My ML10v2 died so I was looking for a new NAS and noticed this has a 20% off coupon available.
Realtek RTD1296 Quad Core CPU
1GB Ram
4 Bay slots
2x USB 3.0 Ports, 1x 1GbE on the back
Sold by Terramaster and fulfilled by Amazon.
CamelCamelCamel.
And now you're on a list.
Santa now shares his list with the Alphabet agencies, so you better be nice this Christmas :P
Sorry if this has been covered before, but does anyone know how this holds up as a Plex server (up to and including UHD 4K)?
First review on Amazon says it struggles as soon as transcoding is involved, so depends if you are going to be playing media in its native format or not.
I seem to remember similar comments on this unit previously but haven't had any first hand experience myself.
Thanks, will pass on this one then.
In general it's not suggested to run plex on a NAS. Have it on a separate PC and use NAS only for storage. You heavily overpay for a plex ready nas.
On paper this looks to be slightly better than my Drobo 5N which needs an upgrade but since Plex is quite important to me I'll keep looking…
Plex provides a list from of compatible NAS's for different streaming:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MfYoJkiwSqCXg8cm5-Ac…
Buy/build an actual server if want to transcode. These aren't servers, the idea of using a NAS to transcode media is a laugh.
And yet there are plenty of options from QNAP and Synology that will happily transcode media…
Maybe kids playing around with YIFY rips or whatever garbage. Think they're playing 1gb "4k" files.
Or.. Why even transcode? The whole thing just seems stupid to me
@deelaroo: Yeah you have no idea what you are talking about, there are plenty of NAS devices with multi-core Intel based CPUs with integrated graphics and 4gb+ ram that have no trouble transcoding large format 4k video files.
This one certainly wont, but the higher up models have no issue.
I bought a synology DS918+ for plex storage and transcoding. It sucks at transcoding big files. Now I just use it as a file server and plex runs separately on a optiplex 990sff with a gtx 1050ti.
@Aiver: You just need to apply the configuration fix and it has no problems transcoding at all. Its a plex issue not a NAS issue.
https://forums.plex.tv/t/synology-faq-questions-answers-and-…
Why transcoding is such a big concern these days? Most of media clients can do it, NAS should just supply them with the data stream.
Usually you transcode because either the media client can't do it, or the internet connection on either end is being strained. How can you be able to identify both of the potential problem areas and not be able to identify the problems themselves?
isn't transcoding a process of uncompressing video/audio streams? then uncompressed steams should use more of your connection bandwidth which means you are better off using transcoders at the player side.
@vovka: No that’s not what transcoding is. It’s decoding from one format (say 4K HEVC) and then encoding it in a different format (like 1080p H264)
@Mitch889: so rather than buying a proper 4K TV we need a NAS which does what NASes not designed to do (as they are STORAGE devices not video processing units) just to stream very high quality content to low resolution devices. or how many users watch movies stored on their home NASes from Internet?
I own a Synology NAS but never really used it as for transcoding because the only device I cannot watch my 4K movies on is my old laptop, which needs to be upgraded anyway.
@vovka: Sorry, I will be sure to tell everyone that because that's not what Pupkin wants to do with his storage solution that everyone else shouldn't worry about it either.
@Zorlin: They are called Application or Video servers. NAS is mainly a storage device and some come with added capabilities.
@vovka: But NASes are specifically designed to do this now (if you buy the right NAS). There is so much 'spare' CPU (even on the low end of CPU) that processor intensive tasks like transcoding are possible on a large range of NASes…
The NAS has evolved from a pure storage device (remember, before it was a NAS it was a DAS.. and that itself is an evolution)
@jason andrade: Further, a lot of NASes nowadays have hardware encoding and decoding support. This means they can handle transcoding with very little power or CPU usage…
@vovka: I stream over the internet on a regular basis.
Instead of these underpowered things I repurposed a Dell Precision SFF workstation with an i7 6700, 32GB RAM and packed with 16TB of storage. Cost me $500 and it’s been sensational.
Transcoding is great for downloading eps to your phone for offline viewing without them taking up heaps of space, or dropping the quality when streaming so as not to burn huge amounts of data.
Not all clients can handle all formats, so great for that too.
Plex doesn't let you direct play newer formats like h265 unless you pay for a plex pass, and depending on the size of the source files you may well struggle to maintain a constant stream over the internet at original bitrates.
You already have it on your network? What do you mean "over internet"?
@deelaroo: Streaming when not connected to your LAN - e.g. giving friends access, watching from your workplace, etc.
@deelaroo: I do :)
A couple of my friends regularly used my server while i had it running 24/7, though I suppose it might not be something most users bother with, since unless you can get upnp to work it requires setting a static ip and configuring port forwarding
@deelaroo: I do it all the time. Was especially great when travelling for work or to visit family interstate, a $72 Voda TV box and all our home media was available wherever!
Try playing hevc content with subtitles on plex, my synology just falls over unless the tv can handle it, basically this is a motivation for me to upgrade my tv, but can’t justify.
I have no issues with this on our DS218+ and our new Samsung 4K Smart TV. In fact, I moved from the Synology Video Station app to Plex because of codec and metadata restrictions.
