Which NAS do I need?

Noufas · 1 Jan 2019 at 17:39

I have a fairly good router (Linksys EA9500) and I have access to some linksys gigabit switches and access points in case i need them.

Right now I have all my hard drives in my pc, I run a plex server on it and use my tv for 95% of my media viewing.
I save all my files on my hard drives
I will be moving houses (don't know the new house layout yet)
I was thinking that maybe getting a NAS to decentralize my media viewing would be a good idea.
I was thinking of taking off 4 hard drives from my pc for that.
I wouldn't want to spend a lot (I am not trying to solve a problem, but to make my life a bit easier).
What are my options that will not break the bank?

Also, would an external 4slot storage like an icybox connected to the usb3 port be an option?

ChrisD. · 1 Jan 2019 at 17:41

Budget? if using Plex then it's hard to ignore QNAP.

Noufas · 1 Jan 2019 at 17:43

ChrisD. said:
Budget? if using Plex then it's hard to ignore QNAP.

No budget has been set, I really don't know my options yet!
As I said, I wouldnt want to spend a lot of money for something that gives me no trouble in its current iteration

Avalon · 2 Jan 2019 at 02:23

Are you intending to run Plex on the NAS as you don't specifically state if the PC will still be running PMS or not? If not, then not a lot of benefit in moving the drives as you'd need the PC on anyway to run PMS.

Personally the usual suspects when it comes to consumer grade NAS' leave me cold, the history of planned obsolescence and having to resort to 3rd party workarounds to maintain packages vs using something like UnRAID with it's free lifetime upgrades just seems like a no brainer - it's feature set has improved massively over the last decade and hardware upgrades are generally painless, combine that with the ability to add mixed sized drives depending on what has the best £/TB should make it the the default option. You could pick a side in the FreeNAS fiasco, personally i'd rather not.

Noufas · 2 Jan 2019 at 07:11

Avalon said:
Are you intending to run Plex on the NAS as you don't specifically state if the PC will still be running PMS or not? If not, then not a lot of benefit in moving the drives as you'd need the PC on anyway to run PMS.

Personally the usual suspects when it comes to consumer grade NAS' leave me cold, the history of planned obsolescence and having to resort to 3rd party workarounds to maintain packages vs using something like UnRAID with it's free lifetime upgrades just seems like a no brainer - it's feature set has improved massively over the last decade and hardware upgrades are generally painless, combine that with the ability to add mixed sized drives depending on what has the best £/TB should make it the the default option. You could pick a side in the FreeNAS fiasco, personally i'd rather not.

Haven't thought of it but I guess that PMS will be running on the NAS.
But I think you are suggesting that I avoid any kind of nas?
The idea was to free up space in my case. I went from a cosmos 2 case into something smaller and things are tighter now (not that it has become an issue though), and also to decentralize my media needs. Or I think maybe a very long ethernet cable would work better?

ChrisD. · 2 Jan 2019 at 09:41

I run PMS on my QNAP and haven't had a single issue with it.

BigT · 2 Jan 2019 at 10:17

Depending on your definition of ‘cheap’ there isn’t really a cheap solution to introducing a 4 bay NAS that is worthwhile.

Personally I run Unraid and love it for lots of reasons that I’d recommend (mainly running dockers to completely automate downloading behind a VPN). Get perhaps a second hand gen 8 microserver and put your four drives in that for a good solution in that direction. If you curate your media well then you don’t need huge performance from the server for Plex.

If you go down the route of continuing to use your PC but remove the disks to an external enclosure then from my own personal experience I had lots of problems using USB3 and a much better time adding an eSata card and using that for connectivity. This was with a four disk Icybox enclosure. However in the end I was glad I ditched it all eventually and built it properly in a server.

QNAP is also a good solution but it always seemed to me for a little bit more you could get a more flexible server. However if you have no need for any of the extra benefits then it’s very fit for purpose of being a Plex media server and NAS.