Question So what's a good, basic, NAS these days?

Matt_C

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For a good while now I've had a Buffalo 2TB (dual disk) LinkStation. It's crapped out on me before (failed drives, one after the other, which I had RMA'd with new Fujitsu drives), but I think it's time to upgrade. I've never been truly happy with it, and I'm outgrowing the 2TB storage.

So I'm thinking of going probably 4TB, mainly because I want to have a USB external drive back up (currently I have a WD MyBook 2TB external drive that I use with CCC to back up the NAS), so I'll have to get a 4TB external drive to do the same.

So what I'm looking for is a fairly basic NAS - all I use it for is storing and serving music and video to my MacBook (iTunes) and Apple TV (XBMC/Kodi). I don't need it to be a print server, email server, web server (although www access would be useful - something that has never worked on my Buffalo system). I don't have any smart TV's, and I don't need to stream to tablets/phones etc. I am tempted by there ATV4 and Plex, but need to look into it more before I commit.

So what is good in the basic, non-fancy, NAS world? I'm not looking for the cheapest, but at the same time I'm not looking to pay business grade money either.
 
I've always found the Zyxel NAS units to be good value for money. The NSA325 is a dual drive unit with USB 3.0 port for backup. Add whatever 3.5" SATA drives you want to provide 4TB (Depends upon which RAID configuration you want).
 
I have three basic 2-bay QNAPs. Suit me well for music/Blu rips/integrated cloud backup etc.
 
Hey @Matt_C!

You can choose between two options in this case - to build your own NAS, or to get a prebuild one from a manufacturer. Building one on your own can be a bit cheaper in some cases but you don't get support for it and it could be harder to set up and manage later on. Self-built NASs have the advantage of upgrade-ability, though.

As for a regular NAS, I have and could recommend you WD My Cloud as it is very easy to set up and manage and should do the job perfectly fine. Here's a link if you want to check it out:

Support Answers

Since you have an external drive you can also try another thing that I saw people doing - connecting the My Book to a router or anything else that can connect it to the network, you would essentially get a NAS and should work just fine. There are differences between the different products such as hardware encryption on the My Book and some features on the My Cloud Mirror that your router might support, but essentially you should get the same end result - file sharing across the network. I'd pick the option that makes more sense in terms of performance and budget (just keep in mind performance of the My Book would depends on the router's abilities).

Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

Cheers! :)
 
IMO if you want a device that actually works, I'd buy a qnap.

I've had and setup various brands of nas drives and I'm only ever happy with the qnap ones.

When it comes to HDDs get western digital reds, great drives that can stand being in a NAS.

When it comes to plex, imo it's always best to build your own little, low powered PCs, as only higher end nas drives tend to transcode well.


Another route is getting the HP Microserver range, I've had the n40, n54 and the gen8, they can be used as a nas drive and can hold up to 6drives, but can also be used as a PCs. The come up regularly sub £100 after cashback
 

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