# Help me choose an NAS.



## Eliomiller (Dec 19, 2017)

Hey here. I would like to purchase an NAS. I plan on using it for streaming media to mobile devices and possibly a few laptops (need some way of seamlessly accessing/reading data without it being stored on the device itself and internet connection is not as quick as you'd want it to be (so I can't possibly use public cloud services like Google drive ect). If it could possibly download large files by itself(from a website for example) it would be even better. Any recommendation? Here are my options.
(Sorry for putting the link but that's what's available in my country for purchase). Budget is around 200$. I got an extra hard drive laying around in case it's an enclosure and I could upgrade later. Thanks in advance


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## FreedomEclipse (Dec 19, 2017)

Main thing about a NAS is storage capacity and also if the data stored is sensitive or important enough to warrant some form of redundancy like RAID.

If your needs arent really demanding, you can get away with some low level stuff like a Synology 215J. It is an extremely basic and entry level NAS that I ran the older version of this NAS for at least 2-3 years and it was alright for streaming to multiple devices. File transfer speeds wasnt the best though due to its low spec.

I have since upgraded to a different nas made by Qnap and I believe that Qnap is probably the better out of the two due to its OS and also setup options when youre booting it up for the first time. There are a range of options including being able to set it up as a cloud server so you can access your files remotely.

I currently run a QNAP TS-251+ which costs more than $200 but you could easily get away with the non '+' model For $200 it doesnt include any hard drives though so you'll have to pay more money ontop of that $200 for those.

I really recommend the 251+ if you can stretch your budget, It comes with a quad core processor compared to the dual core on the basic 251 and ram that you can upgrade up to 16GB and it is definitely futureproof and should cover your needs for many years so long as your needs are super demanding. 


Both brands are real easy to configure but Qnap was more intuitive and user friendly imo. 1GB on the 251 is passable but your NAS will get overwhelmed pretty quickly with moderate use.

I use my NAS as a file server and download station for torrents too apart from streaming media so its always doing something.


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## Eliomiller (Dec 19, 2017)

Qnap is not available in my country. Honestly I was surprised to even find a synology here.


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## FreedomEclipse (Dec 19, 2017)

Eliomiller said:


> Qnap is not available in my country. Honestly I was surprised to even find a synology here.



well what brands do you have available to you?


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## Eliomiller (Dec 19, 2017)

I provided a link in the original post because availability varies. But it's mostly WD my cloud; Seagate; synology; Thecus and LaCie.


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## brandonwh64 (Dec 19, 2017)

I do not think 200$ would even come close to building a decent NAS. The HDDs alone would be over 200$. You need atleast two for a raid 1 mirror and then you need an enclosure with raid and network functions. You could go some cheaper if you had an old intel or AMD dual core machine laying around and just pickup a raid card.


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## Eliomiller (Dec 19, 2017)

I stated earlier that I had a single 2tb hard disk I could use with any enclosure I purchased until I can manage to get 2 big hard disk's to upgrade


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## FreedomEclipse (Dec 19, 2017)

The problem with Synology apart from their OS is their hardware scales very badly given their price compared to the competition. a $415.57 Synology 281+ still comes with 1GB RAM and a Dual core where as the Qnap 251+ costs $314 and comes with an intel quad core CPU and 4GB of ram which can be upgraded to 16GB....

Is Asustor available in your country??? It would also help to know which country youre from to give me more options when googling.

Netgear -- I dont really like, Ive never used their NAS's. Ive used some of their other products but they arent always great.
Seagate -- I have no idea, I didnt even know they made NAS's
Thecus are good but their units are more industrial and corporate use IMO so I dont think they are as user friendly for general home use -- Problem is the same as Synology, they charge more while giving you lower end hardware compared to the competitors.
LaCie -- I dont know. Afaik they only really do external hard drives and NAS's aint their speciality so approach with caution.


I would rather spend a little extra and see if it was possible to import a Qnap in.



