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Looking at getting a 4-bay pre-rolled NAS. Narrowed it down to the Synology ds418play and ds918+. Leaning toward the 418play as there will usually only ever be max 2 users accessing the NAS simultaneously. Am I right to conclude that the quad core over the dual core celeron and ssd caching in the 918+ vs the 418play will be overkill? Also, the dual core has a slightly higher clock speed - does this mean, if anything, performance on the 418play will be slightly better when only 1 person is accessing? (not that I expect a perceptible difference).

To me the only reason to go with the more expensive is if you want to run other apps on it like Plex or Docker or something like that. For just straight NAS uses, go with the cheaper.

If I recall correctly, the "play" models use a cheaper ARM cpu, whereas the + models use an Intel Celeron. The Intel chip is more powerful and better at transcoding video on the fly, but I imagine the ARM chips are also continually improving. If you're not transcoding, a "play" model should suffice.

They both use the latest Gen celeron. The 418play is dual core and has a slightly higher boost clock than the quad in the 918+. As far as I know, because they are both x86, they both run Plex and Docker. Though Docker might only be “officially” supported on the 918+. They main advantage of the 918+ over the 418play is that the 918+ is expandable and it has 2 nvme ssd slots for caching.

I have a DS418j which I use mostly for backups, and for that it's been great. In the past I've tried to run Plex on it and had mixed results. For streaming only it should be fine, but once you try to do any kind of transcoding it tends to get bogged down pretty quickly. The best reason to get a NAS from Synology is for their DSM software that runs it. Some of the more expensive models don't make a lot of sense price-wise when you compare the hardware to what you can build on your own for the same cost, but if you can get by with a 4 bay model using the tools that DSM gives you, then you can get a pretty decent machine without much trouble.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

To me the only reason to go with the more expensive is if you want to run other apps on it like Plex or Docker or something like that. For just straight NAS uses, go with the cheaper.

Agreed. Synology stuff can be run as full blown mini servers complete with LAMP stack, which is why I like them more than the typical prebuilt NAS vendor, but if you're just using it as a standard network drive with a small (individual/family size) amount of traffic, the 418 series should be plenty sufficient.

I have a Synology 211j from a few year ago and I really like it. It's an impressive little NAS box with a lot of really cool features. It's very versatile.

The Swamp wrote:

I have a Synology 211j from a few year ago and I really like it. It's an impressive little NAS box with a lot of really cool features. It's very versatile.

Newegg has the 2-drive ds218j on Black Friday for $140. Hard to go wrong at that price. I might even stop saving up for the 4-drive and go with that. I can get the 2-drive plus an 8TB for cheaper than just the 4-drive enclosure and re-using my smaller drives.

cynan wrote:

They both use the latest Gen celeron. The 418play is dual core and has a slightly higher boost clock than the quad in the 918+. As far as I know, because they are both x86, they both run Plex and Docker. Though Docker might only be “officially” supported on the 918+. They main advantage of the 918+ over the 418play is that the 918+ is expandable and it has 2 nvme ssd slots for caching.

I have a 418play with (4) 8Tb drives. Works well.

I can verify if uses a Celeron. I have upgraded the memory to 16Gb. No special hacks required, just pop in the hardware and go. Officially 16Gb is not supported, but unofficially it works great.

Plex also works great, I have not had experience with slow encoding.

I also port trunk (aggregate, bind, etc.) the two 1Gb links. You need to attach to a switch that supports it (I have a cheap Buffalo managed switch that does).

For basic NAS duties the 418 should be plenty, but if you plan to run apps or run programs on your desktop that host files off the NAS then the quadcore is a better fit.

The IGP provides the best transcoding and since both NAS devices have the same IGP it apparently doesn't matter which model for that. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 0jdj3tmMPc

I'm running a 415play at home. Have plex on it, streaming my blu-ray rips to Xbox One S and PS4. Also running their cloudstation app to backup our phone photos and streaming my CD rips. I've gone from 3x2TB to 4x4TB to 4x10TB drives so capacity hasn't been an issue. I haven't had any troubles with the Synology, although I've found that my Xbox seems to do better for playback than my PS4 (both are on wifi, as I don't have ethernet to the entertainment center, so it could be related to that).

