- Jun 5, 2008
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Hey guys - I need help scoping out what I need / budgeting for a simple home NAS.
Requirements-
So these aren't exactly advanced requirements and I'm just trying to figure out if a single drive NAS can suffice, if I should go dual bay or a quad+ bay system. And if I could use something simple like an external USB HDD for backup.
Background-
My only experience with NAS is I once setup a Qnap 2 bay NAS w/ WD Reds in Raid 1 mirror as a temporary network server for a job a few years ago. Backed up with external HDD over USB
That seemed to work out well and had decent performance. But I question if I it would be overkill for home as I don't really need the mission critical uptime from a RAID array so long as I have the backup.
Right now we have a 2x 1 TB external HDDs, and probably dozens of older small drives, smartphones,CD-R/DVD-R that have photos and videos on them that we want to consolidate. My wife and I are planning on slogging through all this stuff and organizing it once and for all.
Options I'm looking at currently:
Starting at the cheapest option, I feel like this WD Mycloud Single Drive 4 TB option could work:
https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Person...1_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1502038765&sr=1-1&th=1
I know nothing about these. Are they decent?
Would you be concerned about performance streaming HD video on a single bay solution? Also there could be up to 2-3 Win10 PCs accessing the NAS at the same time over GigE ethernet. It's fine with it having some performance drop in that scenario. I know RAID should offer quite a bit higher read performance
Next step up to something like the dual-drive, Mycloud 4 TB (or 8 TB) if merited:
https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Ultra-...502040604&sr=1-1&keywords=WD+4TB+My+Cloud+EX2
Or step up even more and get a diskless from somebody like Synology / Qnap and populate drives myself.
I wouldn't feel bad about dropping <$200 on the single drive Mycloud to get started and at least have something to test out. Then upgrade to a better NAS down the line as storage needs grow. In any scenario I will be purchasing also a separate USB external HDD to backup the NAS, unless you guys have a better backup plan. I'm also considering cloud backups. It would be nice to have some way to access from our smartphones on the go but not a requirement.
My concern about investing in something like a 4+ bay solution upfront is as I don't actually need that space now or anytime soon, the firmware/hardware could go obsolete before I hit those capacity needs.
I'm just starting out my research so will continue digging into this but thought it would be helpful to hear from anyone that went throw a similar decision making process. Thanks!
Requirements-
- 4 TB+ storage for storing old family photos/home video
- methodology for tagging/organizing this kind of content is a bonus.
- Occasional streaming of HD 1080p video & ripped DVD footage to Fire Stick / Roku
- again cataloging functionality would be nice
- Backup mechanism for preserving this data
- Turnkey / plug and play -ish
So these aren't exactly advanced requirements and I'm just trying to figure out if a single drive NAS can suffice, if I should go dual bay or a quad+ bay system. And if I could use something simple like an external USB HDD for backup.
Background-
My only experience with NAS is I once setup a Qnap 2 bay NAS w/ WD Reds in Raid 1 mirror as a temporary network server for a job a few years ago. Backed up with external HDD over USB
That seemed to work out well and had decent performance. But I question if I it would be overkill for home as I don't really need the mission critical uptime from a RAID array so long as I have the backup.
Right now we have a 2x 1 TB external HDDs, and probably dozens of older small drives, smartphones,CD-R/DVD-R that have photos and videos on them that we want to consolidate. My wife and I are planning on slogging through all this stuff and organizing it once and for all.
Options I'm looking at currently:
Starting at the cheapest option, I feel like this WD Mycloud Single Drive 4 TB option could work:
https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Person...1_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1502038765&sr=1-1&th=1
I know nothing about these. Are they decent?
Would you be concerned about performance streaming HD video on a single bay solution? Also there could be up to 2-3 Win10 PCs accessing the NAS at the same time over GigE ethernet. It's fine with it having some performance drop in that scenario. I know RAID should offer quite a bit higher read performance
Next step up to something like the dual-drive, Mycloud 4 TB (or 8 TB) if merited:
https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Ultra-...502040604&sr=1-1&keywords=WD+4TB+My+Cloud+EX2
Or step up even more and get a diskless from somebody like Synology / Qnap and populate drives myself.
I wouldn't feel bad about dropping <$200 on the single drive Mycloud to get started and at least have something to test out. Then upgrade to a better NAS down the line as storage needs grow. In any scenario I will be purchasing also a separate USB external HDD to backup the NAS, unless you guys have a better backup plan. I'm also considering cloud backups. It would be nice to have some way to access from our smartphones on the go but not a requirement.
My concern about investing in something like a 4+ bay solution upfront is as I don't actually need that space now or anytime soon, the firmware/hardware could go obsolete before I hit those capacity needs.
I'm just starting out my research so will continue digging into this but thought it would be helpful to hear from anyone that went throw a similar decision making process. Thanks!