Eliomiller said:


> I stated earlier that I had a single 2tb hard disk I could use with any enclosure I purchased until I can manage to get 2 big hard disk's to upgrade



Would not recommend this route. Putting that hard drive in a nas would most likely end in you losing all your data as it would need to be formatted by the OS. Buy a smaller 1TB and put that in the NAS and use the 2TB in an enclosure and attach it to the NAS via its USB.


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## Eliomiller (Dec 19, 2017)

I can't import an enclosure due to the fact that duties charges a lot. I would however look around and see if I can find QNAP at another reseller. I live in Lebanon. I got an old laptop (a Toshiba with a 2.7ghz Intel i5 quad core ) but it's USB controllers are fried on it (the laptop itself is operational but I don't know if we could salvage anything out of it). I don't need a raid configuration to start with. I need something that can do the job and download torrents/files. The main backup is on my pc
I don't need the data on the 2tb


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## FreedomEclipse (Dec 19, 2017)

Dont know if this helps but this seems to be the only place in Lebanon that is a certified Qnap distributor/reseller

their website is offline though so i dont know they are out of business

There are other resellers/distributors apparently in Beirut and Dubai....


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## Eliomiller (Dec 19, 2017)

I would phone them and see what they got. Any enclosure name I should look for in particular?


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## Sasqui (Dec 19, 2017)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Thecus are good but their units are more industrial and corporate use IMO so I dont think they are as user friendly for general home use -- Problem is the same as Synology, they charge more while giving you lower end hardware compared to the competitors.



Question - what's your thought on QNap compared to Thecus?

I was going to chime in about QNap, I have a 2-bay TS-253 Pro and it's amazing.  So many bells and whistles that I've only scraped the surface on the thing.  Not to mention support and a crazy amount of ongoing updates   Looks like they are way out the budget and availability of the OP, unfortunately.


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## Eliomiller (Dec 19, 2017)

Phoned the resellers you named that are in beirut. They refused to sell to me as they deal with companies not individuals. Didn't specify any price also. They however told me about a few brick and mortar  shops that sell their stuff; most of this shops I know already but they literally rip you off with unacceptable prices (prices specified in the link above are like 3 times cheaper than the shops they named). I guess I'll have to go the diy route or at least further my knowledge a bit.


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## FreedomEclipse (Dec 19, 2017)

Eliomiller said:


> I would phone them and see what they got. Any enclosure name I should look for in particular?



You can get away with a Qnap TS-251A, Its only an Intel Dual Core though but it should be miles ahead of any ARM/Armada processors that come with Synology NAS's. Ram is user upgradable but either the 2GB or 4GB should serve your needs fine for home use. If youre gonna have a load of users on it at the same time you might want to consider a the more beefy TS-253 which is a quad core. 



Sasqui said:


> Question - what's your thought on QNap compared to Thecus?
> 
> I was going to chime in about QNap, I have a 2-bay TS-253 Pro and it's amazing.  So many bells and whistles that I've only scraped the surface on the thing.  Not to mention support and a crazy amount of ongoing updates   Looks like they are way out the budget and availability of the OP, unfortunately.



Not had any experience with Thecus. I basically just googled around for units and reviews and i wouldnt recommend them for general home use unless you are an IT wizzard of sorts.

Im like you though... I love my Qnap so much more than my Synology as the features on it seems endless. You can run VMs on it and everything.


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## TheLostSwede (Dec 19, 2017)

This is what you get if you go for the cheapest model from Thecus that the shop you linked to sell - https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/32286-thecus-n2310-soho-home-nas-server-reviewed

The Synology DS216se I wouldn't touch, that's too basic, as it only has 256MB of RAM.

Neither model is great and both are quite old and may or may not be supported for too long, especially the Thecus one, as it's a 2013 model.

Try to get a recent model, regardless of the manufacturer.

See if you can get the Thecus 2350 which is their current model and which should be priced similarly - https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/33127-thecus-n2350-home-soho-nas-reviewed

For Synology, have a look at the DS218j or DS218play - https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas...nology-ds218j-ds218play-diskstations-reviewed


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## Jetster (Dec 19, 2017)

Your looking for a NAS and a good wireless router? Your budget will not get you there.

