Advice on a new NAS device please

New Topic
This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
 The Lemming 20 Jan 2021

I've got a five year old Synology DS214 Play and I'm running out of space. Anybody able to recomend a four bay NAS box?

I'm hoping to use the two 8TB drives that I have at the moment to put in the new NAS.

1
 David Barlow 21 Jan 2021
In reply to The Lemming:

I have the DS416 https://www.ebuyer.com/724954-synology-ds416-4-bay-desktop-enclosure-ds416 and I'm very happy with it.

FYI I re-used some old 1TB drives when I bought it, and I've now had two fail: one at 10 years and one at 11.5 years from their date of manufacture. It was a good reminder that having drives of different ages is wise.

 sbc23 21 Jan 2021
In reply to The Lemming:

I’ve just bought a 920+ as an upgrade to a 216J. Much faster.

Do some research on the best order to install the drives to get maximum available space out of the SHR setup. Depending on age, it can be better to just buy two new larger drives for the new NAS, do a clean copy across on the network and then wipe & sell the old as a lump on eBay. I’d definitely do that if the drives are >5years old. They probably won’t last another 5.

A lot of people are buying WD external drives (£180 for 14TB) and striping them down to extract the drive and put them in a a NAS. Half price of a WD red drive.

OP The Lemming 21 Jan 2021
In reply to sbc23:

>  I’ve just bought a 920+

That's on my tick list.

>  A lot of people are buying WD external drives (£180 for 14TB) and striping them down to extract the drive and put them in a a NAS. Half price of a WD red drive.

Good to know as my two 8th Red drives cost lots

Thank you both for your advice

OP The Lemming 21 Jan 2021
In reply to sbc23:

Any idea where I could get the 14tb drives for £180?

Cheaper to get them than a 4 bay nas + storage.

Post edited at 23:28
In reply to sbc23:

> A lot of people are buying WD external drives (£180 for 14TB) and striping them down to extract the drive and put them in a a NAS. Half price of a WD red drive.

I'd seen that reported in the US; called 'shucking'.

I looked for the external drives in the UK, and couldn't find the same level of discount (IIRC, I couldn't even find the model in question for sale in the UK [edit: it was the 'EasyStore' model]; it may be a regional name for the Elements...). I'm not sure that WD haven't wised up... Also need to be careful that the drives aren't native USB interface.

That said, my two WD MyCloud NAS devices were both bought for less than the price of the WD Red drives they contain...

It may also be worth gambling on places like CeX; they seem to get stacks of drives from enterprise outfits, for some reason; I picked up a 6TB WD Ultrastar for £80. SMART report said it had 8 hours on the clock. Now replaced the 2TB Red in one of the MyClouds. I've seen 8TB and 12TB Seagate Exos drives in there, still in their packaging.

Post edited at 23:43
 Cobra_Head 21 Jan 2021
In reply to The Lemming:

Synology were my favourite NAS maker but I used to use CloudStation a lot for syncing a number of computers, phones and tablets. Unfortunately Synology won't allow you to save to an SD card on Android after a certain version, so if f*cked everything up, which is a real pain, because it all worked great.

Despite lots of people moaning on the Syno. website, it doesn't appear as if they're going to change anything, it's been an issue for 3-4 years.

There's a work around using other software on the NAS but it's an arse about.

AAAaaaanyway, I think there kit is great, problem above notwithstanding and you can go to a 4 drive and stick your two drives in with other drives and it should all work straight off.

In reply to captain paranoia:

> I couldn't even find the model in question for sale in the UK [edit: it was the 'EasyStore' model];

After googling for differences between Elements and Easystore, I find that the Easystore is exclusive to the US chain BestBuy; no wonder I couldnt find one in the UK... The only difference seems to be a MyCloud style case vs MyBook style case, and a bit of WD s/w, which, IME, isn't worth bothering with.

 sbc23 22 Jan 2021
In reply to The Lemming:

They were on offer with amazon U.K. just before Xmas. 179 for 12tb, 189 for 14TB. I shared a link for them with a friend. Price today on the same link - 249

OP The Lemming 22 Jan 2021
In reply to sbc23:

Doh!

OP The Lemming 22 Jan 2021
In reply to captain paranoia:

I forgot about cex. I don't mind second hand kit.

OP The Lemming 22 Jan 2021
In reply to sbc23:

> I’ve just bought a 920+ as an upgrade to a 216J. Much faster.

In the end I went for a Synology DS918+ because it has better media codec encoding that the more recent model.

I'm converting my footage more and more to a h265 codec. Its slowly replacing h264, with more and more mobile devices and cameras starting to use the more compressed codec for delivering to Youtube/media streaming.

After a bit of reading today the DS920+ wasn't as good in this respect. I also went for a couple of Toshiba 8TB drives for NAS boxes. Same spec, quite a price difference. 😁


New Topic
This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
Loading Notifications...