The earlier "play" boxes didn't have a high-end processor in them but had additional media transcoding capabilities in hardware to offset it. My understanding of Plex is that it only transcodes if the client device doesn't support the native format of the file you've ripped, so if you're using anything even remotely recent for playback you might not really notice a difference between the two models for media. I'd look over the other functions they have, but it seems the 418 vs. 418play are fairly similar. the 418 can do 4k60 transcoding (I'd expect the next generation "play" to have this if they update the processor, as Intel's newer J parts can do it), but otherwise they're much closer than the previous generations (my 415play, for instance, only has a single ethernet compared to the dual ethernet of the 415+).

I wouldn't bother with the 918+. The only reason to go with that is if you think you're going to need more than 4 drives' worth of storage. But since you can just put bigger and bigger drives in the box, it's more likely you'd want to replace the actual NAS before you'd want more storage capacity. It also sort of defeats the whole "small footprint, unobtrusive box" aspect of it when you need to have a second bay device sitting there.

Unless maybe you already have 9 middling-size hard drives you want to use and don't want to spend money on new ones. Then maybe the 918+ would make some sense, but it still wouldn't match the transcoding capabilities of the 418+.

I was just looking at Newegg's Black Friday ad and happened across the Qnap 3 Bay TS-328-US Personal Cloud NAS for $189. Is there anything wrong with picking the Qnap brand?

biffzinker wrote:

I was just looking at Newegg's Black Friday ad and happened across the Qnap 3 Bay TS-328-US Personal Cloud NAS for $189. Is there anything wrong with picking the Qnap brand?

Thanks for pointing that out. From the looks of it, the software isn't quite as elegant, it relies on traditional RAID rather than software duplication. I'm not sure if I like that more or less. It does support docker at that price point which is pretty fabulous. 3 drives can help alot. I wonder if you can have 2 of them in RAID1 and a 3rd un-raided (in my case I'd have photo's in the array and my Blu-Ray rips on the other since I can recreate those moderately easily.)

deruberhanyok wrote:

I'd look over the other functions they have, but it seems the 418 vs. 418play are fairly similar. the 418 can do 4k60 transcoding (I'd expect the next generation "play" to have this if they update the processor, as Intel's newer J parts can do it), but otherwise they're much closer than the previous generations (my 415play, for instance, only has a single ethernet compared to the dual ethernet of the 415+).

Unless maybe you already have 9 middling-size hard drives you want to use and don't want to spend money on new ones. Then maybe the 918+ would make some sense, but it still wouldn't match the transcoding capabilities of the 418+.

My searching didn't turn up a ds418+. As far as the 418 vs the 418play, the former has a quad core Realtek arm processor, while the play has a dual core Appollo Lake Celeron. I can't see the Realtek outperforming the intel in transcoding. But you are right, it seems that the Arm processor can accept a h265 2160p @ 60fps source input file for transcoding, while the celeron-based models are limited to 30 fps. I don't plan to have too many 4k 60fps files so I don't think that will be an issue. What the more powerful celeron-based models do give you is faster write performance than the Arm-based model, which will come in handy for backups. Plus, they have expandable memory to help that much more with performance.

I think the ds418play is sufficient for my needs. My dilemma is that I can get the ds918+ for only $80 more...

Edit: The processor in the 418play is the Intel Celeron J3355. Isn't this one of "Intel's newer J parts"?

cynan wrote:

Edit: The processor in the 418play is the Intel Celeron J3355. Isn't this one of "Intel's newer J parts"?

According to ARK, that's a Q3 2016 part, but it can do h.265 decode with quicksync:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video

I'm assuming all these NASes have native SMB support, or do you have to install a Samba app on them? I'm in the market for a 4-bay myself, but don't need any streaming or transcoding duties, just want a place to store all my pr0n...

For Windows, nothign additional needed for install.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

cynan wrote:

Edit: The processor in the 418play is the Intel Celeron J3355. Isn't this one of "Intel's newer J parts"?