IF you have a desktop you can put a large drive in it. The use the wireless router to get it up. NAS is not what you need

I currently run a Synology DS216Play it was $230 without drives  (STiH412 CPU)

For years I just stream media off my desktop. 4 large drives (not in RAID) It works and is way less expensive


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## FreedomEclipse (Dec 19, 2017)

Eliomiller said:


> Phoned the resellers you named that are in beirut. They refused to sell to me as they deal with companies not individuals. Didn't specify any price also. They however told me about a few brick and mortar  shops that sell their stuff; most of this shops I know already but they literally rip you off with unacceptable prices (prices specified in the link above are like 3 times cheaper than the shops they named). I guess I'll have to go the diy route or at least further my knowledge a bit.



Try contacting Qnap Customer Service, Maybe they can put a little pressure on these companies to sell you one If not allow you to buy one directly from them. Its a shame these companies arent willing to do business though.



TheLostSwede said:


> For Synology, have a look at the DS218j or DS218play - https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas...nology-ds218j-ds218play-diskstations-reviewed



Not sure if i mentioned already but these only come with dual core and Armada CPUs are woeful as Synology OS's have become so bloated over the year.... Its honestly terrible.

either Intel DC or QC or go home.


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## phill (Dec 19, 2017)

What about building one yourself?   Apologies if this has already been mentioned


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## Eliomiller (Dec 19, 2017)

Would love to build one myself. If I knew where to start. I wouldn't leave my pc turned on 24h/24 so it's not an option to use it as an nas. I'm going it's around 2h to a local shop. The owner is a friend and should be able to assist with purchases. I wanted at first to go with a WD my cloud but I felt It was really lacking. It can't even download bitorent. I feel all those cases are outdated over this website.  How much does an average NAS enclosure weight? If it's not really big I could get away getting one with a relative coming from the Gulf or France.


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## FreedomEclipse (Dec 19, 2017)

Heres a pretty low powered NAS build.







If you want to save further you could swap the ram out for a 4GB stick. the case has room for 3 hard drives and 1 SSD for future upgrade ability. the motherboard also supports RAID which is good. Use a free OS called FreeNas or UnRaid to get it all going.


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## Eliomiller (Dec 19, 2017)

Weight actually matters. I won't be able to build an NAS myself due to the weight associated with it( if I want to ship from abroad) and in addition prices of those parts here is higher. However: I could bring a prebuilt enclosure from France soon with a friend coming back from there. The weight/volume of such an enclosure would be lower than those parts. I'll look back into the different enclosures recommended and see what I can find in france and will update this thread with my finding. If you could share your two cent too it would be great


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## FreedomEclipse (Dec 19, 2017)

Eliomiller said:


> I'll look back into the different enclosures recommended and see what I can find in france and will update this thread with my finding.



youre going france. Just get a Qnap


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## Eliomiller (Dec 19, 2017)

I've opened amazon France to look up what they got from QNAP I found a lot of models and I got lost. But I found  a TerraMaster F2-220 for 195 euro. Is it a good buy ? I'm still looking at the QNAP tho. Will see what I can find as weight references. Weight will determine what I can get and what I can't.


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## FreedomEclipse (Dec 19, 2017)

Not bad for the spec. but going by a few reviews it could be a PITA to setup. Quite a few complaints saying the software isnt as user friendly.


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## phill (Dec 19, 2017)

Eliomiller said:


> Would love to build one myself. If I knew where to start. I wouldn't leave my pc turned on 24h/24 so it's not an option to use it as an nas. I'm going it's around 2h to a local shop. The owner is a friend and should be able to assist with purchases. I wanted at first to go with a WD my cloud but I felt It was really lacking. It can't even download bitorent. I feel all those cases are outdated over this website.  How much does an average NAS enclosure weight? If it's not really big I could get away getting one with a relative coming from the Gulf or France.



