Should you buy a Two-Bay NAS or a Four-Bay NAS? - Everything you need to know

NAS units come in a ton of different configurations, with the most common being either a two bay or a four bay unit for the smaller options. This video covers the topics you should look at when deciding between a 2 bay unit and a 4 bay unit, because in many cases 4 bay units can be the better purchase. They allow for greater upgradeability, and can even save you money for the same amount of data stored.
The concepts in this video are applicable to any NAS units, no matter if they are made by Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, ASUSTOR, etc. This video should help clear up which unit you should buy, and even save you money.
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#NAS #Storage #Synology #QNAP
Synology 2 Bay: geni.us/t8xEVH
Synology 4 Bay: geni.us/pCJYdGt
QNAP 2 Bay: geni.us/yc5GZ
QNAP 4 Bay: geni.us/FcAAcYj
IronWolf Drives: geni.us/KqfkNe8
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[@davidpark9325]

So well processed information. Thanks for making this simple to understand

[@AndreaLivieriPhoto]

I really enjoy your videos, they're extremely helpful. Thanks so much for sharing :) Ciao

[@SpaceRexWill]

Glad you like them!

[@MNinPerth]

Hi there. Thanks for all the videos you make, they are all most helpful and useful. A quick question if I may and I apologise if perhaps you have covered this in a previous video that I may have missed. I have the Synology DS920+ with all 4 bays occupied with 4 x 4TB discs using Raid SHR with data protection for 1 drive fault tolerance and a single volume. There is a total of 10.9 TB total capacity. I am now starting to get low volume warnings (but no disc error warnings) and hope to replace 2 of the 4TB drives with 2 x 10TB drives. Can you please explain or point me to one of your videos that fully explains the process? Terms like hot swopping, repairing, altering Raid configurations etc all seem to feature on various KZbin videos but I have seen nothing that fully explains the correct sequence protocol to ensure a seamless upgrading/swopping to larger drives. Many thanks and once again, appreciate all the no doubt hard work that goes into producing your videos.

[@PaddyPantsdown]

Didn't understand that table setting out costs versus 2/4 bay NAS drive.

[@blackcoalboy]

Hi, Great video my friend i have been thinking of getting a NAS for so long but looking at videos on KZbin they come across as very complicated to setup, Then I discovered you and for some reason “Most” Things became a lot clearer so at the moment i am watching your video about what size NAS to get, I always thought a two bay NAS would be easier to use but now i am not so sure;, But tell if you was in my shoes and giving the amount of knowledge I possess what would you buy? Sorry the question was on the long side but i am really nervous about taking the plunge. Anyhow i find your videos great and very informative.

[@SpaceRexWill]

I would look at how much storage you think you would need. If its going to be a lot (or you are going to upgrade over time) I would look at a 4 bay

[@kimsonvu]

Thanks!

[@kevinhu196]

You said RAID5 for redundancy for a 4 bay NAS, do you actually recommend that we use RAID5 for larger disks or is that unsafe when a drive fails? Or am I just blindly panicking. I plan on buying or building 4 bay NAS and use 2 8-10TB probably WD Red NAS drive in RAID1 first, then I want to eventually upgrade to 4 disks of 8-12TB in RAID5 (SHR-1) which gave me 24-36 TB of usable storage, which utilize most space. The massive storage need is mostly for media server, although these files can be redownloaded at future, it could be a PITA esp I live in Canada with not so good internet/data cap. I want to minimize the chance of entire array failure, with the talks online about RAID5 dangers. I want to get your opinion about my plan with RAID. Anyway nice video explanation. And just to add on, 4 bay NAS also greatly utilize SHR-1 technology, which means when you have 2 drives and want to add 2 more you can add 2 drives of larger sizes and fully utilize the spaces (I think you made a video on that topic).

[@roscored1000]

Hi I currently have an old DS411+ with 4x4tb drives in SHR and have 50% left so dont need to go crazy but it is old now so thinking of a DS923+ or DS423+ , for media mostly and after watching this, possibly just 2 drives say 2x12tb, which will give me 12tb of usable storage and still have upgradeability in the future. Does that make sense?

