Help with choosing a NAS system pleeeeaasseeee?

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OK, looking at a NAS system and have been reading up about what it is and if it's for me and think I got my head round it all other than what exactly raid is, but I think I can look at that further down the line.

So, currently, there are 3 phones, 2 ipads, sons gaming PC upstairs, wifes macbook air, my macbook pro and another pc in the living room i use for torrents / movies then accessed via plex and cast to the TV.

I was initially thinking of a 2 bay synology nas with 2 WD red drives with one mirroring the other?

Data wise Im the data hog as the pc used for movies / torrents has a maximum 1tb drive in there and it's getting full, but it's taken some time for that to be fair, plus then theres my photos but again, probably about 500gb only over the last 5 years.

So I want something on the network that can be a backup solution plus use for the torrents / movies and access via plex.

Am I talking complete rubbish or does this make sense to those that have experience with NAS?

Any help would be very much appreciated.
 
Qnap or synology would get my vote.

2 Bay is too restricted in my opinion. Allow for future expansion..

Raid is only a redundancy, not a backup. Remember to factor in a backup, most qnap and synology now have Usb3 ports to allow a backup to be taken (and rotated off site).
 
I bought a Synology DS218j and 2 x WD red 4TB hard drives earlier this year.
I run it in RAID 1 (mirrored).
Synology have their own torrent app but I prefer to use utorrent and just point it to directories on the nas box where I store them.
Mine holds back ups (although I also have a secondary back up), photos, films and a massive MP3 album collection.
Media streams from it using my Xbox one as a media player and I use tversity as my media server app, plex will also work fine as well.
I use Acronis for system back ups for my desktop and laptop and it does incremental back ups which are stored on the NAS as well
It's been 100% reliable and is on 24/7 and so far it's been flawless.
Synology seem to release updates on a regular basis as well.
My only regret is not buying one sooner.
 
Cheers all, this confirms for me that Im on the right track at least :)

I do wonder if it's worth having the 4 bay version for the future but considering its taken over 5 years to get 500gb of photos, and 2 to get 850gb of movies / music I think I'd be ok with 2 x 3TB drives at least for a while and then possibly upgrade later as funds allow?

Currently thinking

Synology DS218j - £163 on ebuyer
2 x WD Red 3TB drives - £89 each so £178

Total £341 and I can start with a mirrored set up. OR (thinking of space) maybe only get one of the WD red drives but buy one 6TB this month and another next month then mirror them?
 
I've got a Qnap QTS453 - 4 bay with 2*4Tb drives as a raid and 2*2TB drives in the other bays for the family to keep stuff on plus a few movies - Plex runs well on it.
I use Acronis to do a full backup to the Raid of my desktop PC every 10 days with incremental backups every other day in between..... can you tell I once lost a lot of important data due to a faulty drive.
To be honest I found it a very steep learning curve with limited online support as most guides seem to be adverts for the different units available and most of the included apps to be a little limited in usefulness
 
Mine is as follows

Qnap 4 Bay - 4x 3tb seagate constellation (r5)
Into the rear Usb3 is
Startech raid Usb3 das - 4x 4tb wd red (r5)
Seagate 2tb usb3

Main storage is on the qnap main, archive is the startech Usb3 drive, seagate drive gets important data backed up via the qnap backup station app and rotate off site with a disk I store at work.

I've also just installed on the qnap app "cloud drive sync" and am currently uploading/syncing data to Google drive.
 
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I like my Synology, was easy to get to grips with for the most part and has been trouble-free in operation
 
A word of caution....

Synology units in my opinion are fantastic, however I noticed you mention about using Plex....

Although you can get Plex on the NAS its performance is pretty poor. The Synology native app "DSVideo" is pretty damn good, supports casting, has an app on Samsung TV's and Amazon Fire and utilises minimal overhead on the performance. Multiple streams from DSVideo are handled perfectly well, Plex on the other-hand struggles with more than 1 stream, that's my experience on the 214Play, the 418 and my current 1517+

Just something to think about..
 
Synology. Get a 'Play' version or above, as they do encoding/decoding of video material in the box.

You also need to allow budget for a third HDD, same size as the one in you NAS, in order to back up the contents of the NAS itself externally. I have a third identical WD Red HDD in an Inateck disk caddy plugged into one of the NAS usb ports

Whilst a NAS 'protects' the data on it in the event that one of the disks fails, you have a problem if the NAS itself fails, as happened to me. Fortunately in my case when the replacement box arrived the data on the disks was found to be fine, but...

I use a Synology back-up app to back-up essential data from the NAS to the back-up drive.
 
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I've been using an Asustor for a few years, never had an issue. I'd recommend 4 bay, and the biggest drives you can afford, no matter how much data you think you're going store, double it. I've had 2 HDD's fail (WD red) so I'd recommend mirroring, although the S.M.A.R.T did give me a heads up on the imminent failure.
 
whatever you buy, I would look at cloud backup as your get out of jail free card.
also with NAS drives the weakest link seems to be if the PSU fails or NAS drive itself fails and you are left with non accessible disks.
I have an HP Microserver just running W10 as a NAS much more flexible and the drives are all just NTFS format so very portable
 
Good thought about a back up for the nas @JohnX Certainly worth doing just in case.

As for cloud backup, no thanks, too expensive and I don't want to be held to one place like that to be honest.

Having a cloud backup of important files is 'too expensive'???
I have a QNAP 4 bay (it's a few years old), and whilst it has been working great for my purposes, I still have an online backup of some files that I consider important.

Many places offer a free 'xxGb' service, I'd definitely consider that.
 
Yes, to clarify, if I had anything I absolutely would be devestated to lose I could put it on my own website hosting or use the wifes amazon prime cloud as well as a mirrored NAS and backing that up to another drive which could be taken off site.

Actually scratch that, no I wouldn't. Im not interested in the cloud as it's just one more system that plays on the fear of losing data.

The idea of the NAS for me is to backup my stuff locally with no third parties being involved and keep it secure. Plus its cheaper in the long run and less risk of hacking.
 
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