I've began to "tidy up" a stack of started-but-never-quite-finshed tasks. One of which is to have storage at home, accessible from remote, to allow photographs to be saved from the family phones.
I then want to be able to access shared album content easily in the same way as viewing the phone gallery, with the contents on the NAS.
Also I have a large cctv 3.5 says drive which is currently the 2nd drive in a pc tower. This is used for 24/7 recording with blue iris.
I'm wondering if I'd be best relocating this to a NAS for direct recording or whether it would be best to add another smaller drive to the tower and schedule backups to the larger one within a NAS.
I. E. The tower would say, record a week. Then back up to the large drive in the NAS to allow a months recording in total for blue iris.
Lastly, I have a section of the drive containing various software isos and the like. I'd like this accessible through the network as a shared drive as it is now. Again, this would be relocated to the NAS.
Drive bays.... Not particularly bothered. One would suffice, 2 would be better.
Totally aware there are people on this forum who are incredibly experienced in various techy areas, and I generally find the info/advice in here to be amazing.
I have a QNAP TS 219+ that has been doing an excellent job for me for about 10 years. It just works which is what you want a NAS to do.
Some thoughts about NAS drives:
Get as big a drives as you can afford.
I have found that for home use the two bay NAS serves very well.
Keep your security stuff on another machine. I use 10 REOLINK POE cameras (which have been excellent) complete with their own SD cards in the cameras. No central NAS issues here. Each is it's little NAS unto them selves. WORKS GREAT. I can download any files I need.
I store several OS's on my NAS. Comes in really handy.
I keep my 46,000 songs on my NAS and use various streaming apps to send them throughout the house.
I also store tons of photos which are linked to google photos and display on my various Echo show devices.
My only complaint about my nas is that it is older now and lacks some power in the CPU and memory department. I could also use a 1 G network connection.
I do also have another custom built nas. It is a Lenovo Thinkserver. It has an Intel server with 32 gigs of memory and four 4 gig drives. It is quiet as a mouse. It has a docker repository on it and runs a lot of my network management and monitoring stuff. So it has some true horse power. I keep this away from the QNAP nas as they serve totally different purposes.
If like you said you would like a pc tower, the Lenovo Thinkserver would be my recommendation.
Hope this helps.
I run a QNAP 951x. It's a few years old now but has been solid. It's not one of the more inexpensive ones but it has enough processing power to transcode for plex which is why I picked it. I'm also running a couple of virtual machines and docker containers in it.
My only gripe is it takes a ludacris amount of time to shutdown, startup, or reboot.
All that said, I run BI and played around with a NAS share for recordings. In the end it was a PITA and I just put a bigger drive in my BI machine.
BI doesn't always do a good job keeping track of free space on a share. It's also wonky how you need to authenticate as a system user if you are running as a service which occasionally a windows update would break.
Then there's the issue of network saturation. I have a lot of cams that record 24/7. By trying to save those streams on a network share, I'm effectively using double the network utilization of my BI machine.
My BI machine now runs the system of a m.2 ssd, 1 8tb drive in the case, and a 4tb drive in an external USB3.0 dock. With all my cams (12 cams, mixture from 4k down to 1080p) I get right about a month worth of storage.
I think you really need to think about what you want it to do. If simply storing files is the main goal then a prebuilt Consumer grade Qnap is fantastic. But if your usage grows you may find it can't handle more advanced tasks.
I personally have a Home server built with Unraid. The Unraid software turns the home built server into a NAS with parity protection for the storage. But the nice thing about Unraid is that it can also run Docker and Virtual machines. Not all prebuilt consumer NAS's can do this. And those that do are generally pretty lean on cpu power. You can use pretty much any old/new computer to run unraid so you can start with a 5 year old desktop and then get something new if you need it to grow.
Proxmox, TrueNAS, and a few others are similar to Unraid in that they provide a very multifunctional home NAS with advanced functions as well. My first foray into this was with Windows Home Server and then WHS 2011.
You could take a old computer, put unraid on it and have a NAS. So the only cost may be the cost of the Unraid software which is pretty cheap.
What are all the functions you want it to do, or may want to do.
Part of the problem with this is once you start to go down this path the storage adds up quick. In my Unraid box i have 2 x10TB drive a 8TB drive a 6TB drive. Those drives have some SSD Cache drives in front of of 120GB and a 160GB drives. Then I have a 2TB SSD and a 2TB NVME for VM and docker Storage.
That sounds like allot but really isn't. Most of the space is taken up by Plex though. Media files take up allot of space.
If you are going to do plex you may want to consider a low powered processor like a celeron and then adding a moderately powerful GPU for Hardware transcoding. CPU transcoding can require a fairly beefy cpu depending on what it is transcoding. The GPU doesn't need to be a 4090, but something like a 3050 that is fairly power efficient but can had some gpu muscle when needed.
I probably should spend more time converting content to HVEC at this point though.
What are you using for RAID hardware? The mobo I'm using kills off two of the SATA ports for each m.2 slot used. I have two m.2 SSDs installed, so only two SATA ports left. I thought about just picking up a PCIe card for extra ports, but I'm running out of case space for the HDDs.
From what I've read, the iGPU in most Intel processors is more than adequate for transcoding and offers better bang for the buck, but individual use-cases can change that argument. Of course, the best option is direct play or direct stream which most modern streaming boxes can handle.
I don't use a raid card now. I do have a Adaptec 6805E card that functions basically as a HBA when i was running WHS 2011, now there are several file systems that are better if you don't use a raid card and let the filesystem manage parity. This is the case for Unraid as well as the ZFS instances out there like truenas and freenas.
