Looking for Home cloud/ NAS

[usman3206]

Hi
I am new to this forum and as well new to networking and related things but old user of computer and do understand things upto certain level.
I have at least 6 different devices in my house and want to make a network system so that I can have a centralized storage for all my devices which is accessible mostly inside house (occasionally from outside the house as well), could stream media to my connected TV (HD mostly) without hiccups. Although backup is not my no.1 priority but i am seriously thinking of doing so. Also i am looking to buy a powerful router.
For all this casual use i want to spend money but not too much. Saw videos on youtube people using pi for the purpose but seemed too slow.
What i have worked out so far;
1. WD MyCloud
2. D-Link DNS-320L
3. TP-Link TL-WDR3600 N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router
Kindly guide me from here or suggest something economic, fast and reliable.
Thanks and awaiting eagerly for some responses.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
For me, when I think NAS, I think QNAP and Synology.

 

[thiggins]

I've found the WD My Cloud (Actually a WD My Book Live) to meet the criteria you state. Only catch might be that accessing it remotely via web browser requires Java. The Android and iOS apps work fine, even through cascaded routers.

 

[usman3206]

Thanks for response, anything else that i should know about.

 

[patricia721]

Currently I am using CloudBacko Cloud Backup storage for all my devices. It is reliable and fast. You can check this http://free.cloudbacko.com/?r=1d

 

[stevech]

Thanks for response, anything else that i should know about.

A good percentage of us ex-spurts use QNAP or Synology due to their good operating software as compared to companies selling NASes as a lesser part of their product suites.

 

[stevech]

Currently I am using CloudBacko Cloud Backup storage for all my devices. It is reliable and fast. You can check this http://free.cloudbacko.com/?r=1d

I've tried many, and have two favorites: iDrive, with its $60/yr for 1TB.
and OpenDrive, who has much better software but $60/yr gets about 250GB with their custom plan.

All these are not viable for a full back up a NAS due to the typical cable/DSL upstream data rates.
A USB3 drive is needed for that. Both vendors have bulk upload to startup using mailed-in backup drives.

I choose to NOT put any sensitive data on Internet cloud servers for reasons of risk of data fraud by employees or worse.

 

[cdikland]

A good percentage of us ex-spurts use QNAP or Synology due to their good operating software as compared to companies selling NASes as a lesser part of their product suites.

I have been considering adding NAS to my home network as well for similar reasons as stated by usman3206. To be a bit more specific, roughly speaking, about 60% usage would be for video streaming (2-3 hours per day using only Roku & Plex) while the remaining 40% is for file sharing music, photos, etc.

Reading multiple articles and browsing countless NAS threads I have not come any closer to making a decision. The main hurdle is the justification for the significant higher cost of either Synology or QNAP versus that of WD My Book Live. I understand the increased performance but am unsure that this is really needed for the average home. That said, I am a tinkerer and love my network toys . Please give me some good reason I can use to justify the increased cost OR why I should save my money

Thanks in advance

 

[thiggins]

With QNAP and Synology you are paying for features you are probably never going to use.

The main advantage of going with diskless products is that you can replace the drive when it fails.

Really, $150 for 2 TB of storage for a single-bay WD My Cloud is hard to beat. But if you want to play with Synology, try the DS115j.

 

[htismaqe]

With QNAP and Synology you are paying for features you are probably never going to use.

This was my line of thinking when I originally replaced my Buffalo Linkstation LS-VL with a ZyXEL NSA310. Big mistake - it only took me about a week before I was fed up with the ZyXEL's lack of stability.

I don't use all of the advanced features but I do move LOTS of data. For example, I ran a test by copying a 125GB file from an iMac while simultaneously imaging a Windows 7 laptop via DriveImageXML.

Under that kind of load, the QNAP TS-112P chugs along at just under 50% CPU. The NSA310 ran over 80% CPU most of the time and after about 2 hours of that kind of load, it would eventually lock up and have to be reset. They both have 1.6Ghz Marvell chipsets but the QNAP is just plain more powerful.