To be honest, mine isn't made of anything high end to be honest..  It's a G3258, 16Gb ram, 6 x 4Tb WD Reds, in a Fractical 804 case (I think!!) and it runs Synology OS from a USB..  It's been flawless unless I've messed around with it but it works 24/7 without fault.  At idle it's using about 35w..  I don't consider that to be very bad at all


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## Jetster (Dec 19, 2017)

phill said:


> To be honest, mine isn't made of anything high end to be honest..  It's a G3258, 16Gb ram, 6 x 4Tb WD Reds, in a Fractical 804 case (I think!!) and it runs Synology OS from a USB..  It's been flawless unless I've messed around with it but it works 24/7 without fault.  At idle it's using about 35w..  I don't consider that to be very bad at all



I didnt know you could run Synology software on a PC


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## phill (Dec 19, 2017)

You can indeed   Needs a little work but works fine


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## Eliomiller (Dec 21, 2017)

If that's the case I guess I could build something up as a DIY but Ill need to do some research and spend some time reviewing pcpartpicker nas builds. What caused this plot twist is that I remembered I purchased a psu for a side project last year (one that comes with cooler Master older cases if I remember) I purchased it as a standalone deal back then for around 50$. Around 500watts I guess. I don't know if it's efficient enough tho. AMD cpu are not common in Lebanon so I'll have a look at Intel cheap cpu. Do we need a graphics card for the build? Does it affect the performance of the NAS? From a logic standpoint it shouldn't.


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## FreedomEclipse (Dec 21, 2017)

Eliomiller said:


> If that's the case I guess I could build something up as a DIY but Ill need to do some research and spend some time reviewing pcpartpicker nas builds. What caused this plot twist is that I remembered I purchased a psu for a side project last year (one that comes with cooler Master older cases if I remember) I purchased it as a standalone deal back then for around 50$. Around 500watts I guess. I don't know if it's efficient enough tho. AMD cpu are not common in Lebanon so I'll have a look at Intel cheap cpu. Do we need a graphics card for the build? Does it affect the performance of the NAS? From a logic standpoint it shouldn't.




a GPU isnt required if the CPU has a integrated discrete graphics card. The AMD CPU specc'd didn't have that Alternatively you can buy a Intel Pentium Dual Core G4400 which has built in graphics and pair it with a Gigabyte H270N ac WIFI Kaby Lake Mini ITX Motherboard.

It will possibly put you over your $200 budget though


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## Eliomiller (Dec 21, 2017)

I will see what's availabe locally and update the threat with my findings. I guess 8gb ram is enough. will find a good combination.

I found an intel G4400 with a h110 "boardx" for 133$. Im trying to find a gigabyte board instead.
Edit: I found MSI/ASUS/gigabyte boards h110m. With the g4400 it would put my costs under 130$


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## Eliomiller (Dec 22, 2017)

I found the following and I'm lost again. I found a celeron N3150 6W braswell coupled with an MSI h110M +passive cooling for 75$. Now I'm quite undecided. Due to what I'm reading around freenas is a really bad option for me. I will not be doing a raid configuration. Should I go with a g4400/h110M or n3150/h110M?


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## FreedomEclipse (Dec 22, 2017)

Id prefer the g4400 but that n3150 works too. Just make sure case has sufficient airflow


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## Kursah (Dec 22, 2017)

Eliomiller said:


> I found the following and I'm lost again. I found a celeron N3150 6W braswell coupled with an MSI h110M +passive cooling for 75$. Now I'm quite undecided. Due to what I'm reading around freenas is a really bad option for me. I will not be doing a raid configuration. Should I go with a g4400/h110M or n3150/h110M?



I run an Asus N3150-C setup as my PFSense and for that job it is excellent, but I've even ran them as light-duty Windows Server VM boxes with surprisingly good results for such a low power CPU, also set some up as light duty Plex boxes and Minecraft servers (also did those in VM's as well). Lightweight, power sipping, but that quad core Celeron does a decent job for what it is but I have a concern that as a heavy-duty multi-stream box it will not perform and you'll be very unhappy with performance. Not enough raw speed to get it done. If you're hoping for multiple 1080P streams...I'd suggest a better CPU.