@bigpallooka: New TVs are fine, encoding is client side. I am using ds918+ but a 65 inch Samsung from 2012 1080p also struggles with ps4pro as a client
Fairly old unit. Some software transcoding for 1080p but no hardware transcoding.
Check out the Plex.TV web-site. It is kept up-to-date continuously for NAS devices.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201373803-nas-compatibility…
This is the current google worksheet covering NAS devices
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MfYoJkiwSqCXg8cm5-Ac…
As far as NAS server 'flavour of the month' for transcoding is concerned, check out the PLEX forums. Everyone has a preferred choice but at the end of the day it really depends of what your needs and wants are. New NAS models are being released and while mine was the 'ant's pants' 3 years ago, significant changes now makes mine is probably an 'also ran' (WD My Cloud PR4100 Pro with 16gb RAM and 4 x WD10TB Red HDDs in an encrypted RAID 10 config). It still does the job though despite the age.
If you have an apple tv or vodafone tv or tesltra tv of the sorts then this will be fine as no transcoding required for those devices with 4k
Same question as above or is it better to get a 16tb drive? My media server died with 2x 7tb. Replacement machine only has one drive bay. Only use it for selected stuff and music not available for streaming.
I would stay away. Got a 5 Bay enclosure from these guys and had all sorts of problems from the start. Drives would spool down and never come back on the system unless I turned it off/on at the power point. Would ask me to format drives constantly. Copying speeds would drop down to 20mb/s, then sometimes stop altogether. One of the bays wasn't aligned properly so the plastic strip stuck out slightly when a disk was put in. More issues than I want to list. Terramaster refunded me but not before they asked to test more issues with my Ironwolf and WD Ultra Stars, obviously I told them I'd be delighted to sacrifice thousands of dollars worth of hard drives for their research. Basically tried to use my drives as guinea pigs to find faults in their products. Really poor all around
This unit has 1gb RAM, that's a bummer.
ive been waiting for so long for a deal on a synology they dont seem to appear anymore! Its like NAS units dont go on sale anymore! 1gb of RAM on this isnt enough for the use case
It's easier to find a HP gen 7 or 8 microserver on ebay or something. They are much cheaper than a NAS and more powerful.
I'd say the Celerons in something like the DS918+ do a far better job of transcoding than the N36L/N40L (Gen7 Microserver). And I would know, running Plex under Xpenology on a N40L with 8GB of RAM.
Gen8 units were far, far better in that regard.
Oh that's what the n40L is for?…..mine is used as a shelf for the ps2 and the statue from BF1….
Great minds think alike, mine apart from running general HTPC duties is also the shelf for my Wii U gamepad.
I've got 2 Microservers in my cupboard. I much prefer to use Plex on my Synology DS218+ although I should have held out for a 4 bay version. But that might be because don't know anything about Linux and had to run Windows on them. The interface on the Synology is very easy to use. I'm sure those who know more would find the Microservers an excellent alternative though.
some of us just want a low power plug and play solution, not building servers ourselves…
It's hardly 'building a server yourself'. The Microservers are pretty much as Plug & Play as a QNAP or Synology with the exception of the USB key to boot from and at least on the N36L/N40L the power consumption is quite similar. Additional things like adding RAM is a little harder but not heavily so.
Bung in 4 hard drives, build a USB key, plug it in and boot. You even use the Synology 'Finder' software to locate it on your network and install DSM onto it.
@Monsta-AU: My microservers are the first few models years ago (N36L & N40L) and you had to hack the BIOS and do other things like install Graphics cards and RAM (which was a pain in the limited space) to get them to do what a Decent NAS does out of the box. I wouldn't have been able to do it without detailed instructions from the overclockers forum. It certainly wasn't Plug'n'play. It may be different now
@bigpallooka: I never needed to hack my BIOS, and never added a video card. I did add the RAM however, and it was a bit fiddly to get the Mobo tray out - that I will agree with.
@Monsta-AU: I've still got my HP Micro N36L running along with Ubuntu, I use it for many things, a plex is one of them, no transcoding needed nor could it cope if you made it! :) works wonders for me
@Monsta-AU: My memory isn't great but I think it was necessary to allow the use of larger capacity HDD's and to allow the eSATA connection to work at full speed. I added a video card because that was the recommendation in the forums for what I wanted to do.
My hp n40l busted due to thunder do you know if i can just remove all the 3 drives and just put them into the gen 8 microserver? The gen 7 was running Windows sever 2012
ive been waiting for so long for a deal on a synology they dont seem to appear anymore!
12 deals on Synology 4-bay and 5-bay NASes since the start of this year. You're just not paying attention. Set up some email notifications in your account settings for "NAS" and "Synology".
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/525406
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/526237
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/532673
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/534218
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/534965
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/538447
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/545257
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/545630
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/548828
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/549184
ive seen those, hasnt been anything noteworthy since may, budget is under $700, i just missed the 918 one.
hasnt been anything noteworthy since may,
That's hardly "so long" a period of time.
Pricing for anything tech-related has been terrible all year but those deals were the best prices around at the time of their posting for Synology NASes.
