Hi Guys ,
Posting my First Deal here. I have been keeping an eye on the price of Synology DS918+ and with 10 % cashrewards this is the cheapest I have seen it for atleast a couple of months. This comes to $ 603.9 delivered after cashback for prime members. I Bought one myself.
Cheers
CamelCamelCamel.
I have my eye on the 218+ play. Is it worth paying the extra amount for something like this? To future proof and get something more versatile?
Really does depend on what you want to use it for, how much data you have and your network.
Wanted to use as a media hub, plex server or kodi (whatever works better) and a server for security cams, but im not sure thats a good idea because the licenses are so expensive
I have been using it as a NAS (recording from security camera). I have to say it is one of the best in market, bit expensive but after trying few of other products it's worth the money.
kodi is great.. plex u need a license for 4k … i bought a shield instead.
@hippyhippy: Shield TV is good for Plex, but as a player. As a server there is far too much demand on the system. However if you employ 'adoptive' using and external USB3.0 drive your will get a boost in performance, but nowehere near the performance of using Plex TV server on an external NAS or PC. I would NOT recommended using a USB3.0 thumb drive unless you have very light usage and only modest storage requiremnts. Either of these devices make the storage embedded to the Shireld TV and are no longer mobile removable devices that you can use elsewhere.
For best results, an external NAS or PC (set up as an NAS) are best, particularly if your media requires transcoding on the fly. This Synology NAS good, however I personally prefer the WD My Cloud PR4100 Pro for this purpose.
By the way the free Plex is still very usable, however the Plex Pass give your access to much more functionality. Am alternative is Kodi, SPMC (a fork of Kodi which will work when Kodi can't playback video files) I& Emby (no experience with this, but some folks prefer this to Kodi). All are free.
Cant you use network recorders from hikvision at much cheaper price to act as a server for security cams at almost 40% of price? You can then use cheaper alternative for internal network storage and plex. My 2 cents.
@EnALup: I set up a hikvision NVR years ago at my mothers house and it's been great . If your running a NAS anyway this would be better . Combines a media server , NAS and NVR all in one .
@EnALup: Good Hikvision NVR will cost around $400 - $500 without HDD. Why not have 1 machine to do all the jobs.
@DesiBoy: I have purchased it in the past for less than 200 dollars for 8 cameras and 1 TB storage. That works like a treat and does everything. Not sure what do you mean by Good….
@EnALup: Search Hikvision NVR 8ch, cheapest I can see is around $400 without HDD. One may get it it cheaper if they go with non AU re-seller with 1 year warranty (I think). AU models generally have 3 years warranty.
@DesiBoy: Question is, just 2x times cost justify just the warranty?
I have dealt with Asian providers for Hikvision who provide 2 year warranty. I once sent my camera back ( paid for 1 side shipping) and it was repaired.
I’ve got the 218+ and it can run several instances of Linux on docker without breaking a sweat. Can upgrade to 6gb memory if needed. Comes with 2gb mem
I had a 416 play and sometimes that even struggled to play certain 1080p movies
I upgraded to this one and it sometimes struggles with 4K movies, and I still can't work out why as my tv says it is direct playing them.
If you go a 218+ and a nvidia shield you will be fine from my understanding
Has gone up $9 in the last couple of days, did purchase Friday night
Tempted to upgrade but don't think I can actually benefit from doing so. Someone with NAS experience let me know if I'm on the right track.
I currently have:
DS1813+ (8 port with 6 x 4TB) RAID6 (16TB)
DS1511+ (5 port with 5 x 2TB) RAID6 (6TB)
Capacity wise I'm crammed. Instead of adding more 4TB drives I've been thinking about getting some 10TB drives and then I won't need both NAS boxes. The 1511+ is the oldest and probably should be sold, but the 1813+ is bigger than I'm ever realistically going to need now also.
They both serve different purposes I should have mentioned so it's possible I keep 2 arrays in the DS1813+ and just get 10TB hdds for the larger array mentioned.
Any real benefit from upgrading these old NAS boxes or has nothing much changed? I think I just talked myself out of buying a NAS lol.
