NAS Options

swarfega said:

I have had a WD My Cloud Mirror NAS (6Tb) for some 6 years now and I feel that I would like some thing more powerful and perhaps larger. I have currently used 66% of the current NAS.

I have been looking at Synology (such as synology ds220 or Synology DS920+) or a Qnap device. Trouble is, I'm not sure what I want and whether I need a 2 or a 4 bay model. The WD NAS has served me well but it can be a bit under powered (cant run Plex well) and WD don't release updates for it very often. Can I transfer the two WD red drives that are in there now into another NAS?

Does anyone have any ideas as to what would be suitable for a home user.

Hi there

Almost any Linux system would be ideal as a Home NAS -- much better (and cheaper) than a proprietary Synology NAS and of course you can install any software you like on it.

All you need is some old hardware and an HDD or two -- running also two HDD's (can be of unequal size) as a combined "big drive" with software RAID 0 you can get really excellent performance from even old HDD's and with SAMBA you don't need to run any "Server" things for sharing files --even multi-media -- just say run something like KODI or VLC on a firestick device - that then gives access to all your multi-media files which you can play on a remote TV without any problem.

I'm using an old HP microserver Proliant GEN 10 as a NAS server -- running ArchLinux kernel 5.11.6 with KDE as the GUI on a 4 bay unit - the OS is installed on an SSD which I've used in place of the DVD bay and there's 4 HDD bays which I've arranged as 2 X 2 arrays in RAID 0 Combo's. This server also has 2 LAN connectors and 2 display video ports which I'm using via a DVI->HDMI adapter to external monitor.

It just runs 24/7 with almost no need of any attention whatsoever and IMO far better than a load of those proprietary Synology NAS things.

You don't need PLEX or any server software to watch multi-media on a remote TV either if you set up SAMBA on the Linux box (and on a thing like an amazon TV firestick). Install KODI on the firestick and you are "in business".

If you like UK footy (premier / champions league) then also on the firestick install a vpn - e.g openvpn - logon to servers in one of these 3 countries : Iceland/ Belgium / USA , an select from the amazon web browser the url ustvgo.

Cheers
jimbo

swarfega said:

Thanks Jimbo. We do have Dad's old machine which is an AMD (pre Ryzen) system. Fairly slow but doing nothing at the moment.

I am familiar with Linux as I use it on my WFH machine (Manjaro KDE)

Hi there

For UK TV footy use this : USTVGO channels list - USTVGO.TV and choose Iceland / Belgium / USA for the vpn server on nordvpn -- nbc sports usually has UK premier league / Champions league football all FTA -- remember though times are shown as US east coast local times !!!

If you are using Manjaro then you can use the Archlinux extra repositories (the AUR) via the yay facility. Install nordvpn cli for that and you are in business.

You don't need a mega fast machine for this stuff !!!

Cheers
jimbo

swarfega said:

I was using Arch until last night. Then for some unknown reason, all the sound devices vanished and there was no way to add them back in. Manjaro has been solid for me. I love AUR, easy to find software.

Hi there
ensure the gst streamer plugins - good, bad, ugly etc are all installed as latest kernel updates did something with sound that needs these plugins- all working again 100% -- After installing simply go to configure audio devices on the "speaker icon" on the bottom right of the panel .

Also at login choose plasma X11 rather than plasma wayland -- if you change the sddm login screen away from the default one you'll see these options.

On the NAS it's easy to have Windows as a VM using KVM -- I'm running W2K19 server - re-jigged as a desktop OS running very nicely on this box !!! beats the pants off a bog standard W10 system !!..



Manjaro is fine too - but I'm sticking with Arch as I don't have any problems with it.

Cheers
and it's "bedtime" for me now.

Jimbo

I built my own using TrueNAS:
My 'New' Build!

It is also a pre-Ryzen AMD computer. The software is free. It also runs a Windows 10 VM and a Plex Media Server.

Hi folks
I think the conclusion really must be that if you can do it build your own NAS -- doesn't need really powerful hardware -- I don't know why but unless you are running a whole slew of quite busily loaded Virtual Machines there seems to be a misconception that a server needs a mega powerful CPU. What it does need is decent I/O and sufficient RAM - and even with slowish HDD's using RAID 0 in software mode MDADM can really speed up the I/O throughput. Whether using RAID 0 or any other system don't forget to backup your data regularly -- with RAID 0 if the array goes you lose the whole thing but with regular backups and reasonable quality disks I've had these things running 24/7 for months and months without problems.

The software is all free and easily installable - I'd definitely avoild the commercial proprietary products as they are much more inflexible and definitely more expensive.

BTW using RAID 0 allows you to combine different size HDD's without losing capacity -- in Windows storage spaces combined disks have to be either the same size or the aggregate size of the smallest disk so a 1.5 TG HDD and a 500 GB HDD would aggregate to a 1.0 TB size (2 X 500 MB). With MDADM and RAID 0 the size is the full 2.0 TB.

Here's one :



running a load of VMs on it too



W2K19 server running as VM



The Raid 0 idea is also a good solution if you have some old HDD's lying around unused to increase the HDD capacity of your server.

Cheers
jimbo