4 Bay NAS - Before You Buy

[@InspectorGadget2014]

Next to the con's you already mentioned, I would add 1x more con/against for the 4-bay's; Often 4-Bay's have a bit limited CPU (as in computiing-power/performance) compared to the 4x-plus bay-models. Like Atom, ARM, Celeron's. At 1 GHz to 2GHz and occasionally 3GHz CPU-speeds. Which does not mean it is bad because it is not an trillion-core i7 super-duper machine, but often in due time your NAS will be used more & more for (also) other tasks other then "simply" file-storage alone. Better to have some spare power left under the hood than having no further options to increase the performance, other then implementing cache etc. It is like a fast car, you do not drive your gas pedal all the way to the bottom, all the time :)

[@MrPir84free]

After years and years, I'd suggest going with as large as you can go for the number of drive bays. If you were considering a 2 bay, go for the 4 bay.. If you were considering the 4 bay- consider heavily going to a 6 or 8 bay - if you can afford it and if the system is upgradable in a manner that makes sense to you.

[@blackcobolt1520]

Hi Robbie. Very informative video as usual. How about doing a video on thick v thin provisioning? There's hardly any videos out there discussing the pros and cons and use scenarios. Given that you have to make the choice early on in the setup process, shedding some light on this topic would be helpful. Thanks.

[@knofi7052]

I would be very happy if you could maybe bring a video on the topic of SSD for data storage in NAS, in which you could talk about all sorts of questions, advantages and disadvantages, including RAID with SSD. I think that SSDs have now reached a price range where they can be of interest to many home users. Of course, there are already provided solutions, such as a QNAP TBS 453DX, but even normal NAS systems can also be equipped with the somewhat cheaper SSD drives. For my new private NAS solution, for example, I got a QNAP TS-453D. I swapped the fan for a Be Quiet Shadow Wings, which made the NAS absolutely inaudible. I equipped the NAS with two 2 TB SSD drives, each of which only cost 170 EUR. This leaves two bays free for future extensions. The network is sufficiently fast at 2.5 Gbit. An old NAS with two hard drives acts as a backup, which only switches on when needed and then switches off again, as well as a cloud backup for really important data. I also think that RAID is not really useful for most private users. Many people still confuse the benefits of RAID and backup. Most of them only want data security and can certainly live with doing without their network storage for a day. I have now implemented a very responsive, quiet and for me sufficiently fast NAS solution (without RAID), which is also very economical in operation and couldn't be much more satisfied with it. By the way, thank you very much for your many and very informative videos. They helped me a lot in choosing my own solution. :) What else I wanted to mention. I also use the NAS as a Linux station and thus an economical mini home server what is sufficient for my personal needs. I see, it's perfect, you have done such video already 3 months ago. :)

[@Paultimate7]

Its the same as HDD. What difference are you assuming here? SSD work the same in these solutions as an HDD. SSD is just smaller and more costly right now.

[@JM-zw8cq]

Semi unrelated question. I just bought a pr2100 but only Re cold one of the 2 hard drives. But I went ahead and set it up as jbod just to do some testing playing to familiarize myself with the unit and os3 and Plex etc. So my second HDD arrives today and I’ll want to install it and change FROM JBOD TO RAID 1. Do I need to power off/shutdown the pr2100 in order to install the 2nd drive? Or can I pop it in with it on and running and then just do the RAID set up to wipe/format to RAID 1? Silly question but I’m having a hard time finding the answers. Hoping u can help :). Thanks!

[@krupier78]

Also WD Mycloud EX4100 has 2 PSUs

[@sylvainalain6637]

I never thought that someone could use a raid6 on a 4 bays. It’s like returning to a raid 1 with 4 disk. I’m a big fan of the raid5/shr on a four bays.