The main advantage of going with diskless products is that you can replace the drive when it fails.

This is the reason I didn't buy another Buffalo Linkstation (this and the lack of robust data restoration features).

 

[StephenBB81]

@usman3206

I'm back in the forums today because my current set up is a
Seagate 3TB GoFlex Home
Asus N66U Router
WD Elements 1TB Portable hard drive plugged into router via USB

which connects to 4 TV's wirelessly to steam from my approx 2TB of video files and I have to say while it mostly works it is frustrating to use consistently

If I have 2 devices accessing content from the Seagate drive at the same time while another is trying to write to it because a new recorded show needs to be added it is just slow and terrible. It was fine 2yrs ago when my content was all low sound quality 720p 300MB/hour filesizes, but today with approx 1-1.5GB/hour file sizes for quality sound and 1080p video the Seagate just can't handle it which is why I have the popular stuff duplicated onto the WD USB drive so ease the strain.

Because I was in your position 2yrs ago and am back now I do encourage you to consider an actual NAS, I don't know if it is really what I need yet but that is the journey I'm currently on.

 

[stevech]

Hi,
For me, when I think NAS, I think QNAP and Synology.

that's the prevailing opinion here. For me, it is Synology.

 

[spyrule]

Xpenology... Same OS as synology, with your own hardware.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[thiggins]

@usman3206

I'm back in the forums today because my current set up is a
Seagate 3TB GoFlex Home
Asus N66U Router
WD Elements 1TB Portable hard drive plugged into router via USB

If you are trying to do all the reading and writing via WiFi, wireless bandwidth is more likely your problem, not NAS bandwidth.

 

[StephenBB81]

If you are trying to do all the reading and writing via WiFi, wireless bandwidth is more likely your problem, not NAS bandwidth.

Writing is always done wired.
Reading is 80% wifi (4 of 5 steamers connect via wifi 1 connects hardwired)

 

[spyrule]

To clarify, I built my nas using a $80 AMD cpu, $50 motherboard with as many sata connections I could find at the time (gigabyte is where I ended up), a decent nas case and psu, plus 6x 2TB WD Red hdd made for a nas, total cost was just over $700 Canadian . But I have the ability to expand my nas with up to 6 more hard drives whenever I want. I ended up installing Xpenology, because I love synologies UI. Xpenology is legal because synology built the OS from a Linux base that had a GNU license that requires them to release all their code.
But it's been very good for synology as many people use it at home and buy thier bigger systems for work.


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[spyrule]

And to add... I run two ESXi severs using the nas as an iscsi device, store ALL of my data (so far approx 5.2TB total), all of which is automatically backed up to my crashplan cloud backup (unlimited amount for $40/year).

While all of that, I stream to 3 devices, constantly download tv shows, all the while my ESXi hosts run. None of them hiccup... Rock stable and fast. My only bottleneck now is my managed switch, I've been maxing out its fabric speed, which is why I ordered a new managed switch last week (8port 10Gbps fabric gig switch to a 48+4 gig 96Gbps fabric switch).

Should solve my last problem other then moving to sophos for my gateway...

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[thiggins]

Writing is always done wired.
Reading is 80% wifi (4 of 5 steamers connect via wifi 1 connects hardwired)

What device is doing the writing?

We measured the GoFlex Home NTFS write at 16 MB/s and read at 43 MB/s. So, the first question is what are the stream bandwidth requirements? (For measurement methods check this article.)

RT-N66U NTFS throughput was measured at 17 MB/s write and 11 Read. So the Seagate is better to stream from than the USB drive and it's a wash for write. If you must simultaneous stream and write, then I'd stream from the Seagate and write to the WD.

 

[stevech]

Originally Posted by thiggins
With QNAP and Synology you are paying for features you are probably never going to use.

Wow. That's a broad generalization that many disagree with. There are features I won't use such as bittorrent downloads. But I use most of the other software features.

 

[thiggins]

But I use most of the other software features.

Good for you, Steve.