I probably should do this:
1. Sell the DS1511+
2. Sell the 2TB drives, sell (4 of the 6) 4TB drives, RAID1 the 4TB drives as 4TB is ample for that array.
3. Buy 4 x 10TB drives, move everything over (20TB RAID6) — essentially the same can be accomplished with 8TB drives but 10TB is more future proof without costing too much more.
4. I can then expand to 6 x 10TB (40TB RAID6) as needed in the coming years.
any reason you are sticking to the NASs? they are definitely convenient, but at some point it might be better to build your own and use something like freenas/unraid.
Just out of curiosity could you build a freenas/unraid box for $600?
For me it would need:
- Some kind of ilo remote management to do installs over the network because it will not have a screen attached
- 4 drive bays
- Low power consumption
- Handle transcoding of 4k streams
short answer: DYOR
longer answer: you're basically asking me if you build a compute for $600. and yes, I think you can get case, motherboard, ram, cpu that can do hardware transcode of 4k streams, OS SSD for under $600 (used components are probably fine).
for ilo you could probably just use something like anydesk.
but you'd be spending your time on it.
@phoenx: The Synology NAS's have been nothing short of amazing for me. I'm not saying your solution isn't superior but I'm 100% happy with my needs being met already so I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel at this stage.
I just load up the HDD's, build and forget pretty much. I love how everything just, works. I guess the shortcomings is the weak CPU but it's able to handle the household perfectly at the moment with streaming, in saying that just about everything is 1080p or lower, no 4K yet so I'm not sure if that'll push it beyond its limits… (I didn't neg you either)
@Click_It: wasn't trying to convince anyone, just asking if you had considered it. I also have a synology and it's amazing, but for people with large storage requirements they aren't exactly cheap, and not viable for lots of transcoding.
I just learned about exponology which makes me think I can have best of both worlds.
and yeah, not sure where the negs are coming from, just trying to help out password, oh well.
@phoenx: One of those $200 HP microserver n40l boxes and a 16GB USB drive for the OS (the mobo has an internal USB port) would do the job right?
I think they have iLO, and freenas is free / easy to setup.
I don't see why you're being neg'd.
@phoenx: I appreciate your response. I didn't neg you…
I think for my skill level my only option is a hp microserver that has an ilo port as idonotknowwhy suggested.
Again, depends on use case.
The NVMe cache option is excellent and even enterprise NVMe drives are cheap now.
Be aware of the hard drives you're considering buying too. If your after any type of performance, make sure the drives don't use Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) tech for the drive heads.
SMR and RAID6 would likely give horrendous write speeds.
If you're only going to have 4x drives, don't consider RAID6. RAID10 should be your choice. Although if you want to expand to 6x drives you wont be able to. But it depends on your data growth. I find my need for storage is rapidly reducing with better access to streaming and cloud storage speeds.
My 32TB (10x 4TB RAID6) could probably be easily culled to 10TB now. I've had that for about six years and have consistently found my need for storage reducing each year since about 2015.
In my personal use case, downsizing to a 918 would be totally viable.
Thanks, yes I know I'm missing the NVMe cache option in my older NAS and the CPU is probably dated too (though it handles everything I throw at it so far)
Yes, not going anywhere near SMR drives but am happy with 5400rpm over 7200rpm where possible too. I currently have HGST CoolSpin 4TB drives. The 5 I have, I could have bought 6 or 7 Seagate/WD's but these things have been amazing. Unfortunately I added 1 seagate later and it was SMART failing within months.
As for RAID10 v RAID6. I hadn't given much thought to a RAID10. My current needs, 20TB probably covers me for another 18-24 months. I don't add to it anywhere the pace I used to. But it will become a ceiling eventually and need to be lifted. Whilst I'm a huge user of cloud for personal data, the bulk stuff I still do the old fashioned way. I probably should learn to embrace streaming more than I do. It'd simplify things.
I'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to storage so I don't think I could cull nearly as much as you have.
Thanks for your well thought out reply, appreciate it! Food for thought.
