NAS for my simple needs
Hello forum, I usually only lurk and read as I am not knowledgeable enough to contribute useful information. I am or think I am ready to purchase a NAS for my network. I have been reading a lot and I just want confirmation that I am purchasing the right unit for my want. I just want to put movies of all types(4k, 1080) photos and music on it. I have a shield box. My only question is, will this unit be suffice or is it overkill, DiskStation DS918-plus . Data storage devices such as NAS and file servers don't "care" about what types of files you store on them. A file, is a file, is a file. NAS's don't have to do anything "special" for media files.For a SOHO situation where security is not much, if any, concern, I suggest what mostly matters is whether the device you choose has enough storage capacity for your needs, does RAID or similar redundancy if you want it (it's by no means essential) and (probably) is easy to set up and use. Then maybe there's some aethestic concerns such as noise and heat and maybe consider "future proofing" in that adding additional storage later is easy to do.
A NAS ticks pretty much all those boxes - NAS's designed for the SOHO market are often designed to be "appliance" like and offer ease of use for non-technical people (with the quid pro quo, that they cannot do much more than they are designed either.)
A NAS is "just" a computer like any other, it's just that it's been stripped down to the bare minimum required to store files and serve them over a network. (Pretty much every computer since the epoch of Windows 3.1 has been able to do so.)
Where the waters get muddied is that there's been a lot of "function creep" in the NAS market as increasing amounts of facilities have been "added back in" that were originally omitted to make NAS's simple and cheap (e.g. media servers, backup agents, trancoders, data scrapers - the list is endless.)
I suggest the jumping off point is to determine what your playback device require for their back end storage devices (some, for example, might require Plex Media Server or DLNA support.) If you players do not require anything "special" above a file store serving out CIFS/SMB/NFS shares, then pretty much anything will do. The cheapest Synology, QNAP, Thecus or Asustor NAS streaming to your Shield running Kodi over a wired network will suffice.
I'd recommend Synology as I think their software is excellent and easy to use. Just get one with enough bays for your needs and the best price per GB drives, WD Red, Seagate Ironwolf and Toshiba Enterprise are all drives specifically for NAS purposes.
The WD Reds can be often picked up for cheap by purchasing the relevant WD Nas or Duo bay drive unit on the cheap and then removing the drives. From your general description the DS918would be overkill.However, one advantage further down the line is that you can very easily add a Synology DX517 expansion bay to the DS918when the NAS inevitably becomes full without any additional messing around with configuration.Obviously, a second NAS would require configuration from scratch again.
If you're really not concerned about the expansion advantages, the standard DS418 will more than suffice for the requirements you've listed data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7.(Not the budget "DS418-J" model!!)
Enjoy data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7. I hope nobody minds a bit of thread hijacking.... I'm thinking about upgrading my Synology 216j to a 4 bay.is the 418j not very good?I don't need transcoding options.I'm happy with the performance of my 2 bay, just want more space....
Thanks The J model only has 1 GB RAM.(Perfectly good enough for a lot of users but it doesn't leave you a lot of wriggle room if you did want to run certain apps ir services etc. from the NAS.)The last thing you want is problems from a lack of available resources & you can't upgrade the RAM later!
As always, it's completely subjective.Weigh up your current needs & leave a little headroom for possible future use data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7. Thanks for the reply. data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7 I would look at just using an old pc or pick up one of the old hp microservers both will do the job just fine for lot less money.
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