Want a small NAS assbox.

1 x 3.5" Bay would do the job for what I'm thinking.

Had a look around and things seem a bit pricey. I could go down the RPi route but I'd like a Just Works™ option that is an all in one unit. Though once you've bought a Pi, case, drive caddy, good power supply, you're probably close or at a proper small NAS price.

Would like to chuck a drive in a bay, plug it in, stick it on the network and off you go.

Do I just get whatever QNAP are currently flogging?

I thought Synology were de rigeur for "plug it in and go" at quality. I've got one that was a hand-me-down from a mate and it's fine. Before that I had a Netgear one I think, it was also fine although the hard drives eventually shat themselves, but I think that was them rather than the assbox at fault.

Synology, that's the other I couldn't remember the name of.

Do you want it just for storage or media streaming too? Many of them also do hardware transcoding of video (if you get one with the right CPU of course) and without needing to get a Plex Pass for doing it with Plex.

I've heard good things about the Asustore series. In typical Asus tradition, they are often over specced a bit with dual 2/2.5Gbps ethernet, DDR4 RAM etc. and come with some weird features like streaming to Youtube and Twitch for y'know ... reasons.

We just bought an Asustor 4-bay for a work file server (not all the other shit). It's pretty slick and well-built, hasn't really been stress-tested yet. Quite reasonably priced for the spec.

One thing to watch out for in a NAS drive, if performance is important, is whether the hdds are CMR (desirable) or SMR (deffo not). For archival storage, SMR offers higher capacity at cheaper prices.

Here are my notes from some July comparison shopping:

NAS shopping list

Synology 4 Bay NAS DiskStation DS418 $519 + $1200 4x hdd $1719 TTL
https://www.newegg.ca/synology-ds418/p/N82E16822108681?Item=N82E16822108681
Realtek RTD1296 quad-core 1.4 GHz 64-bit
2 GB DDR4 memory
Dual 1GbE ports
2x USB 3.0
SMB, AFP, NFS, FTP, WebDAV, CalDAV, iSCSI, Telnet, SSH, SNMP, VPN
2-year warranty (P+L)

****** GOOD REVIEW *********
https://www.digitalcitizen.life/reviewing-synology-diskstation-ds418
---------------

Asustor (Asus) AS5304T $556  + $1200 4x hdd $1756 TTL
https://www.newegg.ca/asustor-as5304t/p/N82E16822225062
Celeron J4105 Quad-Core 1.5 GHz (2.5G burst), 64-bit
2x 2.5 GbE
4GB RAM DDR4 (--> 8G)
4GB eMMC Flash Memory
3x USB 3.2
SMB, AFP, NFS, FTP, TFTP, WebDAV, Rsync, SSH, SFTP, iSCSI, HTTP, HTTPS, Proxy, SNMP, Syslog
3-year warranty (P+L)

"PC Mag editor's choice https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/asustor-as5304t
---------------

Buffalo TeraStation 5410DN Desktop **24TB Hard Drives In** $2,265
https://www.newegg.ca/buffalo-ts5410dn2404/p/N82E16822165798
1.7G Annapurna Labs Quad Core
2 x 1GbE + 1 x 10GbE
4 x 6T NAS hdd on board, hot-swap **compatible replacements may be VERY expensive!**
4GB DDR3 with ECC [max]
2x USB 3.0
CIFS/SMB, AFP, FTP, SFTP, NFS, SNMP
3-year warranty

***** A V.BAD REVIEW ... ******
https://www.zdnet.com/article/nas-wars-2017-we-test-the-buffalo-terastation-5410dn-raid/
---------------

WD My Cloud Expert Series NAS WDBWZE0000NBK-NESN $538 + $1200 4x hdd $1738 TTL
https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/western-digital-wd-my-cloud-expert-series-network-attached-storage-enclosure-wdbwze0000nbk-nesn-wdbwze0000nbk-nesn/10418655
1.6GHz dual-core Marvell ARMADA 388
2GB DDR3
Dual 1GbE ports
CIFS/SMB, AFP, NFS, FTP/SFTP, WebDAV
2-year warranty (P)
---------------

WD 24TB My Cloud Expert Series NAS (WDBWZE0240KBK-NESN) $1800, 24-T WD Reds (unspecified) INC., $ 1,404.99 direct from WD [MAY BE EFAX, SMR DRIVES!!!]
https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/western-digital-wd-24tb-my-cloud-expert-series-network-attached-storage-wdbwze0240kbk-nesn-wdbwze0240kbk-nesn/10418656
---------------

Just media storage. For my gfs place whilst I spend quite a bit of time here.

Currently got a RPi (2 or 3, can't remember which) and a 128GB flash drive. That is also acting as a torrent client and does a couple of other linuxy things. Then I just share using SMB to a coreelec/kodi box in the living room. If I could buy an enclosure that does RPi and 3.5" HDD then maybe that would work.

I'm saying 3.5" drive since I have a 1TB drive sat doing nothing which would be ideal.

Right, I'm going to take one for the team and buy this piece of crap and hope it's not actually a piece of crap.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32970874658.html

Supposedly you can install open-wrt on it so that will open it up for a torrent client and other stuff. It seems to effectively be a router with a USB/SATA interface.


Worth a punt for £30.

we could do a sweepstake on how long before it starts messing up your files!

Nah, good luck, if that works well it's a big saving.

I'm betting on 2 weeks

But you won't discover it for two years?

Just when I need to use the backup.

Idea isn't for it to store anything critical. Downloaded films and TV episodes mainly. But a bit of offsite storage isn't such a bad thing for something very important

Any backup is better than no backup.

Forgot to mention the Asustor is a replacement for a QNAP TS-451 we've been running mostly without incident with the original WD Reds in RAID 10 since early 2014 (we put a UPS on it, because it don't like power outs)

The Asustor is very competitive on spec/price to the newer QNAP models. Longevity factor remains to be seen. One thing that disappointed me about the Asustor is it doesn't support RAID bitmaps (which can accelerate recovery). The QNAP does support this.

Good luck! Just beware the point Dan made about SMR drives. WD lately have been quite naughty here and have sneaked SMR technology into a number of their WD Red NAS drives. These should be avoided unless you like dreadful write performance.

After being called out they've been a more upfront about and (IIRC) have discontinued using SMR in their WD Red line (also they claim their firmware compensates for SMR speed drawbacks -- but it doesn't work in RAID). You could still get caught out by resellers though. Since Ant is not going with RAID he wouldn't benefit from using NAS drives anyway (they are generally slower and more expensive than desktop drives).

I'm just chucking in an old 1TB drive I have lying around.
No intention to make this anything more than that unless I have another bigger spare drive at some point in the future.

I wasn't aware that they'd backtracked on this. Instead I thought they'd introduced a new line called "Red Pro" which avoids SMR drives. Either way, their normal Red drives are shit for NAS enclosures unless (as you say) you don't plan to use RAID with them.

Another thing incidentally they've been found out for recently is claiming that some drives are 5400rpm when they're actually 7200rpm. They even doctored the firmware to report the slower spindle speed. May not sound like a massive deal, but if you're buying a lot of drives to pack into an enclosure that will be on 24/7, the additional heat output and power drain of the drives may come as an unwelcome surprise.

Anyway, until they stop all this fucking around, I'm avoiding WD drives until they can learn how to tell the truth and market their stuff with some degree of honesty.

It hasn't arrived yet but already potentially regretting buying something with only 100mbit ethernet.

Maybe 300mbit on WiFi will be ok

Preload the drive before you stick it in the box?

Shouldn't need any more than that for usb2.