[@nandodolleman7819]

I have a 4 bay NAS ( ABCD) ( AS1004T) with two WD RED 3GB for multimedia storage RAID1. ( A - B ) And want to add 4 surveillance camera's ( with is the free limit of Asustor) I think I want to integrate WD Purple for this. First using one ( C) of the 2 free slots but later a second one to have a Raid 1 for the surveillance setup. ( using both free slots C-D) So my idea now is using the 4bay NAS for 2 RAID 1. A+B WD RED 3GB for media storage/backup's. And C+D WD PURPLE 4GB for surveillance. I think this is the way to go, Does this makes sense, anyone?

[@Luiscofield.]

Hi.... I hope you can help me. I just purchased a DS220+ and I had a spared SSD drive so I put that drive into bay 1 and instale DSM in there. On bay 2 I installed a 12TB IronWolf drive for all the back up and files, I didn't use raid, just 2 separate drives (My secure back up its in a desktop drive) that I never use, so my info it's fine besides no raid on my NAS. My question is, do I have a advantage to use my NAS like that? DSM on my SSD drive and the info on the HDD drive? Otherwise I could just take away the SSD and use just the HDD as my main disk for DSM and file backup. I was trying to achieve more speed.

[@Tigerskunk]

On Synology DSM is installed on every drive even if no raid is setup and is stored in memory. So if any drive fails the DSM and its settings remain. The settings are stored on the drives, not in the system board. I know this from on my Ds412 plus stopped responding. I was able to get it working by pulling all drives that were in a raid 5. And put in a single laptop drive. It booted as fresh and I was able to update DSM. When I shut it down and reinstall the raid drives, it booted and asked to update the DSM on the drives. Then it worked with all data intact.

[@Luiscofield.]

@@Tigerskunk thanks for the answer but its not clear to me if it is there any advantage to use a SSD drive, maybe to load files, to reboot, to install apps, to make copies, dunno.

[@knofi7052]

@@Luiscofield. I would use the SSD for data which you need most of the time because it's much more reactive than spinning disks and uses less energy. Of course, if you are having the possibility to use a faster network you could have a better transfer perfomance as well.

[@PowerAirSimulations]

would something with a celeron chip be good for plex, like the DS918+?

[@BB-qp5xo]

918+ was his pick early last year, but then 920+ came out so you get faster cpu which is better for plex. This is what I bought based on advice and videos for my needs (plex) with trancoding and 4K.

[@PowerAirSimulations]

@@BB-qp5xo Thank you for the reply it’s much appreciated.

[@PitboyHarmony1]

After the 920+ came out and he talked about plex being the only real world tangible difference between the 918+ and 920+ ... I went 918+ and saved $. I dont do video plex use on it, so it was an easy almost $300CDN save. To each their own.

[@XellosMetallium]

- how many people will be watching at the same time? - in x265 HD videos? imo the qnap TS-x53D is the best for the budget. I did notice the cpu hit 70% w/1 user streaming in x265 video but that only happen once.

[@PowerAirSimulations]

@@XellosMetallium It’s only really going to be just me tops two people no more.

[@servalous]

A 4 Bay NAS doesn't need a 10Gb NIC. Having two 1-2.5Gb LAG is better then having one 10Gb NIC if you have multiple users accessing the data... Also if you need 10Gb the CPU in a 4 Bay wont be that optimal to handle it where you have your next bottleneck..

[@floe304]

Is there a DIY NAS case that I can put in my own ITX MoBo + GPU

[@EsotericArctos]

PC Cases always tend to be a bit larger than a NAS that holds the equivalent drives. The customised boards in the NAS tend to be a lot smaller. You'd really be going for a PC Case. You can get some smallish ones that can hold afew drives, but the footprint will always be larger than a NAS.

[@Paultimate7]

You spent the first 10 min basically saying that 4 bays are where quality goes up. Great. Okay. We get it. Please compare the solutions at this bay amount already.

[@michaeln1712]

I watched this video in 2x speed :)

[@nascompares]

*breaths deeply* ThankyouverymuchandIhopeyouenjoyedit!Don'tforgettosubsribe!