8GB Ram should be fine, I run Plex as a service on my virtual file server with 4 virtual cores, which also acts as my TeamSpeak 3 server for my boys and their friends, our local file server, print server, etc...and have no issues and are able to stream Plex over LAN and WAN to multiple devices with ease. If you do this build right, and based on  your connection, configuration, devices, source files, etc...you'll easily be able to do the same. 

If you're looking at Plex for streaming (I'm going to use it as the example here), you might read this: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/ar...kind-of-CPU-do-I-need-for-my-Server-computer-

The N3150 has a passmark score of 1663, Source: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+N3150+@+1.60GHz

I would honestly recommend an Intel G4600 2C/4T, which has a passmark score of 5000+: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+G4600+@+3.60GHz&id=2921

The G4400 you selected is around 3.5K so it should do decent as well, but won't handle as many streams... https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+G4400+@+3.30GHz&id=2634

Keep in mind there's more to streaming, but when you need to transcode streams to devices, that's where having a beefier CPU makes a huge difference. And with services like Plex that also manage your library, which can be CPU intensive as well as it indexes and catalogs everything, it'll go faster with more CPU power. Unfortunately there is quite a price difference between the 4400 and 4600 right now at about $20. 

But it is up to you and your budget what you can and will do. Hopefully some of this info helps you get it sorted. For NAS's I prefer to build them myself, a small cheap PC, even old gear. Pick up an old Z6/7/8/9x board with an i3 or i5, 8GB DDR3, slap a bunch of storage in, throw Windows or Linux on it and go. If you decide to use Windows 7 and are treating the NAS as a file server/backup server beyond just streaming media, there's some registry tweaks you can do to resolve session limitation and performance issues. I prefer a server-grade OS, but also primarily use a NAS as a backup device rather than a media device....but the market for them as media devices has sure taken off!


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## phill (Dec 22, 2017)

Here's a few pictures of my little home made Synology box...






















Case has enough space for 10 3.5" drives, motherboard isn't anything special, neither is the CPU but everything works flawlessly..  Just remember to take backups whenever you have storage like this as the day you don't something won't work and you've lost a massive amount of data.  There's 6 x 4Tb WD Reds in there, I'll be looking to change them out for at least 8Tb in the future just to have some extra space and I'll grab some extras to make sure I can backup the data on the raid arrays just in case anything funky happens.  Failing that, I will also try and get a Synology install on my R710 and see if I can backup the most important bits on that one as well....


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## Eliomiller (Dec 23, 2017)

My only concern right now with going the DIY way is the software side of things. I've been reading it's much harder all over the websites I've been to. Stuff like ports ect.
What I want to do on that NAS as it's been lost for a while here :
- files repository for android devices in the house/ streaming to those devices
-file transfer between various devices
-torrenting/ downloading (steam updates can be large sometimes to be downloaded on my pc directly and leaving it on is not an option)
- I will not be streaming more than 1 device at the same time (video speaking). I don't have 4k content. But I would like the NAS to remain operational during a stream (for accessing/transferring folders). 
-standalone transcoding(will not be transcoding when streaming)
For the main things to be streamed it will be mainly music so I'm not really bothered there. I've seen a synology 218+ for 300$ with specs worse than what I could build myself; but my main concern is the software setup. If you could provide some help over this field I'd jump in and purchase the left parts.


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## Aquinus (Dec 23, 2017)

Eliomiller said:


> My only concern right now with going the DIY way is the software side of things. I've been reading it's much harder all over the websites I've been to. Stuff like ports ect.
> What I want to do on that NAS as it's been lost for a while here :
> - files repository for android devices in the house/ streaming to those devices
> -file transfer between various devices
> ...