According to ARK, that's a Q3 2016 part, but it can do h.265 decode with quicksync:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video

Yes, but perhaps not a 4k h.265 60fps decode (30fps limit)

cynan wrote:

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

cynan wrote:

Edit: The processor in the 418play is the Intel Celeron J3355. Isn't this one of "Intel's newer J parts"?

According to ARK, that's a Q3 2016 part, but it can do h.265 decode with quicksync:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video

Yes, but perhaps not a 4k h.265 60fps decode (30fps limit)

What 2160p content is out there is > 24hz? UHD Blu-Ray Rips are still going to be 24fps by and large.

Voldenuit wrote:

I'm assuming all these NASes have native SMB support, or do you have to install a Samba app on them? I'm in the market for a 4-bay myself, but don't need any streaming or transcoding duties, just want a place to store all my pr0n...

If I remember, it's just a GUI check box for "Enable SMB" on the 418play...

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

cynan wrote:

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

According to ARK, that's a Q3 2016 part, but it can do h.265 decode with quicksync:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video

Yes, but perhaps not a 4k h.265 60fps decode (30fps limit)

What 2160p content is out there is > 24hz? UHD Blu-Ray Rips are still going to be 24fps by and large.

3D rendered AMVs can be found at 2160p60 on youtube. Some sports cams like theGoPro Hero 6 also shoot in 4K60p. There have also been a couple of commercial blu-rays that have been released at 4K60p such as Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.

Rare as they may be right now, I guess it depends on what media you view and how future-proof you want your setup to be. If Twitch decides to throw the switch on 4K 60 streams, that might open up a whole extra channel of content.

EDIT: Newegg currently has the QNAP 451+ 4-bay NAS with Quad Core Celeron (It's Bay Trail, not Core) and 2 GB RAM (expandable to 16 GB according to users) for $399 after promo code, have heard polar opinions on QNAP vs Synology, wondering if it's worth biting.

I have a DS218j with (2) 6TB NAS drives in it, mirrored. Love it. Full native Mac/Windows access to files, and very good mobile access (at least on iOS, dunno about Android).

Originally bought it so my Mom can have one big ol' bitbucket to put her years and years of photos and videos, and be able to access them from anywhere. Totally does that and lots more. I'm so impressed I'm going to buy another one for myself. As long as there's room, the plan is to use hers to backup mine, and mine to backup hers over the interwebs.

It does lots more than just file serving... look up what modules ("Packages") you can get for DSM, the Synology OS that lives on their DiskStations. Pretty impressive. Surveillance, media streaming, even an email server (but I haven't tried that one yet).

The only major slowdown I've noticed is when uploading lots of photos from iOS in HEIC format and converting them to JPEG on the NAS. That taxes the admittedly somewhat meager CPU, but it's queued and doesn't really slowdown I/O.

If there is anything you'd like me to try before you buy, lemme know.

Drewstre wrote:

I have a DS218j with (2) 6TB NAS drives in it, mirrored. Love it. Full native Mac/Windows access to files, and very good mobile access (at least on iOS, dunno about Android).

.

I'm now considering a 2-bay myself - the ds218+, which has the same appollo lake dual core celeron as the ds418play and upgradable memory. Particularly since you can get refurbished 10 Tb HGST Ultrastar with 3-year warranties on Amazon for $220... I think 10 Tb (Raid 1) will suffice for a while.

Pulled the trigger on the QNAP TS-451+ 4-bay NAS, waiting for it in mail.

PS, prospective NAS owners should be aware of the network drive map bug in Windows 10 1809:
https://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Network-drives-You-dont-need-no-steenking-network-drives.

Guess I'm staying away from Windows updates until 2019.

Got my QNAP TS-451+ and set it up. Also expanded the RAM from the stock 2 GB to 8 GB DDR3L-1600.

Installed 4 x 8 TB HDDs (Seagate ST8000DM004 5400 rpm drives shucked from external drives). Don't need performance, just want something cheap and quiet.

Set up each disk as a static single volume. Decided not to play fancy with RAID and storage pools so that I could pull the drives in the future and just read them in a dock as need be (drives are formatted as EXT3, which Windows supports as of 1709, iirc*). RAIDing them would have required me to mount the RAID array in Linux if I wanted to retrieve the data without the NAS.

