Tales of the NAS, how it ended up

[DQ]

So I had a couple of threads here about my NAS, backup and my general setup. Many of you were generous enough to answer with how you did things so I could develop a best practice of my own.

For anyone interested and just for conversation's sakes, here is how it shook out.

- My NAS ended up being a RAID 5 with 4 active drives (can have up to 6).
I did just add a 5th drive to that array to add space. So YES you can safely add a drive to a RAID array on a QNAP device. However it does take like a day of time for it to be added.

- For Backup I ended up buying "Genie Backup Manager Pro". While it is not the most polished program it will backup to multiple destination drives AND if you turn off encryption and compression all it does is a raw file copy.

All in all the entire thing runs well. I even stream lossless UHD titles from the NAS, to Plex, to my Roku's and all through Wi-Fi of course. It takes about 100mb of bandwidth to do so and I think it puts a hurting on a Roku but it works and is stable.

 

[SamuriHL]

I recently in the past month built a new nas myself. My 4x10tb synology had 27tb of usable space using shr (synology hybrid raid). I ran it out of space. The original plan was that I was going to upgrade to a ds1821+ 8 bay nas and move the 4x10tb drives to it. So I got the new ds1821+ and started consolidating things on my old 4 bay nas.

Ultimately I ended up doing things quite different to the original plan. I grabbed my original 2x4tb drives that I had replaced in my original nas with the 10s. I brought the new nas up on those. I got an external 16tb drive to copy a bunch of my stuff to.
Obviously wasn't quite big enough so I grabbed a bunch of old 4tb drives off my shelf and used those as temp storage. See the old 10tb drives were formatted as ext4 and I wanted the new nas to be btrfs. So it required moving all the data off the old nas temporarily.

I decided that I wanted a couple new drives in addition to the 10s. I grabbed 2x12tb iron wolf drives. It took about 4 days to add them to the new nas. I ended up liking them so much that a new plan came together. I got 2x12tb more drives and added those to the new nas. I reformatted the 4x10 in the old nas and kept it alive. That is now my backup nas where I use acronis to backup my machines and keep some very important docs and pictures that can't be replaced.

Every month from here on out will see me grab a new 12tb iron wolf for the new nas until it's 8x12tb. So 4 more of them. That should keep me going for a little bit. Lol

I upgraded the ram in that thing to 20gb. It's running my plex server and my gitlab server. Doesn't even break a sweat. It's an impressive setup and I'm very glad I finally did it.

Sent from my SM-G998U1 using Tapatalk

 

[DQ]

I recently in the past month built a new nas myself. My 4x10tb synology had 27tb of usable space using shr (synology hybrid raid). I ran it out of space. The original plan was that I was going to upgrade to a ds1821+ 8 bay nas and move the 4x10tb drives to it. So I got the new ds1821+ and started consolidating things on my old 4 bay nas.

Ultimately I ended up doing things quite different to the original plan. I grabbed my original 2x4tb drives that I had replaced in my original nas with the 10s. I brought the new nas up on those. I got an external 16tb drive to copy a bunch of my stuff to.
Obviously wasn't quite big enough so I grabbed a bunch of old 4tb drives off my shelf and used those as temp storage. See the old 10tb drives were formatted as ext4 and I wanted the new nas to be btrfs. So it required moving all the data off the old nas temporarily.

I decided that I wanted a couple new drives in addition to the 10s. I grabbed 2x12tb iron wolf drives. It took about 4 days to add them to the new nas. I ended up liking them so much that a new plan came together. I got 2x12tb more drives and added those to the new nas. I reformatted the 4x10 in the old nas and kept it alive. That is now my backup nas where I use acronis to backup my machines and keep some very important docs and pictures that can't be replaced.

Every month from here on out will see me grab a new 12tb iron wolf for the new nas until it's 8x12tb. So 4 more of them. That should keep me going for a little bit. Lol

I upgraded the ram in that thing to 20gb. It's running my plex server and my gitlab server. Doesn't even break a sweat. It's an impressive setup and I'm very glad I finally did it.

Sent from my SM-G998U1 using Tapatalk

Now a second NAS for backup is not a bad idea to be honest. It does cost more than a large external drive for backup but over time multiple external drives will cost as much or more. Something for me to think about.

I actually just dumped Acronis because it cannot backup to multiple destinations and and I was using it primarily for cloud backup (non media) and there are things that work as well but cost much less for that.

