Only 5 left at posting, but cracking price. Already own one, great NAS, same as DS920+ but with extra drive slot, extra 4GB RAM and 4 LAN ports.
CamelCamelCamel.
They do if you want to run Plex with HW transcoding or Virtual Machine Manager.
Plex with HW transcoding
Or you can direct stream and offline transcode.
Online transcoding isn't essential.
Virtual Machine Manager.
Doesn't need an Intel CPU
It's not essential but boy its highly preferable if you run Plex on it and dont want to waste a lot of storage with multiple encodes. Just need to be clear what your requirement is and pick what is fit for purpose. Knocking an intel with quicksync is just silly.
It's not essential but boy its highly preferable if you run Plex on it and dont want to waste a lot of storage with multiple encodes.
It depends on what you are doing with it.
If you are only streaming within your house then direct play should work on most/all of your devices.
If you are going external then it depends on your bandwidth, but as I mentioned you can offline transcode for that too.
Storage is not that expensive so the cost of storing different encodes is not very high.
Online transcoding also is not preferable if you want the best quality.
Offline software transcoding will give the best result.
Just need to be clear what your requirement is and pick what is fit for purpose.
Which is why I said
Or you can direct stream and offline transcode.
Online transcoding isn't essential.
You shouldn't buy a NAS just because it has hardware transcoding and you shouldn't avoid a NAS just because it does not have hardware transcoding
Codecs will change over time but the ability of your NAS to online transcode new codecs will not.
When the next codec comes out what do you do then? Buy a new NAS?
You're probably not going to do that so what else can you do?
Software transcode? Use an external transcoder like a NVIDIA Shield?
Both of those options are valid now for a NAS that cannot transcode online.
Knocking an intel with quicksync is just silly.
I didn't…
@spaceflight: Mate your just repeating much of the same. I clearly stated the caveat and context for my remark so all this is largely jibber not necessary. Yes options are available, intel transcoding is not the be all and end all, but its a great option AND preferable for some people (like me). I used to run Plex server on an nvidia shield and then a shield pro (and originally a HTPC), it runs better on my NAS hands down and less stuffing about. Keeping other versions would be a terrible option for my use case and most definitely not fit the sweet spot between cost effectiveness and convenience. For someone else with a smaller library or less 4K stuff of course may be different.
Codecs do not change overnight, its hardly something to worry about. How long have h.264 and more recently h.265 been around and will continue to be around? Longer than my NAS in all likelihood.
For someone else with a smaller library or less 4K stuff of course may be different.
So you have a large 4k library and transcode?
Transcoding 4k (especially HDR) is a bad idea if you care about the quality. It's getting better but you are better off with a 1080 SDR copy.
Even Plex agrees…
The first rule of 4k is
Don’t bother transcoding 4kThe second rule of 4k is
DON’T bother transcoding 4kThe third rule of 4k is
If you cannot direct play 4k, then perhaps you should not even be collecting 4k.The forth rule of 4k is
If you don’t have the storage space for a copy of both 4k and 1080/720, then perhaps you should not even be collecting 4k
https://forums.plex.tv/t/info-plex-4k-transcoding-and-you-ak…
Why's that?
QuickSync for hardware accelerated video transcoding
Oh I don't use mine for video transcoding so that's no issue for me.
They had a bug with some of the Atom powered ones years ago.
Bit of a silly thing to say without giving context. Running 918+ very happily.
Yup. Got an Atom powered one, not one of the affected series, been chugging along 24/7 for years.
yep. have 1019+ and very happy with it and its Intel CPU.
can confirm….
i had a DS1815+ which died due to a known issue with the C2000 series chipset, they replaced it under warranty… with another unit that was suceptible to the same known bug… (which i didn't know about at the time)… a couple of years later once it's out of warranty it died again, and they wouldn't replace it.
they're great units when they work, but spending $1200 on a new chassis every few years wasn't really part of my long term plan for reliable storage/backup…
What's the bug?
it wont boot
yeah just fails to boot… turns into a big, useless brick.
if you get another synology you can restore the disk volume and get your data back easily enough, but after the second death and lack of support i wasn't keen to spend the money on another unit, so just built an unraid server and restored my critical backups to it (and it's been great since then)
@jaybo: There's a fix out there, a resistor fix that allows the unit to return to normal functionality.
a couple of years later once it's out of warranty
As long as you purchased it in Australia, Aus Consumer Law would override any out of warranty BS they tried on, especially for a known fault.
Neg me all you want - your money - I wont buy anything synology ever again.
Why make a false blanket statement when the issue was limited to a very specific Intel CPU/chipset and not limited to Synology devices?
Friends don't let friends buy any device using the Intel Atom C2000 series CPUs : that would be a fair statement.
I've been running that same Synology DS1512+ (Intel CPU based) for 9 years. It has been running 24/7/365 (UPS protected) for that whole time and is still working perfectly. The majority of the Synology products were not affected by the C2000 issue. I understand that provides little comfort to people who bought C2000 devices but there is little to be gained from false statements.
It was the way it was handled by synology, every co makes mistakes - bad ones dont get my business again.
Understand your point of view based on your experiences.
In contrast I have had good technical support from Synology over the years. Lost entire volumes a couple of times due to bad software updates (yes, lack of quality control). Synology both times remote'd in and fixed the volumes up - within about 4 hours of raising the support tickets.