I'm not using any of the fancy features - Cloud Share, Kodi/Plex, etc. It's just dumb SMB share with no aggregating for my home network.

I do like how quiet it is - it uses a single 120 mm fan instead of some models that use 1-2x 40 or 60 mm fans, and the fan runs at ~500 rpm during normal use, which is inaudible. Web administration tools seem pretty good so far for my needs.

One hitch I encountered was it flagged one of my drives as bad after a QNAP OS update. Pulling the drive and checking it in a dock showed all good SMART indicators. After running a block scan on the drive with the NAS (which took over 12 hours), it was flagged good again, so I'm thinking it had to do with the OS update.

PS I've been using the pushd command in CMD so I don't have to mount the shared folders as drive letters if I need to do command line manipulation with CMD (yes, I know bash and powershell can work directly with network drives, but CMD is so convenient...)

* EDIT: My memory might be bad here. If Windows 10 doesn't natively support EXT3 (I can't tell because I've been using Ext2Fsd for a while), you can use Ext2Fsd.

If the number of disks you want is 4-6 then it's always better to roll your own NAS with a FreeNAS build.

The ~$400 they ask for a diskless 4-bay could be spent on a higher-spec mITX build in something like a Node304, but for not a lot more scratch you can get yourself an ATX case and just pile in the disks; 14-disk-capacity homebrews are usually cheaper than 6-bay off-the-shelf NAS boxes and not artificially limited to one particular ecosystem. If you want a bit of extra pep just sprinkle a cheap 128GB m.2 card in there and use it for the OS and share cache.

At the low end you can get an embedded mITX board with a Pentium-J and 4 SATA ports. Add a PSU, Case, and 4GB RAM and you're already $100 cheaper than the equivalent NAS and way more powerful.

At the higher end you're looking at a 6-port ATX board with an i3+ECC RAM and then you just just need some PCIe SATA cards.

I went ahead and ordered the ds218j today for $135. My plan is to just move the two drives from the desktop and get an external as my duplicate copies. I can throw that in the safe when you ere our if town or take with us if we evacuate.

Well I had a weak moment and bought a 8TB external WD Red drive for $150 at Best Buy. My plan now is to shuck the drive and put it in the NAS then move everything to that. I’ll then put one of the 2 current drives in as a duplication drive (probably going to use the “hybrid-raid” or whatever that is called). I’ll then put the other current drive in the external chassis and have that be a daily backup. We’ll see in 24-hours.
Also I’ll be able to plug in both surveillance cameras and play with that aspect right off the top.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

Well I had a weak moment and bought a 8TB external WD Red drive for $150 at Best Buy. My plan now is to shuck the drive and put it in the NAS then move everything to that. I’ll then put one of the 2 current drives in as a duplication drive (probably going to use the “hybrid-raid” or whatever that is called). I’ll then put the other current drive in the external chassis and have that be a daily backup. We’ll see in 24-hours.
Also I’ll be able to plug in both surveillance cameras and play with that aspect right off the top.

I did the same and bought 4 Seagate external 8 TB drives for ~$135 ea, when the same exact drive as an internal HDD cost ~$200 ea.

Shucking those cases with their overly tight plastic clamps was not fun, that's for sure.

EDIT: PS, if you use the Synology Hybrid Raid (SHR), I don't know if you'll be able to easily recover the data from the drives if the NAS dies. If you stick to the classic RAID types, you should be able to mount them in linux (maybe even using the bash shell in Win10? Iunno) with the mdadm command and retrieve the data from the RAID array, but I don't know if Synology has user-available tools to do the same with SHR.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

Well I had a weak moment and bought a 8TB external WD Red drive for $150 at Best Buy. My plan now is to shuck the drive and put it in the NAS then move everything to that. I’ll then put one of the 2 current drives in as a duplication drive (probably going to use the “hybrid-raid” or whatever that is called). I’ll then put the other current drive in the external chassis and have that be a daily backup. We’ll see in 24-hours.
Also I’ll be able to plug in both surveillance cameras and play with that aspect right off the top.

What have people's experiences been with shucking externals? I've heard that some models have stopped using a separate USB-to-SATA converter (i.e. main logic board is native USB), so you can't use them as a standard SATA drive.