this test case running for some weeks. If I like it probably going to buy an Synology with atleast 2 gb of ram, or go for the Qnap ts-251a.
 
Hi,

This morning I have ordered an Qnap ts-253a. Reason is basically :
* It is not that much more expensive as the 251a E295,- vs 349,- for the TS253a
* My main reason to get the 251A was for the DAS port. But, decided to buy an usb 3.0 ethernet adapter in the near future. This will solve that issue.
* It has an quad core, so most likely i'm more safe to have 2 ipads streaming as the double core 251A
* It come with 4gb memory. When I want to upgrade the 251a to 4 gb, Currently I'm running the synology app on an older laptop (I5 3320) and I notice that the memory usage is around 1,5 gb with what I use. The 4gb will give me a bit more buffer as the 2gb model.
* It looks a bit better, less plastic.
 
And it is party time:






My old WD nas. Emotional moment he did the job very well the past years.



Things has changed a bit over the years with connetivity.



Very nice Nas no plastic fantastic.
 

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