NAS upgrade

[Wudang]

I currently have a Synology DS214se which works fine for backups etc. Trouble is it's a bit underpowered for streaming movies which is it's secondary use. My initial thought was to buy a more powerful Synology box, they have a decent range of software etc. But then I thought of the way the box goes into a coma every few months and has to be power-cycled to restart.


Then I wondered if I'd be better buying a small form factor PC and installing a bare bones linux. I could write cron scripts that would do a restart if no network connections are active etc.

I'd definitely prefer to future proof by getting something that can handle 4K even though most of our movies are (for now) stored at around HD levels.


eta: Just found synology dsm supports cron jobs though suboptimally.



Suggestions welcomed.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

The eternal quandry. I can barely keep my 3 sets of copies for security alive, what with drives dying what seems like every 3 months. As for a NAS, I dumped mine for direct install in my folding farm rigs, since they are basically available when I need the data. Anyway, sorry not to have a ready solution.

My druthers, had I the $$$, would be Direct Attached Storage over USB 3.2/thunderbolt on a C connector, chock full of Iron Wolf 10TB drives... Toys, must have toys...

For old hardware, in case any reader cares...

... there are ways to get around HDDs, apart from SSDs, such as IDE to SD adapters, and IDE to CF. (I even have HPIB to SD, because those drive units cannot be easily maintained.) Using such media guarantees you can continue with the legacy hardware much longer without having to source spinning rust. You can also boot from an NVMe on legacy BIOSes and get much better than SATA speeds by employing a DUET USB boot dongle.

 

[grmcdorman]

I have had Synology for years, currently a DS218+. Never had an issue with it going into a "coma", as you put it. Always been connected via Ethernet, though; are you using some sort of WiFi adapter?

Using a small form factor PC with Linux could work, but it's more manual work. Some of the nice Synology features (Photo Station, or their new Moments - which I am not interested in, thank you Synology) require more work to set up equivalents; other items are easier. Depends on what you use it for/what you need.

Synology also tends to be quite low power. I don't know how it compares to small form factor PC devices, however.

Another thing to look into would be Raspberry PI; I believe people do a lot of NAS configurations with that. It'd be Linux, very small form factor, very low power.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

... Another thing to look into would be Raspberry PI; I believe people do a lot of NAS configurations with that. It'd be Linux, very small form factor, very low power.

Indeed! Forgot about that. Good channel with dry humor for such things.

 

[eerok]

I'm happy using Ubuntu Server with ZFS, but I'm comfortable with Linux, and this allowed me to use hardware I already had.

 

[a_unique_person]

I went with a QNAP. After initial problems with a memory leak the latest patches all seem to be stable.

I tried a DIY NAS as a secondary backup for the QNAP but it was too much work and didn't save me any money.

 

[Wudang]

I have had Synology for years, currently a DS218+. Never had an issue with it going into a "coma", as you put it. Always been connected via Ethernet, though; are you using some sort of WiFi adapter?

Another thing to look into would be Raspberry PI; I believe people do a lot of NAS configurations with that. It'd be Linux, very small form factor, very low power.

The NAS connects to the network via a power line adapter Ethernet cable to the router and directly to the TV via an Ethernet cable. The TV has the synology DS Video app installed and the first symptom is that the app becomes unresponsive then attempts to use the web app will timeout. Possibly a memory leak in one of the apps on the NAS but Ive stripped that down to the basics as the system was overloaded. I suspect if I set cron to reboot once a week in the wee hours the problem will go and nobody will ask “Have you tried turning it off and on again”. I meant to dig more into when I bought the NAS but I was working long hours until I retired.

I’ve used Linux off and on for years at work and home so I’m happy with Linux options. Does the Pi allow TBs of directly addressable storage? We have nearly a thousand movies and quite a few TV shows on our NAS.

 

[eerok]

I’ve used Linux off and on for years at work and home so I’m happy with Linux options. Does the Pi allow TBs of directly addressable storage? We have nearly a thousand movies and quite a few TV shows on our NAS.

The practical constraint on storage is how many drives you want to buy. There's no OS limit on this; you just plug in HDD enclosures.

 

[grmcdorman]

The practical constraint on storage is how many drives you want to buy. There's no OS limit on this; you just plug in HDD enclosures.

I think he (or she?) is asking if it supports terabytes on a single drive, rather than multiple drives. I'm pretty sure it would, though. In many cases, I suspect that one plugs in a USB drive rather than a SATA drive; depends on the performance you need. Networked I/O probably doesn't need SATA performance.

Wudang, have you tried contacting Synology support about the issue? You can also check a lot in the Synology performance monitor, and even more from the command line.

 

[eerok]

I think he (or she?) is asking if it supports terabytes on a single drive, rather than multiple drives. I'm pretty sure it would, though.

Well, the OS handles I/O as a stream, and it doesn't care how big the source is. Addressing the data is handled by the drive itself. The limitation is the speed of the interface.

In many cases, I suspect that one plugs in a USB drive rather than a SATA drive; depends on the performance you need. Networked I/O probably doesn't need SATA performance.

For a Pi, USB is the only option for storage. IMO the way to go is with a 4x HDD enclosure. For example, 4x4TB in RAIDZ is 12TB of storage. One drive can die without losing any data, and you're protected against bitrot.

 

[jadebox]

I upgraded from a DS410j to a DS920+ a year and a half ago.

I never had any real issues with the DS410j during the many years I used it. Right now it is unplugged because the fan is noisy. Sometime I will replace the fan and find a new use for the NAS.

In the mean time, I am loving the DS920+. As you said, the older NAS wasn't fast enough to make a good media server. I had to manually transcode video to put on it. With the DS920+, I just copy the video files to it.

I highly recommend sticking with Synology.

 

[Wudang]

Apologies for the thread necromancy. A while back I bought a Raspberry Pi 5 for fun. Stripped everything non-essential off the NAS (eg Video station etc), set up NFS and did an NFS mount of the NAS's drives on the Raspberry Pi. Installed Plex there and everything flies along. The NAS is just a NAS and the Pi works great as the media server.
Next little thing is piHole on the Pi.

 

[plague311]

Apologies for the thread necromancy. A while back I bought a Raspberry Pi 5 for fun. Stripped everything non-essential off the NAS (eg Video station etc), set up NFS and did an NFS mount of the NAS's drives on the Raspberry Pi. Installed Plex there and everything flies along. The NAS is just a NAS and the Pi works great as the media server.
Next little thing is piHole on the Pi.

I put my pihole in a docker container and it can't get much more lightweight than that.

I was having a lot of fun with Unraid because you can use pretty much any storage to make a RAID and works great for containers, VMs, etc.

 

[Wudang]

I was doing a series of uploads of large files to the NAS yesterday and twice the pi dropped from the network. Not enough logging to quickly see why so I just wrote a little script to ping the routers IP address and if an error to stop and restart the network. Added a crontab entry for it and all good.

 

[Wudang]

So I finally got round to installing pihole. This Mac now has it set as the sole DNS server and all is good. I flushed the dns cache etc.