[@smilodon92]

About volume expansion. I read that It takes a long time to process, especially large size storage drives like 16tb. If I had a power outage during the expansion process, I'm doomed, right

[@SpaceRexWill]

You are not doomed most likely community.synology.com/enu/forum/17/post/20414 (But still good idea to have a backup before hand)

[@smilodon92]

@@SpaceRexWill ooh, so a UPS is the solution. But man, UPSs are as big as the Synology NAS. I'm not really eager to put an extra fat box in my room.

[@SpaceRexWill]

So even without a ups an unexpected shut down theoretically it should just come back up. Would I do it for fun. No, but it should come back ok. Just backup anything you could not live without

[@smilodon92]

@@SpaceRexWill Got it. Thanks a lot bro!!

[@hegdelabs]

On DS220+ or DS220J can I just use both bays for storage or RAID -1 is a must?

[@SpaceRexWill]

If you have a backup then RAID1 is not a must. you should have a backup anyways

[@beavisx32]

Hi SpaceRex am I able to link my ds1515+ to my ds420j so I can see all the files only by longing into my ds1515+

[@SpaceRexWill]

yeah, I have a video titled 'mount other server over SMB' Though accessing files will be slightly slower due to them having to first be transferred from one server then to you

[@TM-vg4mx]

For 4 bay, do these hard drives have to be the same size, say I start with 2x2tb but then I add one 4tb then one 8tb, just as an example, can I also mix sdd and hhd or do they have to be the same size. thanks

[@SpaceRexWill]

Check out SHR! It can let you add multiple size drives to the same volume. You always can add any drive to its own volume. But you cannot add a hard drive and SSD to the same volume

[@polgarpetikoma]

Hey, great vid. Coming late to the party here. Stupid question. If I only use two drives in a 4bay NAS will it be similar power consumption then a 2bay with same drives?

[@SpaceRexWill]

So the 4 bay will likely use more power, not by a ton, but it will use more power

[@polgarpetikoma]

@@SpaceRexWill I see. Thank you so much for your quick response. I‘m really struggling to decide wether to go for the 4 bay, because of future proofing, but at the moment I don‘t think I‘ll be needing more than 8TB for the next couple of years. And energy costs are playing a pretty huge role in Germany right now, so this would make the decision even more difficult. 🙈

[@lufelipe78]

Hi Rex I cant forward ports, do you recommend solutions like tailscale? It uses wireguard, thanks for the awesome videos!

[@SpaceRexWill]

I have no experience with tailscale so I can't comment

[@slam5]

I disagree with you. RAID's are not really meant for making backup of your data much faster. Think of it this way, if you have that much data in a NAS, if a surge, fire or theft makes you lose your complete NAS, you will lose all those data. You have a single point of failure. It doesn't matter how well your NAS is, I've a 2 bays higher end QNAP NAS that was protected by a good APC UPS. The unit died just under the warranty expire. Luckily the hard drives were ok. Can you image what will happen if I have a 4 bays drive and whatever caused it to died killed the drives too? IMO, a better way to backup more data is to get another NAS and hook it into the system. NAS improves with time. New processors run faster and cooler. Regardless, NAS needed to be backup off site. For the same reasons I stated above can cause complete lost of the data.

[@devonusmcable]

CC for the Video please

[@SpaceRexWill]

I am really sorry but I am just not big enough to be able to do CC's on videos. This channel is just my weekend project and I priced out paying someone to do it and it would end up costing more than my videos make. Hopefully as I get bigger I will be able to do this

[@chrisharvie-smith486]

@@SpaceRexWill Hi team Rex :-) , As your speach is very clear the KZbin auto caption should work if swtched on/it get's round to processing it. From their help: Here's how you can review automatic captions and make changes, if needed: Sign in to KZbin Studio. From the left-hand menu, select Subtitles. Click the video that you want to add captions or subtitles to. Under Subtitles, click More next to the subtitles that you want to edit. Review automatic captions and edit or remove any parts that haven't been properly transcribed.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Ah thanks! I have those enabled, but looks like they have not been processed yet.

[@devonusmcable]

@@SpaceRexWill no worries guess I got to it before it got processed thanks

[@sylvainalain6637]

4 bays all the way

[@SpaceRexWill]

100%

[@rustic35]

Why does this dude talk weird and wobble his head like a puppet? 🤣🤣🤦‍♂️