Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler NAS advice

I used to have a two-bay NAS and it just hummed along peacefully doing its thing. Then it lost a drive and when I went to replace it, I figured I should move to a better NAS and go to a RAID 5 or 6 storage system. I lost interest and then just backed up my files on an external hard drive. I plug it in every few weeks and it updates. I know, IT guys cringe at that....

I then got the notion that if I had a hybrid type NAS, one that would also operate FLEX, I could use it for my music files. Play them from the NAS instead of my office PC where the files are stored.

Not being a techie, and definitely not a network guy...... figured I'd ask what this crowd does first. I'm looking at a QNAP four bay with 4T Ironwolf drives. I have roughly 2T of files and don't see that growing much.

These units get some decent reviews and are supposedly easy to set up. Synology seems to be highly regarded too.

What do you think?

I use an older QNAP (TS-420) and like it a lot. AVS Forums seems to like Synology more for what that's worth.
I'd recommend that you put your Plex server on a Windows PC machine for two reasons, (1) the windows version is updated more often, (2) the NAS will not be as powerful as your basic windows machine.
If you're just doing music, then you're okay running on the NAS; but if you are considering video streaming then use the PC for Plex.
So yeah, I think you're on the right path. You may not need a 4-bay just for music, but having the 4 bays would let you run RAID5 which allows for a single disk loss which'll cover you in most cases. And Plex is awesome. You can always play music straight from the NAS, but Plex will give you playlists and searching and all that stuff. (QNAP has a music streaming add-on; but it's not as freindly as Plex.)

As a PC enthusiast, building rigs for about 20 years, i've also subscribed to MaxPC for the same length of time (formerly known as Boot magazine). They've done a number of reviews of some NAS over the years and Qnap keeps coming up on top. Synology has also had some models and i've seen a few Western Digital efforts if i recall.

I did a bunch of research into going this route at one point and was going to buy a Qnap model, but then I reconsidered it's use. We hadn't continued buying DVDs for a couple of years with the advent of bluray, so money went elsewhere. Netflix came on strong and i saw the future of digital streaming. I didn't see the point in continuing to buy much more physical media so there were relatively few DVDs to rip (probably less than 40) and store onto a NAS. Music is all we had for media streaming after having the complete CD collection ripped (and just finally the last disc got done last year), so, i run that off my office PC via Sonos (for now).
Not much else required. Even the PC digital collection may become pointless if the online Tidal and Spotify continue to expand on quality with the only difference in having to pay a monthly fee but the tradeoff is having access to more music than what we have in rips on the PC.

On another note, been seeing more up and coming users of Jellyfish over Plex. Plex is tied to an online account whereas Jellyfish can be run off your own home system which is preferred by some people who don't want that big brother influence/monitoring. Still need a fixed or stable IP of course.

Thanks guys.

I still buy blue ray disks. Well, 4k nowadays. I really have no interest in ripping and storing them digitally. I'm kinda old school I guess. I like to see the disks sitting on shelves. The vast majority of my files that I want to back up are the typical files - music (FLAC/MP3), photos, documents, tax stuff...... I've been using a Squeezebox Touch to play the music files over my home network, but it's way too long in the tooth and I continue to have troubles with it, as it's not supported anymore. Plus, it runs on my office PC that resides on the home network, and sometimes (more often than not), the PC is snoozing, and I have to go wake it up to play music files. I have roughly 1500 CD's ripped and stored and the FLAC files just sound better than anything I stream from Spotify. Spotify is great for background, but I prefer the FLAC files when I want to listen to good sound quality.

So yeah, rambling aside......I want to use the NAS for music playback and auto file backup. No video streaming.

If it were not for the backup aspect, i would say you can run all this off any PC you have unless you are a laptop kind of guy and don't leave it on all the time, plus has more limited storage.
My office PC is on 24/7 and has 2TB of storage. It IS the NAS.
I use two portable USB drives for backup. One at home, manual backup every other month then unplug it from the PC (extra safeguard), and the second one gets updated usually once a year and is stored offsite.
This is all a bit more physical, but unless i pay for cloud space, that isn't an option. It is also less desirable uploading one's files to cloud for backup even though i have everything encrypted. Just doesn't feel comfortable.