I added RAM to my NAS as well. I went to 16GB on it, although that RAM is twiddling it's thumbs for the most part. I run Plex on a dedicated PC so I can transcode more but primarily so I can use a tuner card for an antenna.

How do you share or access your NAS? I use iSCSI because it was less hassle and seemed faster than just a SMB share.

 

[SamuriHL]

Just doing smb over my gigabit network. The goal is to eventually upgrade my network to 2.5gb. I've had no problems at all with gigabit though. The new nas has 4x1gb ethernet ports and you can use link aggregation on it. I'm not currently doing so. Transcoding I don't need because I use nvidia shields as my plex client. Dolby vision, hdr, and all the audio formats you can bitstream. It works very well.

Sent from my SM-G998U1 using Tapatalk

 

[DQ]

Just doing smb over my gigabit network. The goal is to eventually upgrade my network to 2.5gb. I've had no problems at all with gigabit though. The new nas has 4x1gb ethernet ports and you can use link aggregation on it. I'm not currently doing so. Transcoding I don't need because I use nvidia shields as my plex client. Dolby vision, hdr, and all the audio formats you can bitstream. It works very well.

Sent from my SM-G998U1 using Tapatalk

Yeah, I am on 2.5 right now and obviously that speed is not needed for streaming but it does help transfers and backups.

 

[SamuriHL]

The two machines I need to backup, well actually 3 now, are all 2.5gb. I have a 2.5gb switch in the server room and I just rewired the house for cat6a. My stupid router doesn't have a 2.5gb port to drive the network so I have to wait. Plus I'll need to get a pcie network adapter for the nas to make it all work. Given that's where I store my unsupported isos the speed increase will be nice once I get there.

Sent from my SM-G998U1 using Tapatalk

 

[DQ]

The two machines I need to backup, well actually 3 now, are all 2.5gb. I have a 2.5gb switch in the server room and I just rewired the house for cat6a. My stupid router doesn't have a 2.5gb port to drive the network so I have to wait. Plus I'll need to get a pcie network adapter for the nas to make it all work. Given that's where I store my unsupported isos the speed increase will be nice once I get there.

Sent from my SM-G998U1 using Tapatalk

I am half 1gb and half 2.5. The 2.5 is really just my media stuff. I will need to upgrade my router (hardware) too when I upgrade my ISP connection at some point but mine is a VM so I have to buy 5gb NICs which will necessitate a 5gb switch. Stuff get's pricey quick doing all these shenanigans.

 

[SamuriHL]

I just upgraded to symmetrical gigabit fiber hence the network rebuild. Just have to figure out the router situation to get 2.5gb. I'm not going to 5 or 10 any time soon.

 

[bjjones]

So I got the new ds1821+ and started consolidating things on my old 4 bay nas.

I was wondering how the new Ryzen based ones handled hardware transcoding but it sounds like you're not doing it on the Synology. I had the same problem of running out of space and bays at the end of the year and upgraded my DS918+ 4 bay full of 4TB to a 5 bay DS1019+ so I could stay with Intel for quicksync support and went with a pair of 14TB. Just now needed more space and added a 3rd and I've got a pair of bays left. If you do any video processing on the NAS instead of the Roku the Nvme cache works really well

 

[SamuriHL]

For me it's just serving content, not transcoding anything. I absolutely love it. I need more drives but I'm rebuilding my savings after buying an LG G2 77" and a spectro to calibrate it with.

 

[bjjones]

Nice setup ! I'm on Emby instead of Plex and mine serves up just fine on my 75" Sony XBR to the android app on it without transcoding but I'm thinking seriously about going to a Roku and off the internal app

 

[SamuriHL]

I have a Shield Pro in every room. I also have an ATV on the G2. It is indeed a very nice setup. I just hit 200 hours over the long weekend so I did a full calibration of HDR and Dolby Vision. Looks absolutely stunning. And now I have the space for all my UHD's.

 

[RedFox 1]

I have a Shield Pro in every room. I also have an ATV on the G2. It is indeed a very nice setup. I just hit 200 hours over the long weekend so I did a full calibration of HDR and Dolby Vision. Looks absolutely stunning. And now I have the space for all my UHD's.

