Reddit reviews QNAP TS-251 2-Bay Personal Cloud NAS, Intel 2.41GHz Dual Core CPU with Media Transcoding (TS-251-US)
We found 8 Reddit comments about QNAP TS-251 2-Bay Personal Cloud NAS, Intel 2.41GHz Dual Core CPU with Media Transcoding (TS-251-US). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Transcode Full HD videos on-the-fly or offline.Play 1080p videos with 7.1 channel surround sound pass-through via HDMI output2 x Gigabit RJ-45 Ethernet port1 x HDMI；2 x USB 3.0 port (Front: 1, Rear: 1)；2 x USB 2.0 port (Rear: 2) ；Support USB printer, pen drive, and USB UPS etc.Centralize your file storage, sharing and backupBuild a personal karaoke system with Ocean KTV ; Linux Station supports Ubuntu with direct output via HDMI and Operating Temperature 0-40˚C, Relative Humidity 5~95% RH non-condensing, wet bulb: 27˚CA hybrid approach to virtualization: Virtualization Station & Container Station ; Supports Virtual JBOD (VJBOD) to maximize the storage utilization of multiple QNAP NAS units
Get a used Dell R710 or a Supermicro. You can find some very nice hardware on eBay for cheap. Install XPEnology RockStor, FreeNAS, or something like that on them.
Otherwise, $200 is not going to get you much, if anything at all really.
Otherwise, I'd recommend something like these:
QNAP TS-251
Synology DiskStation DS216j
Consider checking /r/datahoarder, they discuss this topic in detail.
Electricity expenses will be negligible unless you are running a full server system, a typical consumer NAS doesn't consume much.
Depending on how much storage you need, a simple 2 bay NAS might be enough. If one hard drive fails, the files will be safe on the second hard drive.
This doesn't protect you from losing the data if your house burns down or is burglarized however, so you'd want a copy of the data stored offsite, either a USB hard drive you leave at a family member's house, or an online backup service such as Crashplan or Backblaze.
In 2017 there is less of a reason to do this than ever due to the capability of inexpensive streaming devices like Chromecast or even all the way to the NVIDIA Shield.
But if you need exotic codec support or local media playback, a dedicated HTPC is still desirable.
Some people want a CableCard-based DVR system that can record Copy Once (HBO, Showtime, etc.) content and Windows Media Center on a HTPC is one of the few options to do that.
If you don't need those things and just want a Plex server, you can buy dedicated NAS appliances that do a pretty good job.
This still doesnt meet all your requirements, but just in case, what you're describing sounds so much like a consumer NAS such as this QNAP, though also sound like you need much more functionality.
https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-251-Personal-Transcoding-TS-251-US/dp/B00L8GHOQ8
Honestly, just buy one of those two bay NAS units:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L8GHOQ8/?tag=thewire06-20&linkCode=xm2&ascsubtag=AgEAAAAAAAAAACCtAAAAABO_FpEAAAAAWbLcsQ
It does way more than you need, but the idea is to keep it separate from your PC, so you can access your data from your laptop and your desktop (rules out an external unless you feel like lugging it around) and don't have to worry about migrating it (rules out internal solutions).
You don't want to rely on a single drive simply because it might fail, but you don't need an eight-bay NAS either. You could use two externals and script to clone them, but why? It's kludgy, both physically and software-wise, and you're really not saving much money. The QNAP I linked is $250 - 1TB drives are $49 new on NewEgg. $350 for a hassle-free drive-loss resilient solution that's easily accessible from any kind of PC (Mac, Linux, Windows), and it does a bunch more crap that you may decide to explore if you want to.
You still need to have off-site backups. For this size of data, /u/vinceskahan had a really great idea - use TrueCrypt or a similar tool and encrypt all your data into a single file that sits in a folder synced to DropBox/GoogleDrive/whatever. RAIDs and NASes and external hard drives don't prevent the house from burning down.
I suppose if you really want to avoid that you can buy a single external drive and do a monthly backup from the NAS to the drive and then keep it at your office or something. Of course, that doesn't protect you from large disasters like Harvey or Irma unless you're mailing the thing off to another state.
Laptop probably won't do, due to limited drive hookup slots. I'd probably go with a prebuilt, and whether you buy it loaded with drives or not is really your call. For ease of installation, they're a bit more money but the drive-included models aren't super expensive.
Here are a few models I've used in your price range with great performance.
For your budget, the QNAP might be a little pricey. If I were in your situation, it would depend on how familiar I was with NAS devices. If you know some stuff, the Synology is a great device. If you know nothing, the Western Digital is the most user friendly. All the included links are for Amazon. You may find them cheaper in a general search.
> I can't download music outside iTunes.
Sure you can. You can download music with 3rd-party apps over WiFi pretty easily.
If you don't want to fill up the iPad you can save music to cloud services or to a local wireless storage device (like the Western Digital MyCloud), or to a home network-attached storage (NAS) unit like the $250 dual-drive QNAP TS-251 2-Bay Personal Cloud NAS (which you need to add drives to) or the $170 (also empty of drives) Synology DiskStation DS216j.
Do they come with drives included? Such as this Amazon choice listing? https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-251-Personal-Transcoding-TS-251-US/dp/B00L8GHOQ8/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1521667373&sr=1-2&keywords=ts-251%2B&th=1