- Dec 6, 2010
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Hi, I'm looking to upgrade my home "NAS" setup to something more flexible and redundant. I currently use the USB ports on my wireless router to set up network shares (I believe they are just samba shares) for my media drives for plex, backup, and file transfer. I currently do cloud backups to CrashPlan, but their service can be slow and restoring a 4 or 6 TB drive could take a week or more if one were to fail, even at my maximum download speed. I also don't like having just a single point of backup for media that has taken me nearly a month to burn and re-encode from blu-rays and DVDs, and other archived footage from my youtube/twitch accounts which cannot be replaced once lost. I would like to have a local RAID array for better data protection.
Additionally, I have an issue with my setup that prevents me from opening my NAS for access outside my network. This doesn't affect my plex server, but if I wanted to grab archived footage, backup files, or other files from my network drive outside my home, I can't do so. My router technically has this capability, but there is an exploit out there for my specific line of routers that can allow an intruder admin access to my router's settings if I opened network shares to the internet (it also does not allow me to create users with just read access, so anyone that uses such an exploit could also wipe my drives if they wanted). It also is very limited in functionality, so I'd like something a little more capable.
With this in mind, I am looking into NAS solutions with their own operating systems and plex capabilities, as well as cloud backup scheduling and RAID support.
I have $700 to budget on this currently with the option of waiting to save up more. This will need to cover any extra drives I buy too (currently have 1 4TB so I'll need more drives), and I need a minimum of 4TB usable storage to get started with room to expand. I don't know what kind of RAID array I should use though, or how many disk bays I'll need. I *think* what I'm looking for is RAID-6, but if I'm honest this is all new to me and it's a bit confusing, I want to be sure what I'm setting up suits my needs. What I want is at least double redundancy, so if up to two drives fail at once I still have all of my data and can recover locally. I also want decent read performance, though I don't care a ton about write performance as long as it doesn't take all day to, say, add a new movie to my plex server.
I would like a NAS OS that allows me to connect from the internet and set up different user accounts with different permissions. Ideally, I could also have the NAS act as a plex server and manage my CrashPlan backups so I can stop using a weak little Nvidia Shield android server that struggles with transcoding all the time. This looks like it *should* be possible with solutions from Synology and QNAP, but I'm not 100% sure. Is this possible with a good quality NAS, or do I need to start looking at full server solutions here? I'd like to avoid the server solution because of space, cost, and electricity requirements, if at all possible.
Additionally, I have an issue with my setup that prevents me from opening my NAS for access outside my network. This doesn't affect my plex server, but if I wanted to grab archived footage, backup files, or other files from my network drive outside my home, I can't do so. My router technically has this capability, but there is an exploit out there for my specific line of routers that can allow an intruder admin access to my router's settings if I opened network shares to the internet (it also does not allow me to create users with just read access, so anyone that uses such an exploit could also wipe my drives if they wanted). It also is very limited in functionality, so I'd like something a little more capable.
With this in mind, I am looking into NAS solutions with their own operating systems and plex capabilities, as well as cloud backup scheduling and RAID support.
I have $700 to budget on this currently with the option of waiting to save up more. This will need to cover any extra drives I buy too (currently have 1 4TB so I'll need more drives), and I need a minimum of 4TB usable storage to get started with room to expand. I don't know what kind of RAID array I should use though, or how many disk bays I'll need. I *think* what I'm looking for is RAID-6, but if I'm honest this is all new to me and it's a bit confusing, I want to be sure what I'm setting up suits my needs. What I want is at least double redundancy, so if up to two drives fail at once I still have all of my data and can recover locally. I also want decent read performance, though I don't care a ton about write performance as long as it doesn't take all day to, say, add a new movie to my plex server.
I would like a NAS OS that allows me to connect from the internet and set up different user accounts with different permissions. Ideally, I could also have the NAS act as a plex server and manage my CrashPlan backups so I can stop using a weak little Nvidia Shield android server that struggles with transcoding all the time. This looks like it *should* be possible with solutions from Synology and QNAP, but I'm not 100% sure. Is this possible with a good quality NAS, or do I need to start looking at full server solutions here? I'd like to avoid the server solution because of space, cost, and electricity requirements, if at all possible.
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