Our Sonos is also getting long in the tooth and with the new versions they produced, they added very little tech, actually took away one connector type, are charging a bit more than the first versions and require you have an account logged in to access the app/software.
Um no thanks.
Our legacy Sonos doesn't require that so when it dies, we'll be moving on.
The next version could very well be BluOS, but at some point we might subscribe to Spotify or Tidal just to get more variety.
I'm 100% in agreeement that the FLAC rips sound better than Spotify (haven't had a chance to demo Tidal). As long as we have our ripped files and no online equivalent for them all, we'll need a media streamer, but i look forward to the day where this is simplified and more universal. So many proprietary formats and such out there still. Reminds me of the early days of USB where we had wars with other connector types until USB came out on top, or VHS vs. Betamax, or DVD-A vs SACD, or.....

To add, one thing i distinctly recall about the reviews of the Qnap was it's easy to get around interface, likely better for your average home Joe to figure out.
Peter was running one i think. I know he mentioned having a home NAS many years ago. If it wasn't a Qnap it was another equally well regarded brand for NAS.

Thanks again Chess. Sounds like you and I are doing things similarly..... My PC is my NAS. I don't use it all the time so it's in hibernation mode quite often. That makes access to my files pretty clunky if I need to get to them when I use the laptop or tablet. Kinda defeats the whole "convenient" aspect of having a home network with shared files..... I use my laptop to tune my car, and the tuning files are on the network. It's irritating to be sitting in the car, ready to flash the ECM and the network (PC) is asleep. Same with music files. I'm having a party and want to play a CD for the group, and I have to go wake up the PC.

I hate having my stuff on the "cloud". Just hate losing control of my stuff. Yes, it's convenient if I'm not at my home, but if I have a NAS set up correctly, it will then become my personal cloud. Problem solved.

I think I'll go forward and order one of the QNAP machines. Trying to keep total cost under a grand.

Many years ago I had one the HP Media servers. I sure loved that thing. It went up in smoke though, and I have missed how convenient it was ever since.

I had experience with QNAP and, personally, I'm not touching another product from that company. The 4 bay NAS I had was nothing but trouble. Every few days, weeks, or months it would tell me a different drive had failed. The drives were on QNAPs approved list (WD 3T Reds) and always check out. The QNAP tech guys treated me like an idiot, run me though all the diagnostics on each call, and would insist it was the drives even though I had tested them and was beyond certain it was not. I finally got them to replace the unit only to have the same thing happen.

I gave up ... it was not worth my time. I bought a Synology 8 bay. Transferred the drives from the QNAP and it ran no problems for a couple of years till it had a power supply issue. Customer service promptly replaced it free of charge. Other then a single drive failure (which was a real drive failure) I've had no issues. I'd buy another Synology without hesitation.

BTW: Anyone who wants to the QNAP can have it for the price of postage ...

You should be able to wake on LAN with the hibernating PC, but otherwise don't let it hibernate (assuming it is plugged in all the time; https://www.groovypost.com/howto/enable-wake-on-lan-windows-10/).

Consider Rlevs experience re: the QNAP. My info comes solely from reading some online reviews and the last one i saw was years ago when i was researching it. Synology is an equally good name. It's possible things have changed with Qnap over the years. It does happen.
They continue to make the 'best of' lists though.
https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-nas-network-attached-storage-devices
https://www.techradar.com/news/the-10-best-nas-devices-reviewed

Actually maybe it was a Buffalo NAS that Peter had...

Thanks. I am paying attention to rrlev's comments.

The link you provided has other brands I was not aware of. The Asustor AS5304T gets high praise. I may buy one of them.....

I really - really do not want to use my PC for media streaming anymore. I have my reasons, and will not budge from that.

Thanks for the comments and advice. Much appreciated.