Unraid is good in some ways and bad in others. It is great from the standpoint you can have 10 drives all of different sizes and performance levels and use them all together. You simply can't do that with any other solution. But it also will never match the speed of a reasonable performant raid like solution with matching drives. A ZFS solution with 4 8TB drive would absolutely crush what i have io wize. But would have cost more to get started with as well.
@djh_wolf This got me thinking. I upgraded my home server about a year ago from a Core i5 2400 with 24GB of ram to what I have now. If you want a good setup to start with it is pretty decent hardware. You just need to install your drives in it, and put a OS on it. I don't mind even doing a initial deployment for the OS on it if you like. It is just sitting to the side for now. It ran great for me for 11 years and don't see why it can't provide you some time if you don't need something with more power. Ofcourse i can't provide a warranty, but i can make it cheap. Would just need a cheap way to get it to you from Charlotte NC. You would probably want to put it in a better case for more drive bays.
Some great info and some very much appreciated replies. @mavrrick58 - that's very kind.
All of this has got me thinking.
Essentially, I wanted low power seperate storage I guess, hence the questions about the NAS.
I'm guessing that my existing i5 tower is going to be on the power hungry side. I really need to get one of those power management plugs on there are see what's actually going on.
I presume there'd be some substantial power difference (ie costs)?
Good point. May be best to just stick the big drive in the BI box as you suggest. Less hassle.
Looks amazing, but if I'm using a pc, I might as well stick with windows for what I need. Which to be fair, I wasn't very clear in terms of my needs.
I'll investigate the power costs. Because in theory I now have a spare i5. Or depending how the i7 treats my cams (waiting for it to arrive), I guess I could just use that on its own.
Yep, guess I'm showing how long it's been since I talked about data storage. What I was trying to ask was what do you have setup in general for drive connectivity? I thought about just getting a JBOD enclosure but think the few I looked at would turn into a throughput bottleneck.
The two drives I do have in use are 8TB SeaGate IronWold drives operating independently. They just house movie/shows so I'm not concerned about data loss there.
So when i rebuilt my setup last year you could say i went a little overboard.
The new MB i am using is a Asus Rog Strix x570-E and has 8 Sata Ports along with 2 NVME slots. I kept the same case and drive setup because there is nothing like it in the consumer market anymore. I had 2 5 drive hot-swap mobile racks in the case. So I have 8 sata cables connected to hot swappable drive bays in those mobile racks.
If your #1 concern is power it really is hard to beat a prebuilt nas. I am not saying you can't build something that is close, they are darn near impossible to beat though.
If you use one of your existing systems just make sure you eliminate or remove everything that you can that will take power. If i remember right my i5 2400 could get down to the 30watt range even back then, what drove the power up was all the fans, drives and extra stuff on the MB. If you don't need a expansion card get rid of it. If you can run with two dimm sticks instead of one do it. If a PCIe card is in but not be used remove it. Anything active takes power.
If you are using a external JBOD enclosure you would preferably get it with a HD Port that is basically one cable with the bandwidth of 4 sata cables. Depending on the # of drives in the external enclosure it could still be a bandwith, but how often would you need the full bandwith of 4 sata/sas ports at once.
if i was going to get a qnap now. i would get one of the ts453b be or d models depening on your needs. that way you have room for growth.. i have a ts453be and a ts653d both with upgraded memory and ssd caching.. the 653 i have upgraded to 10gbe as well.
Also remember when a computer power consumption is low like below 75 watts a good power supply can lower power usage as well by allot. Generally speaking cheaper power supplies are less efficient with power draw below 15% or so of their rated power output.
I think it was 80 gold/platinum where the lower ranges get more attention to be efficient as well. So a reasonably spec'd power supply is something to consider as well.
I am using a QNAP TS-251A for six years. Hardware-wise, it’s been perfect. Software-wise, not so much. As often happens with computers in general, a firmware or app update breaks other software. Some of the software included such as Plex and Music Station are a joke. Overly complicated, barely functional, and not routinely updated. Overall, most of the software is a hodgepodge. I had high expectations of creating a media center. Now I only use it for the included basic Surveillance Station. But for that purpose, it hums along perfectly recording from cameras.
The helpdesk system and forum are minimal. I find more answers on reddit and stackoverflow.
I will occasionally see a notice in Taiwanese, as they are headquartered in Taiwan. Shortly after receiving/viewing that notification, the English version comes along.
I was running an i5 4590 and recently upgraded to a i7 6700 and the power use went down 10-15 watts. It's a little lower tdp, but I think with more processing power it can idle down a bit more.
If you aren't using substreams, set them up because it'll help out cpu usage and power a lot.
I forget what my BI machine alone draws but my whole rack averages 175-180 watts. That's my BI machine, qnap with 4 drives in it, 24pt (8 Poe) switch, hubitat, and a rasp pi running.
I bought a Synology DS220+ just over a year ago. I upgraded the memory to 18gb. The primary usage is backing up four windows machines and I am using the built in active backup for business. Four machines totalling 3TB with three weeks of backup restore points with compression and file compare gets shrunk down to 1.9TB. I love it. I have used the bare metal restore twice now and it’s flawless. It could be faster, but it works.
A number of times i have gone a week or two back and pulled individual files. It just works. I considered using my always on amd 3800x media machine (my Plex server runs on this machine) but I wanted an off the shelf solution for backing up.
It has also allowed me to kill my personal one drives and backup our phones. And yes I am running an alexa speaks cookie refresh in a docker. I know the machine can do more, just need more time to play.
if you're just looking for a cheap NAS, terramaster isn't bad. i used to run one until i wanted to do more advanced techniques that it was unable to accommodate, so i upgraded to a synology
