Non-C4 specific: NAS enclosures

[eggzlot]

I have a very long in the tooth ReadyNas NV+.  It is fine, works well (knock on wood).  Just upgraded it to 2 TB drives so drives are fresh.  I am hoping it lasts another few years, but from what I read, around the 7-9 year mark the power supplies start to go, etc.  So I want to be prepared and likely start to look for another solution, implement the solution, move the data over easily and cleanly and have both running for a while to make sure no issues.

I do not really need C4 integration offered by QNAP - I have XBMC via VideoStorm Netplay for video and Sonos for audio, so I have interfaces to play video and audio around my house - unless someone can tell me why QNAP/C4 is superior.  Currently the NAS sits in an already cluttered home office, and here is my issue: tight on space and not sure I want to add a 2nd NAS to my office so I was thinking about a rack mounted one for my basement AV set up.  That said, on paper you seem to get less bang for your buck spec wise when you look at rack mounted vs 4 bay desktop model.  Am I missing something?  I looked at Thecus, QNAP and Synology mostly.

uses: Backing up 1 Mac and 2 Windows (v 8 and 10) computers, hosting 10's GB of photos, few TB of FLAC/MP3 files for music and a few 100 GB of music.  Right now my NAS is at about 3 TB in use.  I dont need a 32 TB monster but I realize our needs grow so probably looking to start in the 10-12 TB range to allow for growth/larger drives down the road (as you can see I've had this NAS for 7 years already)

I want to have 1-2 models in mind, maybe find them on discount/clearance and be confident to pull the plug on a purchase when the time is right.

any input?

[msgreenf]

I recommend drobo!  I have had one going for years that I just replaced (literally data is copying for 25+ hrs) to there 5n network model.  I have it loaded with 1 - 2TB and 4 - 3TB WD Red Pro drives.

 

Highly recommend drobo

[enzeder]

I concur on the power supplies, many years ago I have a ReadyNV which worked fine until I blew two power supplies in quick succession, nothing like walking into your house to a putrid burning smell. At the time switched to an WHSv1 solution, followed by WHS2011 (with drivepool). Earlier this year upgraded to windows10 and that was a mistake as took a lot of tweaking to get it to work for C4 and then for some reason data transfer became very poor - KODI was stuttering on HD steams so threw in the towel and decided to go for a NAS solution. Briefly considered building my own, which would be cheaper and interesting, but decided I wanted an easy life.

Like you really wanted a rack mounted unit, but also short depth, which surprisingly constrained choice a lot, so in the end went for a synology RS815. Yes, it seems a little more expensive than a desktop but freed up a lot of rack space for some other toys - it also looks really nice in the rack

Intuitively I hated the idea of downgrading to a 32 bit ARM but I've been very happy with the performance, does the job perfectly and serves files faster than my i5 windows based machine. To be fair I also have that windows machine sitting in the rack available for heavy duty work such as EMBY / Plex transcoding etc so a low powered NAS is all I really needed. 

Would happily buy again.

[eggzlot]

I dont have to worry about depth too much.  I dont know which processes are better, etc.  The Thecus 4510U Pro is the same price as the Synology.  Has a faster processes (but is it better i dont know), double the RAM, even has HDMI output, etc

End of day, anything I get I am assuming need to start with new drives, etc, even a new Netgear I just couldnt pop the current drives into and boot up a new enclosure and get running

Most of my stuff is FLAC music files or movies that are DVD/Blu Ray Rips to stream to XBMC.  So need at least enough horse power for that work.  if a 7 year old NAS is fine, I gotta think most stuff today is fine.

dont see much in way of RAM/processor for the 5n - http://drobo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/downloads/products/0520_Drobo_5N.pdf and its in the same price point as the rack mounted units above, so curious if the 5n is more powerful, etc

Last requirement, also want something easy to set up and manager.  an easy to understand UI when you log in, not too hard to set up the volumes, and get things rolling.  Any remote functions are great or apps but not really needed.