Just spent $3000 on NAS what now?

[di4medollaz]

So i just bought my first ever NAS cause i want huge storage for 4k movies and my overflowing PC games.
I dont really understand what capabilities a NAS has besides storage but from what i have been reaserching there is quite alot of stuff you can do but i dont understand some of the terminology people use , also im not sure how to hook everything up.

My setup is in my room and its a SLI gaming PC with a Rampage extreme x99 motherboard with every connection known to man and bluetooth , wireless ac , 2 ethernet ports ect and its hooked up to my big screen 65 inch oled tv and a top range soundbar and my router is right beside everything for perfect access.

The gear i bought is not here for a few days but here is what i bought.
Synology DS918+ 3x ironwolf pro 8tb , WD blue 250gb M.2. Ssd for chache "saleseman said a must" seems overkill , The newest Asus router RT-AC86U , and i spoiled myself with a Samsung M.2 1TB 960 PRO Nvme for my PC cause i just recently seen a review and the 3500 MBps read and 2100 MBps write is ridiculous fast and my M.2 slot is open.

1. So i know NAS will plug into my new router but since i watch 99% of my shows through my PC can i not also hook the NAS up to my PC through usb 3.1 Or the second ethernet port? wouldnt that be faster then wireless?

2. I kinda dont wanna set up a raid mirror hard drive cause those 8tb ironwolf pros are super expensive and i would be throwing away 8tb. Could i not just copy paste whatever i dont wanna lose to the other drive?
or even buy a 8tb fourth hard drive and have that mirror all 3 of the 8tb drives cause they will take forever to fill. Or how does raid 5 work anyway? from what i read i could set up all 3 8tb drives and if one fails i lose nothing but wouldnt that still take up 8tb?

4. What can a mid level NAS like the 918+ do? besides streaming plex to my PC? Even stuff i might not use or need. Just wanna know whats possible. THANKS

 

[RMerlin]

1) No. NAS means Network Attached Storage, so it has to be accessed over the LAN. The NAS should be able to saturate a 1Gbps LAN, so that's fast enough for pretty much anything (USB attached disks aren't really faster than that in general anyway).

2) Regardless of whether you go RAID or not, you will want some form of backup anyway, typically in the form of a USB disk.

RAID 5 would be a solution if you want to limit the amount of lost storage. Three 8 TB HDDs in RAID 5 would give you roughly 16 TB of storage - third disk is used as a parity disk. Be warned however that RAID 5 on a large RAID is generally not a good idea. Rebuilds can take days, and they carry a fairly high risk of failure during the rebuild.

When dealing with RAIDs, it's usually best to go with something like RAID 1, RAID 10, or RAID 6. Yes, it can get expensive with such capacities, but that's the price to pay if you want reliability.

And to reiterate: whatever the chosen RAID solution, you need some form of external backups.

3) Walk through the Synology webui to discover what it offers. Synology and QNAP NAS offer tons of features, and you can even add new features through external applets. Enumerating all of these in a forum post would be impossible.

One thing I use my own NAS for, beside as an HTPC, is I run Onedrive on it. Any files that I copy to that folder automatically gets synced with OneDrive, without the need of wasting more valuable disk space on all of my computers (Windows 10 Fall Creator Update now supports placeholder links, where files only get downloaded on first access). Not sure if Synology offers a Onedrive applet (I have an Asustor).

 

[di4medollaz]

Im starting to think buying a NAS was a big mistake.

My DS918+ and 3x snow wolf pro 8tb is set up now and everything seems to be in order and i have set up the add ons ect but im starting to think a NAS was wrong for me to buy for what i needed it for.

I basically just wanted somewhere to store my media files with a little redundancy to free up room on my PC and to watch movies off using VLC media player and i could have just got a enclosure and connected it to my HTPC or even just thrown the hard drives on my HTPC cause it has 1500 watt power supply and massive amounts of connections with my X99 Rampage extreme motherboard but i figured i already have 4 hard drives in it and with a NAS i can play stuff from any device and have other stuff i can do if i want too. So i have a few questions to see if im gonna pull the new hard drives and put them into my PC and buy a few smaller Cheaper 4tb drives for the NAS.

1. I dont like plex. Im also having a tough time cause its not seeing half my MKV files unless i make it a folder view. I would rather play files off VLC or power dvd 17
and i dont wanna have to manually open movie files through the players and i dont wanna use synology media player either so my question is can i make DSM file station play the mkv files off VLC media player instead of Synology one by default when i double click?

2. Can i browse my NAS hard drives files in windows 10 like i would a external hard drive or usb thumb drive? if i can do that i will keep the drives in the NAS.

Sorry for all the questions and thanks for the help

 

[ColinTaylor]

I don't have a Synology, but from what I understand the answer to question 2 (and by implication question 1) would be to simply create shared folders that can be accessed by your PC. I believe this is done in the Control Panel by going to File Services and enabling SMB. Then going to Shared Folder and creating folders as required. I don't know the specifics but I'm sure there is documentation for the procedure.

 

[RMerlin]

Almost every media streamer supports SMB, so use that instead of Plex. You could also use DLNA.

 

[FatherLandDescendant]

2. Can i browse my NAS hard drives files in windows 10 like i would a external hard drive or usb thumb drive? if i can do that i will keep the drives in the NAS.