4x drives, don't consider RAID6. RAID10 should be your choice
I've read this as well, and I can see that RAID10 performs better and rebuilds faster - but RAID6 does give to the benefit that any two drives can fail without losing data.
RAID 10 is an excellent option over RAID 6. It's a good 'belt & braces' approach. Basically it's a mirror of a mirror. The downside is that you lose 50% of your total storage.
I have a WD MyCloud PR4100 Pro with 4 x 10TB WD Red HDDs (not the Pro version), plus a spare 10TB WD Red on the shelf should ever a drive in the RAID falls over and dies. The RAID can be rebuilt and up and running in quick order.
With this setup, before drives are intialised, I had 4 x 10 TB = 40TB total available storages. After intialisaion and with a RAID 10 and drives encrypted, I ended up with 20TB of storage.
Anyway. there are plenty of good channels on YouTube that can provide help over the choices available.
I’m not sure of the best answer, but I was going to warn you away from large drives, however now note that you mentioned RAID 6 which I guess is adequate insurance in event of a multi-day rebuild 👍
Yeah I had RAID5 previously but I've been on RAID6 now for 4 years and never looked back. I've only had 1 HDD failure in that time (a Seagate) so RAID5 would have covered me perfectly but… I like the peace of mind RAID6 offers.
8TB drives are certainly another option and still give me years of growth.
What's important to me is quality drives, I forked out a premium for HGST CoolSpins when everyone was having dramas with Seagate and WD (yes I know they own HGST) and it was the best decision I made. They've been on 18hrs a day for 4 years, never skipped a beat. So I'll happily spend a little more on quality again next time I think. Seagate, I don't think I could bring myself to trust them yet.
Seagate, I don't think I could bring myself to trust them yet.
Only drives I ever had fail were Seagates - but I'm seriously considering the 12TB Ironwolf Pro's for my next NAS.
I'm currently using a bunch of 6TB WD Reds without issues, although some have had problems with them.
so RAID5 would have covered me perfectly
Just had to jump in here to say, don't use RAID 5 with multi-TB drives. You may only lose 1 drive, but there is a high mathematical chance that your array rebuild will fail due to a URE (Unrecoverable Read Error) on one of the surviving disks. The larger the disks, the higher the risk.
RAID 6 significantly mitigates this risk as the URE would have to occur in exactly the same place on 2 separate disks to cause the rebuild failure.
@Dudeface: Thanks, I'm pretty sure that is the reason I moved from RAID 5 to 6 in the first place. I recall the problem occurs for RAID 6 at a point too, I always had a feeling an 8 disk RAID6 array would be too much. What I'm planning here is a 6 disk array maximum and initially only 4. Any concerns with such a strategy using either 8, 10 or 12TB drives?
hey i have DS1511+ too!
im happy but wish they are : have usb 3.0, and can run 265 videos….
Cool. They're getting old now but still for the most part do the job. My DS1511+ is reserved for professional and personal backups, crucial stuff but doesn't need much storage.
For streaming I use nVidia SHIELD Tv's so I've never experienced any issues with 265 (lots of my stuff is HEVC)
Any reason you went full RAID6 as opposed to) SHR2? I've set my DS916+ up on SHR and so to increase available space and still have single drive redundancy, I only have to replace two drives rather than all of them. That's one reason I'm happy with my Synology setup, and also because it just works. I came from a DS212j to this, and had been thinking about BYO too…but in the end the ability to take the drives and drop them into a new Synology unit also helped simplify my decision.
In the future, I may still build my own, but for now, it isn't broke…
Actually both are SHR2 arrays, I just said RAID6 to keep the language simple. I don't even remember the benefits of SHR2 over RAID6 now. They're basically the same thing but SHR2 lets you add larger drives and it automatically integrates them in some way that isn't possible in a RAID6 from memory. That said, my preference would be to start from scratch using identical capacity drives anyway.
Until I hit a ceiling I'm happy not building my own NAS. Let's see how these handle 4K streaming, if that's a problem I may have to re-think things but I don't anticipate it being a problem.
