What 4 bay NAS is good

All depends on budget. Something that costs £200 without drives may be excellent for what it does but the same spec or similar at £400 would be pretty poor value even though they are both "good".

I think your going to be pushed in the direction of QNAP or Synology however your best bet is probably to install the synology OS on a HP micro server as they are built a little better and are usually faster and easier to upgrade.

All boils down to requirement, features. budget and dimensions of the space it's going in to.
 
I bought an Asustor As-202TE from here a couple of years back, works flawlessly, seems fast enough, though I've nothing to compare it to. It's a 2 bay but they do sell 4 bays. Word of advice, use Red HDD in your nas, I had a WD 4Tb Red that started to give SMART errors, I managed to get a full back up done before it failed completely, foolishly I had it set up as Raid 0. WD give a 3 year warranty and replace the drive quickly.
I reconfigured my NAS to Raid 1 now, I've too many photos stored on it that I can't afford to lose.
As for ease of use, the Asustor is brilliant, and you can download lots of free apps for it.
 
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I'm in exactly the same boat as you, looking for a 4 bay NAS. I've narrowed it down to either QNAP or Synology but there seems to be so much choice...

QNAP TS-431, TS-451 and TS-453.
Synology DS416J, DS416, DS416Play.

Still toying with the idea of buying 2 x 3/4TB drives in RAID 1 then leaving 2 bays to grow into...
Or going 4 x 1/2TB in RAID 5.

Decisions, decisions... I've been thinking it over for the best part of 4 weeks now and I still cant make a bloody decisions :(
 
JohnBoyUK said:
I'm in exactly the same boat as you, looking for a 4 bay NAS. I've narrowed it down to either QNAP or Synology but there seems to be so much choice...

QNAP TS-431, TS-451 and TS-453.
Synology DS416J, DS416, DS416Play.

Still toying with the idea of buying 2 x 3/4TB drives in RAID 1 then leaving 2 bays to grow into...
Or going 4 x 1/2TB in RAID 5.

Decisions, decisions... I've been thinking it over for the best part of 4 weeks now and I still cant make a bloody decisions :(
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4TB drives tend to be the best value for money (£ / TB) these days.

2x 4TB will give 4TB storage space (RAID1)
4x 2TB will give 6TB storage space (RAID5) but you run the risk of a second drive failing while rebuilding an array. RAID6 is typically recommended these days (as well as having a good backup strategy).
 
Eloise said:
4TB drives tend to be the best value for money (£ / TB) these days.

2x 4TB will give 4TB storage space (RAID1)
4x 2TB will give 6TB storage space (RAID5) but you run the risk of a second drive failing while rebuilding an array. RAID6 is typically recommended these days (as well as having a good backup strategy).
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I should have said, I haven't made a decision as I'm finding it hard to swallow that I need to spend £600-700 on a NAS with the drives lol. My budget was £500-600. I know I can just whack it on the credit card but I'm trying my bestest to be good (for a change!)
Ideally, if funds can be stretched a little, I'll go 4 bay and go either RAID 5 or 6.
 
There's usually a cashback deal on the HP Microservers, I can see a deal on the Gen8 at the moment for £155+VAT (with £60 cashback still to claim on this). That should leave enough in your budget for some WD Red drives.
 
Alastair said:
There's usually a cashback deal on the HP Microservers, I can see a deal on the Gen8 at the moment for £155+VAT (with £60 cashback still to claim on this). That should leave enough in your budget for some WD Red drives.
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How do this differ from a NAS
 
Chaz Photos said:
How do this differ from a NAS
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It's a box without the drives or software.

Add drives, add software and it's a NAS. I use one for 1st tier backups.
 
Personally I would either buy the cheapest you can; or go for a low range QNAP or Synology. Both those brands will be offering support over the next 5-10 years for their devices (excepting a catastrophic collapse of the company) which isn't something you can say about brands like Zyxel or Buffalo (to name two fairly randomly) who swap and change designs quite often.

A HP box is great if you know what you're doing ... but perhaps not a good recommendation to someone who isn't confident.

For photographic storage though any NAS will do you pretty much - you are paying for facilities such as ease of backup (which is important); ongoing support; being able to easily replace drives.
 
A couple of questions to the OP:

What is your budget?
Do you have a backup plan?
How much is your expected capacity & PER YEAR total?
What is your useage?
Do you want a File Server OR BACKUP or REDUNDANCY - they are not the same...?
 
