Hello Everyone,
I am thinking of buying a Network Attached Storage (NAS) which is being talked about here
Unfortunately I cannot find it in my local shops and this is too advanced for me.
So can you recommend something similar but not too expensive ($300 to $500 usd?) cheaper the better since I need to buy disks for it.
Is SYNOLOGY DiskStation DS423+ 4 BAY Network Attached Storage any good?
can you give me some recommendations please?
Thank you
1] How much storage do you currently require for this hypothetical NAS?
2] How much do you expect your storage needs to increase over the next 12 - 24 months?
3] What is your intended use case for this NAS? Is it just a simple file server, or do you expect this machine to also serve applications such as Plex, Docker Containers, and/or entire Virtual Machines?
4] Do you have much experience within Linux and/or its CLI?
There are many ways to end up at a solution - my questions are meant to provide enough information to act as a starting place.
ahh thank you forgot to include my use case and elaborate
1] How much storage do you currently require for this hypothetical NAS? -
I currently own 2 external Hard and an internal HDD total of 6TB(which I am saturating already). so probably 20 TB?
2] How much do you expect your storage needs to increase over the next 12 - 24 months?
-20 TB should cover it.
3] What is your intended use case for this NAS? Is it just a simple file server, or do you expect this machine to also serve applications such as Plex, Docker Containers, and/or entire Virtual Machines?
-I will mostly use it as a media storage ( odd document, but mostly movies and anime series)
4] Do you have much experience within Linux and/or its CLI? - I am familiar with using Linux (ubuntu) and doing the odd sudo apt get. but I would ideally like something with a GUI as show on the “terradata” video.
If I needed a NAS with a budget of $300 to $500 and the information you provided, I would say your best bet would be a DIY solution rather than an off-the-shelf one. Buying used but still very much usable parts off Ebay, testing the components, returning any bad ones, etc steadily over weeks. That takes time, curiosity, and no small amount of patience. The benefits of which will be a massively more effective solution.
It sounds like you should look into TrueNAS Scale - it has a GUI that you can use to accomplish most any tasks including setup and disk configuration. With a 20TB capacity you should be fine with three or four disks in a single RAIDZ VDEV. Also since it’s free you can download it and check it out right now without spending a dime. That way you can determine if it might be what you’re after.
^ If all of that sounds exhausting and you only consider prebuilt NAS, then my advice would be to at least aim for an x86 NAS with an N5105, N100, or faster CPU for decent hardware acceleration with media playback. That Celeron J4125 wasn’t impressive to me when it first launched 5+ years ago. It might handle a single stream well enough for your needs, but you can search YouTube for example videos/reviews for all these NAS CPUs to see if their performance is what you expect. Best of luck!
Allright, so, two ways to go here.
You do not have a ton of storage requirements, so either a 6x4TB setup or a 4x8TB works. With RAID5 that is 20TB or 24TB of usable and redundant storage.
So, let’s look at the market. There are two major contenders here:
A cheaper 4-Bay NAS for $200-$400, plus four 8TB drives for $180 a pop. Total is about $900 - $1200 depending on make and brand.
Go full SSD already. The Asustor Flashstor 6 bay is $449, and a 4TB drive is ~$200 these days, which means that a 3 drive or 4 drive starter kit would be around $1100-$1300. Full six bay cost, however, is ~$1700 at the moment, which may be a bit hard of a pill to swallow.
The Flashstor is an incredibly good file server, draws very little power and it is the size of a Playstation 2. If you plan on doing something more advanced than the occasional encoding task, however, it is not really built for that.
Either way is fine of course. A DIY would be a little more expensive and require a bit more time, but you can get it to 100% fit your needs.
Grab an Odroid H4 Plus with a case and possibly the M.2 to 4x card), run your favorite distro/os and you’re done. That’s going to be by far your best bang for the buck solution.
I bought a 2 bay Syno. It serves the following purpose:
Pros:
Cons:
Final thoughts:
The software eco system makes a big difference for me the main reason was Iphone and Android backups.
In my case, I plan to run a NAS on seperate h/w for homelab storage but the Syno will still have its place for smartphone backup for now.
Thank you all for the replies and suggestions.
So far this project seems a bit daunting because I am low on funds is the impression I am getting. ^^
@FrenziedManbeast I am planning on enjoying the HDD space by the holidays and as I mentioned it is a “gift” for myself but yeah I can always DIY and use my old desktop and bit by bit build it , but again I was hoping I can get something like a simple 4-bay NAS a small cool box by Dec 2024.
@wertigon do you have any links to a good one for your option 1 ? a full SSD would be much pricier and overkill since I am just aiming for storage for now. a DIY would be cheaper not more expensive but since I plan to use it by Dec I am looking at a commercial solution
@diizzy the Odroid H4 Plus is not available where I live. 
@mailman-2097 you uh wanna share the model of the Syno? I am just looking for storage for now and your 2 bay Syno sounds promising
Thank you all and If this is not correct forum etiquette let me know I just usually lurk in reddit .
QNap, Synology and Asustor has good models available, just go to Amazon.com and search “qnap 4 bay” for instance and you will get good results. Something like this:
Although, looking into it a bit more it is a bit difficult to find a good NAS, specifically - there are USB powered disk lockers available but QNAP 4-bay for $439 seems to be the cheapest option.
