Reddit reviews Synology Disk Station 4-Bay Diskless Network Attached Storage (DS416j)

Here's a nice 4-bay Synology for $320.

Keep that and your Apple gadget. A Synology doesn't have the CPU power to do real transcoding, which is needed for Plex. You set the Plex server to access the Synology over the network, Synology stores the data, Plex does the heavy lifting.

Fill this up with 4x 8TB drives (Seagate NAS or WD Red are the ones you want- avoid desktop class drives) and use Synology's SHR so you have 1x redundancy. That gives you 24TB of usable space, and if any of the drives fail you lose nothing.

You might also look at a backup system called CrashPlan. They are apparently unlimited and a user in another thread said (s)he's backing up 30TB to them under the $6/mo home user plan and they don't care...

I went with this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Many USB housings have a controller inside the housing which limits the max size of the drive, so make sure you get housings which support the drive size you want.

The Linux kernel itself has limits far in excess of this, it can handle block devices in exabytes and probably beyond.

As others have said, the limitation will be bus speed on the Pi as it shares Ethernet and USB. The max throughput you'll get is 20MiB/sec, probably worse.

You'll need to power the drives externally obviously.

If you're dropping like $1000+ on 4x 8Tb hard drives, just spend an extra few hundred bucks and get a good actual NAS like Synology or QNAP. A Synology DS-416j is $289 on Amazon. These run Linux with a web frontend. They have an small "app store" so you can install a DLNA server or whatever. They're really quite good.

I'm looking into getting this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

I'm happy not running Plex off it, I just need a NAS and a place to store hard drives. Have a few questions if you don't mind:

First, I currently use two Seagate 5tb externals. A trusted source said I can connect externals on this with an easy fix? True?

Second, I heard my hard drives should stay the same size? Like I can't later add a 8tb hard drive as the third? That's fine if so, just curious.

Ty. I'm new to the NAS idea so I'm lost and any info would be appreciated! :)

Im assusming your running windows on your desktop. If your running windows 8/8.1/10 you can setup storage spaces that will put multiple drives together in a array that will allow one or two drives to fail and it work with drives of different sizes.

FreeNAS needs a serprate compute to run it as it is a operating system on its own and you can't run it in windows. If you want a network storage box, id look at a synology box like https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=s9_acsd_hps_bw_c_x_6. Its would do about the same thing as a freeNAS box.

So I'm planning on buying a few more 4TB hard drives and putting them in this thing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

I was planning on putting all my media content on there and pointing my media server to there.

This should work fine correct? I'm not planning on having the server run off of it. Just a raid with the media hosted there.

• Synology 4-disk NAS - standard 4 disk array. nice and fast.
  
• Drobo 5N (1st gen). 2nd gen gives you 2 NICs but more expensive. Drobo gives you the ability to make asymmetric arrays, which can be cheaper to maintain and expand. The downside is the proprietary nature of the array's technology. I personally have this one.
  
  
  I know these look expensive, but it's a one-time cost, and you'll get plenty of storage. You are protected from single-drive failures. But keep in mind that it's not a replacement of backups. Depends on how far you want to take things, right. I'd recommend using a NAS array for your main storage, and some cheaper single drives for backup -- if you really really really want to protect your stuff.
  

Ya I was definitely trying to hit a lower price point than Synology. I was pretty tempted on the DS416J for only $289
http://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS416j/dp/B019ZUR5WQ

Currently have a nzxt h440 with 3x 4tb drives in it. Its too big. I want to put all my stuff in a ncase m1 eventually. So since the shield can be the plex server itself now can I throw my drives into this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=psdc_13436301_t1_B016EWTC7E
hook that up to the nvidia shield and run plex from there? I don't care about redundancy at all for my movies and tv shows so is this thing overkill? All I need is access to the hdd space over my network to drop newly downloaded movies onto it. Is there a cheaper option (don't feel like building a nas right now)
thanks for the help!

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS416j/dp/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1468174616&sr=1-4&keywords=synology&refinements=p_72%3A1248879011

Would that be appropriate?

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't really super familiar with DAS's (I guess Drobo is a DAS though?) so I hadn't considered it. It seems like from my (quick) research there wouldn't be a cost savings over a NAS, though. This 4-bay Synology NAS is $290 - https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS416j/dp/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=sr_1_6?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1474670435&sr=1-6&keywords=synology and I think the QNAP equivalent is like $10 or $20 cheaper.

Oh, and yes, I do only have 1 host (and it will likely always be that way), so if there were a DAS option that was cheaper than a NAS, I'd definitely be open to it.