Is this good for Plex?
yes, I believe this has a CPU that can easily handle 4k HEVC transcoding on plex media server, making it a strong option for plex. but I think you need plex pass for hardware transcoding?
Thanks, and which HDDs are most suitable?
I've had no issues with WD reds
It can hardware transcode 4K HEVC to 1080p h264 in Plex, but it cannot transcode 4K HEVC to 4K HEVC if you ever need that. You'll have to wait another few years for NAS hardware to be able to do that, I think.
yep thanks for clarifying. 4k HEVC to 1080p is the more likely use-case fortunately.
@phoenx: Just remember that you will need a Plex Pass subscription to be able to utilize hardware transcoding.
Wouldn't it be easier to buy a Shield and then have a dumb NAS somewhere else and ethernet cable wired to shield? Then you have no transcoding issues.
True - it's best to avoid transcoding at all costs. Just need a player that can play everything you throw at it.
I have this and plex on my LG c7 oled.
Sometimes has trouble with 4k transcoding when it is meant to be direct playing
It is amazing for plex. Hardware transcoding HEVC is awesome and fast.
Been thinking about a NAS lately.. my media catalog has been increasing quite a bit over the past few months and I would like to invest in a more long term solution. Not sure whether to build my own system or just use a pre built NAS. Former seems to be better for longevity in any case.
pre-built is definitely easier. the synology ones have a very nice interface and built-in features. I bought mine a few years ago and it was definitely a smooth entry into network storage as well as media automation (sonarr so good). but my next step would definitely be to build something myself. would be a fun project, and as you say it's more future proof.
I've heard good things about freeNAS in terms of performance and customisation but I think that might be a little out of my league right now, I'm kind of learning towards a pre build just because it's basically plug n play (comparatively) but you lack speeds and such. And in terms of initial investment they don't seem priced that far apart.
if you think it's out of your league, then it's probably a good idea to start with a pre-built. for someone doing this for the first time, I would only recommend custom built if they already knew a lot about this stuff.
I always tossed up which was better, for around 7+ years now been running the HP N54L micro servers with freenas and in the last few years migrated to XPENOLOGY…..5x bays - with ram upg cost around $250 at the time each, never looked back…..But its hard to get the current version at a good price for the HP Gen10 model…and if you can get the older series - how hard are they pushed & have older CPU…
Hard call……if I had to do again now, probably try to build my own to save costs…but hard call.
I'm just not too sure about going "all out" initially, I don't really have anything important that I would be storing and I don't already have 50 tb I need moved so I'm just not too sure how well I would utilise a theoretical large amount of data
Fare enough, perhaps for a starter - go a real configured one and see how they go - synology are good - thats their software in the Xpenology (extracted and converted for non-Synology HW).
In the future see how you rand with it and perhaps BYO then.
Apart from the form factor, how is Synology nas better than a micro server? I got a ML10 v2 and only cost $150, thanks.
My stock HP G8 Microserver on Xpenology had been working flawlessly for 2-3 years but recently in the last week just shit the bed with a "Sorry, the page you are looking for is not found" error, any fix I have found doesn't seem to be working so it's turning into a PITA given lack of free time to troubleshoot currently.
YMMV but I think I'm leaning towards a "real" DS instead in future, CPU upgrades are expensive for the G8 but was looking at a Shield to avoid the NAS transcoding when I start 4k.
Dikstation?
Tempted to buy. But I'm guessing Cashrewards/Shopback will have higher cashback percentages on boxing day/xmas/new years
EDIT: Screw it, been patiently waiting for this to reach this price range for 2 months now. Bought one!
Yeah good call. Mines been rock solid. Enjoy.
Nice price but already have 3 boxes from Synology
Pity my Win10 PC will no longer show these in the Metwork in Win Explorer..annoying
I was wondering if that was me…
How do you access the files from a Windows PC if they don't show up in Explorer?
Mapped network drive
Or just entering \\NasName\ShareName into file explorer and optionally saving it to quick access.
Check your network setting is set to Private network, could be the issue.