You're not going to want a pre-built NAS for that. Your requirements deem a full machine because a lot of the tasks you want to do are a little bit on the CPU and memory intensive side (when talking in the context of a NAS.) I used to use a Phenom II system as a gateway/nas/vm host and it worked out pretty well (despite the abuse by my daughter getting stuff in it.) Honestly, I would just find a small motherboard with a ton of SATA ports and get a strong enough CPU just to use software RAID using MDADM in Linux. I did this and it worked out pretty well. Modern CPUs tend to have good enough performance where doing something like RAID-5 in software isn't too bad.

As you said though, it's not exactly just a matter of throwing it all together. When you have that many goals in mind, you do have to think carefully about how you want to proceed but, tailoring a machine to your needs is going to yield the best result, even if it takes a little bit of time.


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## Jetster (Dec 23, 2017)

built or bought NAS there is still  configuration that has to be done. With the bought NAS there is allot less work to set it up but they are a specialised unit and have limitations. Good for streaming and backups but as far as torrents it would be difficult. They sleep unless you shut that off and log in is required with reboots and that much traffic would slow everything down.


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## Eliomiller (Dec 23, 2017)

I wish I could find a g4600 but it's not available here. The only pentium available to me is the g4400. I'll be using an ASUS h110M-K micro ATX board . As of board I got more options but I took the smallest I could find. Will be wall mounting the parts. Still need to find RAM as the only brand I found was a Chinese no name but I'll chop around and see if I find something reputable. 4GB for 50$ no name RAM my god what's wrong with this world lol I've got the RAM of my other system at around 6$ per GB back at the time...


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## Aquinus (Dec 23, 2017)

Eliomiller said:


> 4GB for 50$ no name RAM my god what's wrong with this world lol I've got the RAM of my other system at around 6$ per GB back at the time...


You can get a 4gb bottom of the bin stick of Crucial memory for that much but, you're right. DRAM prices are a bit inflated as of late however, I just bought a Samsung 128GB microSD card for 40 dollars. So while system memory has got more expensive, solid state storage has become a lot cheaper.
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-DDR4-2400-PC4-19200-288-Pin/dp/B019FRDFU0


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## Eliomiller (Dec 23, 2017)

I believe that ss storage have been like that from since I purchased my Samsung drive for around 40$ 1 year ago.


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## John Naylor (Dec 23, 2017)

We used NAS's for several years ... but abandoned them as there really was no need for a separate device.  The NAS was  4 bay unit using proprietary Infrant (Netgear) X-RAID and it worked very well.  The issue is, it's gonna cost ya $300-400 w/o any memory add ons or improvements.  Building a  separate box will cost ya the same ... before the storage devices.

It served a SOHO (small office / home office) with 10-12 PCs / laptops and it did it's job well.... noce thing about it was it could be administered from any PC and I don't have the time stealing headache of OS management. on a 13th box.  However, now it's gone.   Right now my box serves the following roles.

Business Hours:

CAD Workstation
Business Apps
Office Data Server

Off Hours:
Game Box
Entertainment
Music / Multimedia Server
3 Game Consoles, 5 Smart TVs and 5 - 10 phones connected at any one time.

With (6) HD Bays and (2) SSD bays, the case has plenty of storage room and no observed drop off in performance.  Not trying to talk you out of an NAS but, if cost is an issue.... might want to look at just adding an array if you have a reasonable capable system on hand and see how it works.  If unhappy, those same HDs could be added to the NAS should you decide to purchase one.  For me, building a separate box to handle NAS duties is just too expensive, not in cost so much as in time.  

The ReadyNAS s built like a tank a good choice for NAS novices as the software is more intuitive.  Others id look at would include the Asustor AS5104T and the QSnap TVS 463


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## Aquinus (Dec 23, 2017)

John Naylor said:


> For me, building a separate box to handle NAS duties is just too expensive, not in cost so much as in time.


Valid point if it takes you a while. I would only need an hour or two to get a NAS going on a linux box from individual parts to built and running but, I also dev on a linux box and work with linux servers on a regular basis so, this stuff is practically second nature to me at this point.