Wow, I bet it's awesome, UHD discs are so expensive, but I guess its worth it if you have a system like yours. (jealous)

 

[SamuriHL]

Wow, I bet it's awesome, UHD discs are so expensive, but I guess its worth it if you have a system like yours. (jealous)

Some guys buy expensive cars for a midlife crisis. I chose a more modest way to go. I am absolutely enjoying the hell out of my setup. I have the 65" OLED hanging on my bedroom wall and the G2 77" OLED hanging on the living room wall. With the new NAS, this is an amazing entertainment setup.

 

[RedFox 1]

Some guys buy expensive cars for a midlife crisis. I chose a more modest way to go. I am absolutely enjoying the hell out of my setup. I have the 65" OLED hanging on my bedroom wall and the G2 77" OLED hanging on the living room wall. With the new NAS, this is an amazing entertainment setup.

Now I am even more jealous, I have a 43" LCD from 1999. I had to put anchors in my wall because it's so heavy. LOL

 

[SamuriHL]

Now I am even more jealous, I have a 43" LCD from 1999. I had to put anchors in my wall because it's so heavy. LOL

I had my 65" plasma 1080p 3D tv hanging on the bedroom wall for over a year. It made me nervous as hell because it's an inside wall and while it was tied into the studs nicely, it was 100lbs by itself without the stand. The C8 by comparison is like under 50lbs. I also replace the wall mount in the bedroom with the same exact model I use in the living room so that when my friend came to help me move and mount the TV's, we simply unscrewed the mount on the C8 in the living room, walked it down the hall to my bedroom, and screwed it onto the new mount in there. It looks fantastic and it's SO nice to be able to watch Disney+ and Paramount+ shows in bed in the morning before work in full Dolby Vision. With the SHIELD on each TV I have streaming apps and plex/kodi with my NAS content of all my ripped blu-rays and UHD's. Until this week, I've also been using my TiVos to record shows, pull them off with KMTTG, strip commercials using VideoReDo, and dropping them on the NAS for plex, as well. But Xfinity decided to drop ALL channels to low bitrate 720p and we all know how I feel about that. LMAO So I signed up for Youtube TV over the weekend which gives me much higher quality streaming plus 5.1 audio when played on my LG TV's. For shows I want to keep, well, AnyStream is a godsend. Paramount+ and I see perhaps some hope for Peacock coming soon will make me super happy for shows I want to put on plex. The golden age of entertainment has arrived! LOL

 

[RedFox 1]

I had my 65" plasma 1080p 3D tv hanging on the bedroom wall for over a year. It made me nervous as hell because it's an inside wall and while it was tied into the studs nicely, it was 100lbs by itself without the stand. The C8 by comparison is like under 50lbs. I also replace the wall mount in the bedroom with the same exact model I use in the living room so that when my friend came to help me move and mount the TV's, we simply unscrewed the mount on the C8 in the living room, walked it down the hall to my bedroom, and screwed it onto the new mount in there. It looks fantastic and it's SO nice to be able to watch Disney+ and Paramount+ shows in bed in the morning before work in full Dolby Vision. With the SHIELD on each TV I have streaming apps and plex/kodi with my NAS content of all my ripped blu-rays and UHD's. Until this week, I've also been using my TiVos to record shows, pull them off with KMTTG, strip commercials using VideoReDo, and dropping them on the NAS for plex, as well. But Xfinity decided to drop ALL channels to low bitrate 720p and we all know how I feel about that. LMAO So I signed up for Youtube TV over the weekend which gives me much higher quality streaming plus 5.1 audio when played on my LG TV's. For shows I want to keep, well, AnyStream is a godsend. Paramount+ and I see perhaps some hope for Peacock coming soon will make me super happy for shows I want to put on plex. The golden age of entertainment has arrived! LOL

You should get a sign and charge people to get in. LOL, double features on Sat Matinee.

 

[SamuriHL]

LOL I do have friends over for movie nights. It's something they look forward to.

 

[DeepSpace]

pull them off with KMTTG, strip commercials using VideoReDo

While I'm also a little jealous reading your setup (but only a little since I don't even have the time to watch all of that right now lol), I am interested to read about the programs you wrote there.
VideoReDo is of course a program to cut videos, and I guess KMTTG is to decrypt the vidoes you record with your TV?

 

[DeepSpace]

I took a look at the screenshots here and it looks similar to ProjectX, what I was using for a long time to cut commercials off (now I just download the videos instead of recording the TV, much easier, better quality and faster).
But according to videohelp, VideoReDo is still in development. ProjectX has been abandoned years ago. So maybe it is faster or can cut other formats as well. I will take a look.