Yes you can browse your files on a NAS through File Explorer if you have network and file sharing turned on.

 

[sfx2000]

I dont really understand what capabilities a NAS has besides storage but from what i have been reaserching there is quite alot of stuff you can do but i dont understand some of the terminology people use , also im not sure how to hook everything up.

Hate to say it - but if you spent $3K on a NAS and not knowing what to do with it...

A NAS at that level is capable of doing many things - but are those things that it does meet your needs?

 

[EngChi]

I think you have a mild case of buyers remorse which is ok with any purchase -nothing crazy here.
few other things - I do not see where you are getting $3000 - the Synology 916+ is $550 from Amazon which is ok for a four drive NAS. nothing crazy here. Or are you lumping everything together and blaming some single component (Hard drives, SSDs, other parts for your PC)? NAS is NAS, hard drives are hard drives, etc

Now to your questions
- you can play files on your "network hard drive" (NAS) , using any program you want, VLC, media player, whatever. NAS does not control it and does not care
- you can access it from any OS in your network , it does not care
- your "network hard drive" has built in redundancy, security, includes security updates, has "apps" (packages) , and could be a central storage for your network. take the time of looking at the DSM and its capabilities. I use mine integrated with domain I am running, providing storage for a different machine where I do actually run Plex, being target for my Windows backups, providing isci storage for my domain controller . I use a lower capacity hardware (216j) and am very happy with it, low power consumption, redundant, secure, cheap (there is no way I can build a system anywhere close to the price of the 216j that would have these capabilities and this power consumption)

 

[LocalDude]

OMG!!! Yeah, a NAS can do lots of cool stuff. I'm using an 8TB WD MyCloud (PR4100) in RAID-5.
($800 - preloaded with WD Red drives) I LOVE it!

Once upon a time, I lost about 600 Gb of data (engineering files) from previous employers that I ha accumulated over a number of years. My single 2Tb hard-drive failed, and "poof" it was gone. At the time, I had a true domain server. Hard lesson learned, so I invested in a NAS instead.

I'm not sure what you're doing spending $3K and not quite knowing what you want to do with it, without the prior research.

I mainly use mine to serve up an FTP file folder (web access), as well as local network storage (I work from home). My NAS also backs up all my PC's using a little client utility on the PC's, in real time. No scheduled times to run back-ups. I also store a fairly large library of movie files, that I can stream to my smart TV's, iPAD, and PC's.

I use PLEX and don't have any problems streaming multiple movie streams. I go into the habit to "Rip" my movies to MP4 video, because that's what Apple supports. I HATE "mkv" format.
But the NAS as a whole... Wow! I love it.

 

[jail4ceos2]

If you have too much money, you can PM me and I'll take your burdensome loot off your hands. But now I'm going to get you to spend more! I do the same thing you do, but you're missing one key piece. I also have a high quality plasma panel, and I feel driving it with an HTPC is a giant mistake. I use an Oppo 105D which draws/streams the files from my NAS, and outputs an immeasurably better picture than any PC I have connected to my panel. The 105, and it's successor the 205 are now discontinued, but Ebay is your friend. I'm sure there may be other units/brands that do the same job now Oppo isn't in the game. Your overabundance of cash would point me to say get an old Oppo, and then do some Modwright mods on it, which should extend the life, and (mostly audio) quality of the streamer. Google the rave reviews of the Oppo, they're true, but the software is not the greatest or most stable. You may not need the 105D if audio isn't important, maybe a 103 would do for you. Before I got my Linn MDSM, I used the Swiss army knife Oppo as preamp, audio/video source, and it punched way above it's weight sticker price/quality wise.

 

[System Error Message]

you spent far more on your NAS than i did, mine was made from junk parts (unlocked and overclocked AMD phenom II, 16 GB of ram, junk server cases, used black box SFP+ NIC, etc) the only valuable thing are the drives (2TB WD black with 6 3TB WD reds) and was built years ago for about 1/3 of the price. I also added a bunch of junk cards too (USB-C/thunderbolt, sata+esata ports, hot swap bays). This is powerful enough to transcode in real time a bigger than 4K video at 30 fps where every frame is made by a DSLR picture using plex, transfer more than 1Gb/s using SFTP (client NIC limit) and handle software raid 5 pretty well. I also add a bunch of other random drives to this as well.

My latest however built for about half the price currently has 1TB WD Blue (WD black stopped working), 5x8TB seagate NAS drives, 32GB of ram, overclocked AMD piledriver 8 core (free CPU, good cooler and board), 2x HD 7970s), used SFP+ NIC.

One might argue the GPU but other than a little mining it does contribute in compute and cluster code compiles even rendering despite not being a main performance server as i have other servers for that, but i hate leaving idle processor cycles, it feels like a waste to not overclock and fully use the CPU.

 

[sfx2000]

the only valuable thing are the drives

The only valuable thing is the data on the NAS - whether it is a commercial off the shelf NAS, or a home build...

 

[KevinSnyder]

I have to spend under $3000. Confident to get 5TB usable space. Anything over $3000 and I need to go out for offer

 

[sfx2000]

I have to spend under $3000. Confident to get 5TB usable space. Anything over $3000 and I need to go out for offer

Pretty easy to get there these days - if you're corporate and have a Dell account - talk to your rep about needs and requirements - can get a lot of storage there for under $3K, either rack-mounted or mini-tower...