Newbie NAS setup

Hardware HDD's & SSD's
1

Hi All,

I’m planning to upgrade my storage solution for my home backup of my photos and important files. Currently I have 2x4TB WDC blue drives that is mounted on an Orico usb SATA HDD dock. This setup is working fine however, the back up process of our phones are manual. We have to plug our phones and manually copy all the files into the drives.

I have decided that I will go for either Synology DS918+ or QNAP TS453BE. But due to the availability of QNAP in my location I would be going with the Synology. I am also planing to purchase 2x4TB Seagate iron wolf drive and mix it with my WDC Blues.

Is this a good idea?

Thanks in advance for you insights.

2

WDC Reds are much preferred according to user consensus, but having any HDD is better than no HDD at all.

I would suggest you look into something like a RockPro64 NAS or ODroid NAS. Its a bit more involved as you would assemble and set it up yourself but it could be cheaper. Take note that you also have to buy some of their accessories because products like that are so modular, everything is sold separately.

3

If you just want the NAS as a NAS, without extra services such as a steam download cache, a plex server, torrent client, then a Synology is fine.

As for mixing the hard drives, that seems fine.

Make sure that you also have another copy of the data, since with the NAS and your primary devices that is only two copies.

4

You can throw in the blues and then choose to have 2 more levels of redundancy than before
So if you weren’t going to have any redundancy before choose raidz2

You won’t lose any space over just having the 2 drives, but get 2 additional levels of redundancy

But remember, raid is not a backup

5

Thanks for your reply. I think I’m having some second thoughts on Synology. I am contemplating on using unRaid with an old i5 and H61 motherboard that I have.

is this better?

BTW I plan to do some 1080p transcoding and some dockerize services in my server as well.

7

Ironwolf pros are 7200rpm drives whereas the blues are 5400. They can run side by side however they will give uneven performance in any RAID mode and the ironwolf drives will be louder. Something to consider.

The Synology will have dedicated transcoding hardware whereas you will need a GPU for transcoding on the DIY build. It will work but will consume more power and heat, and again, noise.

Also Unraid on hardware that low end would have a worse outcome than freenas, which will run on a potato. The beauty of using the i5 setup is that you already have it so it won’t hurt to try beyond buying an Unraid license. Or just roll your own proxmox build.

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