The DIY route, I would recommend something like this on a budget:
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 5600GT | $120.00 |
| CPU Cooler | Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 | $44.95 |
| Motherboard | ASRock B550M-ITX/ac | $130.41 |
| Memory | G.Skill Aegis 2x16 GB DDR4-3200 CL16 | $49.99 |
| Storage | Kingston KC3000 512 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 | $62.55 |
| Case | Jonsbo N1 | $128.00 |
| Power Supply | Cooler Master V SFX Gold ATX 3.0 850W Fully Modular SFX | $109.99 |
| Total | $645.89 |
More expensive but better value for your money. You could shave maybe $50-$100 by going with lower quality components, I do not recommend it but you could.
If you can consider going a little higher than that, a Ryzen 7600 + mITX board + RAM costs ~$450-$465 vs AM4, which costs ~$300.
Mind you, this is a bare bones NAS machine, so more power but nothing fancy like ECC. Running this does have a rough 5% chance of data corruption in the next 5 years. So don’t store any critical data on it, and by critical I mean if the data is lost you will face significant consequences, like fines, losing your home, et cetera.
My model is Synology DiskStation DS223j 4-Core 1GB DDR4 2-Bay NAS. Its the cheapest one I found in the local IT shop. I tend to purchase from local suppliers but you could also look at other brands such as Qnap , Asus etc…
@wertigon Thanks for the recommendation but due to my location I would prefer to buy from a physical store I will keep a look out for those brands and do a bit more research. I do not mind bare bones I just need something to start with appreciate the help and reply
@mailman-2097 I think we live in the same country. 
Will be going with this for now the cons you mentioned are not deal breakers for me and the local IT shop does have it in stock.
Do be aware, a 2 bay only allows for mirrored redundant setups, and 20TB drives are expensive, slow, and noisy AF. You could, however, forego redundancy and just do JBOD with two 12TB drives.
@wertigon
Do be aware, a 2 bay only allows for mirrored redundant setups, and 20TB drives are expensive, slow, and noisy AF. You could, however, forego redundancy and just do JBOD with two 12TB drives.
Fork it!
I will just pay the extra… thanks did not think of that.
Will go with SYNOLOGY DiskStation DS423+
First question I would have is, what country are you actually in? That is going to have a huge effect on what you can actually get. Are you in Australia?
Do you want to stay away from anything DIY or overly used? If you’re going for the cheapest price for something similar to what you posted I would say you can try going with an HP Microserver, like an HP ProLiant N36L or HP Proliant Microserver Gen8/10. These might be hard to find though, so it depends on where you live.
The DIY route would also be pretty doable depending on what kind of specs you need out of the NAS. If you are just looking for the cheapest way to turn SATA into a network share and aren’t interested in running shit on the NAS then you should be able to get away with a pretty cheap base system.
QNap, Synology and Asustor
I am looking at those suggested brands and so far per @mailman-2097 suggestion I am going with Synology (it is avaiable) and getting a Diskstation 4 bay since I would like some sort of redundancy and not just JBOD it.
I appreciate the suggestion and thanks but the models you mentioned, I would probably have a hard time getting them so I think going Synology route is best
It’s not that I do not like DIY, but I currently do not have the time to tinker and would just like to relax and enjoy the NAS by the time the holidays are in.
I would like to run some shit on it and currently based on my research and the advice I got the Performance | Synology Inc. is my best bet.
Good deal. DIYing is fun but I’ve gone down the rabbit hole more times than I really wanted to when my completely DIY solution blew up.
I’ve learned a lot, but sometimes I just want my shit to work. lol
Synology DS423+ is a solid 4-bay option with good performance and software for home use solutions. And for Cheaper alternatives include the Synology DS420+ or QNAP TS-453E, both offering similar features.
@rax313
Best to buy local ( sometimes they do offer deals better than online just have to spend time looking at the few suppliers).
Ubiquiti just dropped a dedicated NAS which you can technically ssh into and install docker containers behind as well.
We’ve been deploying 20 and 22TB drives for the past couple years.
Use CMR drives and it is no different than any other 7200 RPM HDD made in the past 20 years.
The price per TB is lower for large capacity drives, power utilization is lower per TB, and read / write speed is flatlined at the same 250 / 150 MB.
We will be phasing them out in the coming years as enterprise U.2 NVME SSD’s now have 30 TB capacities at $100 per TB (compared to $30 / TB for Enterprise grade SAS/SATA drives with 22 TB capacities)
The planned phase out includes HDD’s for archiving and massive backup pools, but no prod server with user access will have one.
We do not use off the shelf solutions, so I have no advice on a turn key home NAS.
But a repurposed xeon workstation adds a level of flexibility and utility to a network that is hard to beat. Most have 4 or 8x 3.5" hot swap bays and plenty of PCIe slots for expandability.
With low power xeons, they’ll use 100 watts pegged to 100% without drives.
That’s what, 3x any desktop NAS?
And it’s a full mid tower you have to put somewhere, but they are quiet and dead balls reliable.
Just food for thought.