This has to do with network discovery.
Any reason that is happening?
I have googled it as much as possible… and it appears that there were a Win10 update that seems to have killed ‘homegroup’ - damned annoying
Isn't cashrewards based on the pre-GST price?
That'd be $603.90 x 10% = $60.39 cash back; So 671-60.39 = $610.61
this man cashbacks
What is this thing? Who are you guys? Some sort of techies running their own servers or something? I have given up on googling every Item that come under this site. Feeling stupid.
Yes, this is a home server optimized low power usage, and a lot of storage.
It's mostly for data-hoarders who want to store TB's of files and want to be able to access them 24/7 without having to swap USB hard drives each time.
Thank you very much that explanation.
Really surprised to see a market that exists in this niche. But I have no clue on what people are hoarding these days. Piracy is almost dead I believe, so may be all these picture taken from Drones and Smart Phones I guess. Or I am too old to understand.
Once again appreciate your time.
Backups! Local backups of laptop images (Time Machine on Macbook) as well as photos, videos.
Even if you're not a pirate ripping your blurays so you don't need to constantly swap discs is great.
For me, everything else is pretty techie (running virtual machines as a dev environment, Docker stuff etc).
We’re taking 24MP photos and 4K videos now. And many, many Linux ISO’s.
@muncan: We'll I for one have cut back majorly on the Linux ISO's..
My old N40L hasn't skipped a beat in many years now (lost count!), It's the best thing I've ever bought and still runs 24/7.
But it's taking a bit of a breather now thanks to a man named Stan ;)
Imagine a hard disk that all the devices in your house can access, NAS = Network Attached Storage.
Anyone got suggestions where to purchase extra ram??
From literally millions of online computer part shops?
Nah, I don't have a suggestion, sorry.
Being a smart ass doesn't work when places like MSY told me specifically they don't stock suitable ram… So nice assumptions
You can literally put the string "Synology DiskStation ram" into google an instantly find literally 10 stockists from well known PC part shops in Australia. Just actually try.
I'm finding the info on the Synology website confusing
Does it need all four bays filled to work? Or could I just install 1-2 drives to start with to keep cost down initially and then add more drives down the track?
Also, can the RAID setup for the drives be configured individually? eg two drives mirroring for irreplacable data such as family photos, important documents etc, then RAID 0 for the other one/two drives to maximise storage of low value data or data I've got backed up elsewhere?
Yes, you can install as many as you like.
And, yes you could have two separate RAID sets if that's what you want.
Can start with one drive and pop more in late, no problem.
Bought one, can't figure out how to heat up my lunch? Anyone have a manual?
what filesystem/formatting/RAID system is everyone using? I got one on an earlier deal from Futu with 3x 8TB Ironwolves, and not sure whether to go with SHR or RAID-5…
shr
Guys I would be careful with this synology nas. I bought mine 5 months in, no longer turns on.
Another unit I bought brand new same model came in DOA. Lucky I had ebay plus for free returns
There were also reports of previous synology models have a bug I think it is DS1815 that has the Intel chip bug which causes it unable to power on as well.
My old Qnap from 2011 still working
So I'm very very disappointed about this product.
Just an FYI. YMMV
I bought from Futu and tech mall eBay
My DS918+ still waiting to be RMA
Temping.. been waiting for the DS1019+ 5-bay for months though…
Available on ebay for ~$650 every so often with their 20% deals.
More reason to buy it here instead of rewarding sellers jacking prices.
No stock
i was for a while really keen to get a Synology NAS but i couldn't justify the price point 600+ with no disks. i have 6X2TB disks so i didn't want to upgrade all the disk so i needed something that enables you to grow\expand storage piecemeal without having to purchase all new disks as in mix and match different size disks - Snynology has SHR.. then i came across UNRAID and i still have a few HP Microservers - N40L or N36L. these are tried and tested with UNRAID. been running unraid for about 3 months, its fantastic. i paid $50 for a basic licence.
Price is back up to $749, unless I'm missing something… *edit: My bad, I've just noticed out of stock.
Great find/first post!