How did your ML10v2 die? That's impressive!
I was wondering the same thing!
May have said that too soon, it wouldn't POST and would just chuck a very long beep at me. I fiddled around with it a bit more today and the backup bios got it working again luckily.
Guess I'm saving some money haha
xpenology time
Beep code translation: https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=emr_na…
If the backup firmware worked, maybe try reflashing the primary firmware using ilo
Nearly pull the trigger for DS220j, but 512m ram -_-
I don't need transcoding, so ordered 1.
To be honest, the 512mb is not too limiting for my use case. I use my DS220j as a Duplicacy target and one IP camera on Surveilliance station, and still have 70% ram free :)… All depends what you want to use it for! The processor in the DS220j and this unit is impressive for the price.
Where are you going?
ran out of toilet paper probably…
The build quality on these things are terrible. It’s the only thing I’ve ever sent back to Amazon. The software is nice but a bit buggy and limited. I would not buy this unless The data you are putting on it is not super critical.
for me a quick google about the company is enough to keep away forever
why did you upvote the deal then?
doesn't let me undo it :)
@jetabe: Scroll right to the top and click where it says "vote". Find your name and click the red minus icon to revoke.
So what was the issue? Chinese company?
Can anyone please explain what is the purpose of this thing ???
Storing data.
Can anyone please explain what is the purpose of this thing ???
Digital hoarding.
The very first Google result is a good brief explanation of its use:
https://www.avadirect.com/blog/what-is-nas-and-why-would-you….
Downvoted for asking a question? Why. Not all ozbargainers are well versed in everything
Posted on here
Good ol OzB.
Storing lots of data at home instead of the cloud. I think this is a old method for storing lots of movies to share around the house etc; plex servers etc. Nowadays for a home user the use case is diminishing.
The more paranoid prefer home storage instead of or as well as cloud for some data. I have The Eufy security cameras that can save to my NAS instead of a proprietary cloud account, as well as backing up our phones, tablets and PC's. If you prefer to just use all the streaming, cloud, Google and Apple options for everything there wouldn't be much point in having one. My son has a YouTube channel and it's a good place to store his unedited video and probably some of the biggest private users have material downloaded from dubious sources that has accumulated that needs to be stored somewhere. Of course, they are great for small businesses as well for storage of data. Simply put, it's the easiest way to store data at home or on site that can be accessed by many devices in different locations.
I'd say using a home NAS has got more popular the last few years. I have even had family members query these and that's saying something
Really? I thought the use-case would be greatly diminished as no one stores movies on these anymore.
Any if the cloud isn't accessible or your Internet is down or your cloud hosting providers declares you've violated their T&Cs and simply wipes your account clean (which they're entitled to do)?
Yep, it's for those circumstances; Which is a rare use-case. For some, these are awesome. Similar to some people still using manual cars, or Vinyl records. All good.
@Naigrabzo: No, for most people with more than a terabyte of data to store, they're the only option unless you want to be paying thousands of dollars in storage hosting costs per year. Storage hosting still isn't cheap enough even in 2020 to work out as having a lower ToC (total cost of ownership) than a NAS for large amounts of data.
Most people buying a NAS are not looking to store a few gigabytes of family photos and a few hundred MP3s; they are data-hoarders who need uninterrupted, low-latency access to their data 24/7 which usually takes up double-digit terabytes of space.
Think of it as a tiny, optimised computer that uses little power and runs custom software to allow you to do things like host a Plex server or run VMs and automate backups and things of that nature with good RAID support so you have a form of redundancy built in. You could generally do the same thing with a PC but the overall running costs would be much higher and probably not as reliable. NAS’ tend to be used more for this purposes because they are incredibly reliable and solely built for some of the purposes I mentioned and many others. In saying that. Steer clear from this brand, it’s absolute garbage. Synology and QNAP would be probably considered the top dogs in this realm for your average consumer or small business, but you will also be paying a premium for it. If your data is critical you should always have multiple backups but the first thing you should do is ensure you have a high quality, reliable NAS and this is not it. I hope that helps a little, probably not the best explanation.
Diff model
I believe that is the point/
The seller refused to give me an invoice when asked then I refused to keep their product. That is how the last deal ended up for me.
Same, I asked them to provide tax invoice, they said Amazon support can help; then I contacted Amazon support, but Amazon support said they can't help for tax invoice for third party seller and it should be provided by TerraMaster :(
Did you insist on paying GST?
My Netgear ReadyNAS 314 failed last week. Can I just move my disks (RAID 5) to this? Or do I need to recover data first?
Thanks!
Is it software raid5 or hardware raid5 ?
If its software, then may work in Jbod mode, hardware raid5 wont work for sure.
I am looking for a slim size NAS, with 4 or 6 bays and 5gbe.
Any suggestions?
This is around 13.6 x 22.5 x 22.7cm which is less than 7L. Your biggest limiting factor will be the space taken up by the drives.
Synology DiskStation DS620slim
This one will be even more limited in apps than the x86 models though. Good for media streaming and file storage.
That's what the kids call me when I make them do their homework…