My main disappointment with Synology is they went through a patch of a couple of years of lack to quality control in their software updates. They responded though and quality over the last few years has been very good.
You mean Intel Celeron?
OOS. Back to $1,149.
I had it in my cart and as signed in to buy it went back to normal price :(
Ozbargained …Price back to normal.
has anyone used a shucked WD 18TB with these or a 920+?
I read somewhere that there might be a HDD capacity limitation on some synologys?
That's because there are not yet any 18TB drives on their compatibility list https://www.synology.com/en-uk/compatibility it's not an exhaustive list and is updated over time after testing etc.
There are people running drives not on the list with no problems. I've ordered a couple of 18TB WD Red Pro's for my array in a DS918+ Happy to let you know how they go once received. If they work then they'll work in a DS920+ and there should also be no problem for the WD White's shucked from external enclosures.
thanks just reply to this or message me!
I'm running 2x shucked 18tb WD elements drives in my old DS1817+ and it works just fine.
@vaper: Of course. Unless you don't break the enclosures and keep them to put the drive back in should it fail within the warranty period.
@Russticles: Thanks, now just need another 18TB sale, missed the last one.
Looking at running SHR, so want to start off with a big capacity HDD for future-proofing.
@yacman: I cancelled the order for the WD Red Pro's and ordered a couple of these instead https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/670097#comment-11563372
Not as cheap as shucking externals but not that much more and they're enterprise drives with 2.5M hours MTBF rating.
@yacman: Well it depends what your future drive sizes will be. I started with 12TB drives around July last year, and then I didn't realise every drive you add thereafter has to be same size or larger which meant the 10TB drive I bought on sale wasn't usable (unless I wanted to start over).
In other words, whatever size HDD you start with will be the smallest drive you can buy in the future if you plan to keep expanding the SHR pool.
@jace88: Lucky I posted that extra information and got your reply.
After watching a youtube video I understood SHR to mean that your first drive is your largest and then you can expand with smaller from there but not larger.
There is some info at this link but its a bit hard to understand for me.
What is the advantage of SHR then? and does that mean I should pick the smallest drive in my pool say 6TB to be the first drive, then expand with my 10TB and larger drives?
@yacman: I'm not an expert on the subject (and others on here probably are better equipped to speak to it) but from my understanding, the key benefit is you can (relatively) easily mix and match different sized drives and minimise wasted/unusable space and grow the total amount of redundant storage capacity over time. Traditional RAID isn't that flexible.
The marvel of this is that you can start small (eg with two 8TB drives) and then as your needs grow over time (and hard drive prices fall) then you can keep growing the storage pool.
@jace88: yeah that would work well but I understood it as the other way around.
In your case I would need to choose my smallest drive first then load larger drives after it.
Would be good if users with more experience can comment but I will do more research before buying anything for sure.
@yacman: FYI here's the line buried in the KB which is relevant to you:
For SHR: The capacity of the drive you intend to add must be equal to or larger than the largest drive in the storage pool, or equal to any of the drives in the storage pool.
Example: If an SHR storage pool is composed of three drives (2 TB, 1.5 TB, and 1 TB), we recommend that the newly-added drive should be at least 2 TB for better capacity usage. You can consider adding 1.5 TB and 1 TB drives, but please note that some capacity of the 2 TB drive will remain unused.
Source: https://kb.synology.com/en-au/DSM/help/DSM/StorageManager/st…
So technically you can add smaller drives, but you'll be wasting some of the capacity essentially.
@jace88: Thanks for the help, still confusing if you can have smaller drives in the initial pool, why can't you fully utilise them when you add to the pool?
Or doesSHR merge all drives into one big volume?
Anyway, you don't have to answer that, I'll look into it more, just like you said there's a lot there so info is berried amongst it all.
@yacman: It’s to do with how the RAID works where when you introduce a new drive, it needs to spread the data and stripe the parity data across the drives in such a way that if any individual drive (or two if you’re using SHR-2?) were to fail, it would be able to reconstruct the data. I believe the only way to do it is to start over again if you want to introduce smaller drives.
@jace88: Yeah, that was the impression I was getting, how about if you wanted to upgrade a drive that was old and smallest capacity or failed, can you do that without data loss?
I also have the same understanding of SHR-2 by the way but I'm not sure what the drawback is, I imagine it is less overall capacity.
@yacman: Yes you can always change a drive and rebuild the RAID/upgrade (i.e. doesn't have to be when the drive has actually failed).
And yes for SHR-2 it basically means there is enough redundancy to support two drives failing which means less overall capacity for you.
If you haven't already, try playing around with this: https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator
dang, that was quick.
Great share, thanks OP, skipped this one running the Intel Celeron CPU
hoping to see the DS1621+ with AMD Ryzen chip in it
iirc, the Celeron has the iGPU, whereas the Ryzen embedded doesn't. I guess that's why it was preferable for people who were doing transcodes for media to stream.
I'm curious to know if the Ryzen embedded will continue without an iGPU as the alternate is the 2x costlier Xeon based units.
Cracking deal for the lucky few quick enough 👍
Terramaster good brand?
Synology is out of my budget.
It's a budget brand but will work but stock software isn't meant to be great. I installed truenas with extra 8gb ram. Works well for plex but avoid celeron CPUs.
I am trying to figure out remote photo backup…
ziggy1312 on 29/12/2021 - 11:49 Comment score below threshold.