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## Jetster (Dec 23, 2017)

I need that skill


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## Aquinus (Dec 23, 2017)

Jetster said:


> I need that skill


It helps when it's directly related to what you do for a living.


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## Eliomiller (Dec 23, 2017)

I got till 8 january free days of boredom and loneliness (not all of them but ...) so I won't be really bothered by the time it takes as long as I'm working slowly but surely. Will probably get the parts after Christmas as it's the weekend. Before the end of the year tho. I believe it will take me 10-15 minutes to actually put the hardware together. I'm only bothered by the aftermath. Cost is not the problem anymore. I could fit it within my budget. Cpu+mobo is 132$. Ram is 55$. PSU is available/scavengered. I can still fit a 2TB hard drive and cash out under 250$


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## Jetster (Dec 23, 2017)

I say for that price just keep doing what your doing. Just get large drives in a desktop and map the drives across the network. That's what I did for years


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## Eliomiller (Dec 23, 2017)

John Naylor said:


> We used NAS's for several years ... but abandoned them as there really was no need for a separate device.  The NAS was  4 bay unit using proprietary Infrant (Netgear) X-RAID and it worked very well.  The issue is, it's gonna cost ya $300-400 w/o any memory add ons or improvements.  Building a  separate box will cost ya the same ... before the storage devices.
> 
> It served a SOHO (small office / home office) with 10-12 PCs / laptops and it did it's job well.... noce thing about it was it could be administered from any PC and I don't have the time stealing headache of OS management. on a 13th box.  However, now it's gone.   Right now my box serves the following roles.
> 
> ...


The main issue here was that I can't leave my main system on for 24h/7 due to its power consumption and it's inability to last over the ups for more than quarter hour.given that we get frequent blackouts and power goes off for hours sometimes,building a lower powered pc would fit that purpose.


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## Eliomiller (Dec 25, 2017)

Okay so I'll be ordering the items tomorrow as today they are closed. I'll be purchasing a g4400 as the only pentium I could find along with an Asus h110M-K motherboard.  I'm just questioning my board choice. Anything else to recommend ? I will be purchasing memory later from a nearby shop in an attempt to find something reputable. Will probably get 2TB of storage as a starter (I don't have much data). My main pool for choices is made from gigabyte Asus and MSI h110M motherboards. Help me decide so I can pull the trigger and get them tomorrow.

Update: I ordered the g4400; the H110M-K and a WD Red 2TB. I will be looking locally for a 4GB of ddr4 and at most I'll just scavenge a 4GB stick from my 48gb tree inside my main rig

Update:Okay so as I was looking for RAM I found a "kingston" 4gb stick; except that it was just a no name stick with a "kingston" labeled at it. I was going to get scammed.funny thing is that I spotted it because the man wasn't smart enough to notice that RAM do come in sealed box/bag and not as a plain stick of wood.


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## phill (Jan 1, 2018)

Eliomiller said:


> My only concern right now with going the DIY way is the software side of things. I've been reading it's much harder all over the websites I've been to. Stuff like ports ect.
> What I want to do on that NAS as it's been lost for a while here :
> - files repository for android devices in the house/ streaming to those devices
> -file transfer between various devices
> ...



My NAS box is just for storage, Steam is on my gaming rig and I've tried the running Steam over the network thing, it works but it's a pain in the arse to get it run properly and something games don't like it too much...  It's a bit of a pain in the arse to be honest...

The setup is pretty easy and there are a lot of groups online and forums and run throughs to help.  Make a USB, install, run the program you wish and off you go   Mine stays on 24/7, at the moment with 50 days or more uptime, it's a joy to use it.  Just always remember to have another out the box place to put your data..  Back it up 

My 'NAS' setup wasn't expensive, the most expensive thing for it was the 6 4Tb Red drives..  Something that I do hope to change at some point as I've probably said before..  The motherboard, CPU, ram, PSU even, wasn't more than £200 but I had bought the PSU and ram before hand so I just re-used it..  You don't need a 750w PSU you run it since when it's working it's not using more than 70w with the drives running


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