I can recommend a synology, I have a DS414. I started with 3x 3tb drives in raid 5. Plays well with Lightroom and will backup to Dropbox/ Onedrive/ other synologys or external disks.
 
Chaz Photos said:
It interesting looking at the prices What do you get more of with a high cost? I see some of the same makes at such different prices for a 4bay NAS.
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Basically, higher powered CPUs and more RAM. There may also be more network/USB/eSATA ports.
 
I ended up going with a Synology DS416. 3 x 3tb drives in RAID 5 to start with then a spare bay for later. Pleasingly quick over LAN and wifi.
Still getting my head around what it can do.
 
Rather mixed reviews on Amazon for that model and the write performance seems poor. I think spending the extra on a Synology DS416j would be a better investment.
 
I wanted to import images to an external hard drive and have access to all my photos at once in my Lightroom, so I can edit as I see fit.

I got this when Amazon had it in stock themselves.. 16TB usb drive (2x8gb), It's probably pretty good.. I just wish everything was the speed of SSDs waiting 10 seconds for it to come to life the first time I prod it in a while is frustrating..

https://www.amazon.co.uk/16TB-Deskt...e=UTF8&qid=1490172046&sr=8-1&keywords=WD+16tb

Beyond two SSDs, there is no room in my PC for more.. so that's why I didn't just go internal.
 
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dancook said:
I wanted to import images to an external hard drive and have access to all my photos at once in my Lightroom, so I can edit as I see fit.

I got this when Amazon had it in stock themselves.. 16TB usb drive (2x8gb), It's probably pretty good.. I just wish everything was the speed of SSDs waiting 10 seconds for it to come to life the first time I prod it in a while is frustrating..

https://www.amazon.co.uk/16TB-Deskt...e=UTF8&qid=1490172046&sr=8-1&keywords=WD+16tb

Beyond two SSDs, there is no room in my PC for more.. so that's why I didn't just go internal.
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Thanks but that not a NAS but an external drive bay
 
If its just for storing images then I think a NAS is OTT, all you need is a JBOD enclosure with a couple of disks chucked in.

A NAS is more suited to a home network for Media such as Music, Photos, Videos where one can stream them to any device that is connected to the network , but can also be used as a backup if so required.

we have a QNAP here that has everything on it, including all of the above and any device can access it, thats my Mac, Macbook, iPhone and the wifes iPad and iPhone as well as my HT system.

As Neil says, what is your intended use ????
 
Scotty Pro said:
If its just for storing images then I think a NAS is OTT, all you need is a JBOD enclosure with a couple of disks chucked in.
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Not necessarily but again depend on requirements, for example all of my lightroom raws are stored on my Microserver. Before I started using local ssd for my working set of images I edited direct from the network storage however this was always over gig lan rather than wireless.
 
Snapsh0t said:
Why would you look at anything made by Zyxel? We've told you which brands you should consider but you seem determined to ignore our advice.
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First of all, Have you tried them? what experience have you of them or electronics, There are more thought than your own, if that BAD why are they still trading?

If giving advice it need to be backed up with something, also when giving advice it's up to who reads it to take or reject it.
 
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I have forty years experience of electronics in general and computers in particular. I've owned a Zyxel router and it was the worst of many I've owned. Zyxel currently has the dubious distinction of making the world's most insecure routers. I also read reviews of items I'm interested in and those for the NAS542 don't inspire confidence.

We give advice based on what we know works. Of course you're free to ignore it but you then can't expect sympathy when you pick a lemon.
 
Chaz Photos said:
First of all, Have you tried them? what experience have you of them or electronics, There are more thought than your own, if that BAD why are they still trading?

If giving advice it need to be backed up with something, also when giving advice it's up to who reads it to take or reject it.
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With the "secondary brands" its not so much that they are bad, but they are less reliable when it comes to support or if you want to do something more than simple usage. If you are looking for a NAS to do file sharing to store your photos; then the Zyxel will likely be fine; but 2 years down the line if you have a problem Zyxel's support will be lacking (IMO).

If you want a NAS; then the brands to look at with confidence are QNAP and Synology. These are NAS manufacturers; they don't do anything but NASes. Their devices will be price comparable - not quite the cheapest perhaps but you are paying for support now and on going.

To use camera brands as an (not quite accurate) analogy ... QNAP and Synology are like Nikon and Canon; other brands are like Meike, Neewer, etc.
 
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