Hi All,

I'm looking for NAS mainly for home use. Purpose is to store my photos, videos and movies collection. Estimated need about 5-6 TB. Prefer the device with HDMI so I can direct connect to TV for display. Probably will setup this as private cloud system. Budget within RM 3k.

Hunting around in the market for few brands such as Asustor, Asus Lockerstor, QNAP, Orico, Synology ( least preference because no HDMI port ) but not sure which is better in term of cost effective, reliable and better perform.

Appreciate for suggestion and comment.

Thanks.

Consider Asus only if you dont think you will need the warranty RMA later.

Synology of course. I have a few running at home as file servers. Don't ever let the NAS do double duty. U will kill it faster.

Asustor is same as Asus Lockerstor
Smaller brands like Orico or Ugreen are bad ideas

Basically the top 3 are Synology, Asustor, QNAP

Go with Synology, they're premium for a reason
the software is an important part of the experience
(and hey, knocking on wood but unlike asustor or qnap, they havent been hit with ransomware yet)
low end cheaper synologys are arm based, they are weaker and have less features
advanced ones with intel or amd cpus are more powerful

for the tv part of it, just get some cheap (legit) tv box to stream it from the nas to the tv
but you probably want one of the models with hardware transcoding support

there is also always of course, the diy route with something like TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault

how about using some NAS OS like truenas to basically create a big network storage? The cost will be way cheaper than 3Krm.

i used my old Z97 mobo + a low powered celeron G3250T to power my truenas. So basically free since these were from my old desktop. I put 2 disks only (mirror/raidz0), so power consumption is below 50 watts/h most of the time although some may claim it is very high. Electricity cost only means 50 sen per day.

For DIY NAS, currently you can get these

Core i3-12100 (bundle with motherboard required from Viewnet) - 464
8GB DDR4-3200 - 89
FSP Dagger Pro 650W SFX - 468

M-ATX route:
MSI B760M-E DDR4 (4 SATA, expandable with pcie x1 SATA card) - 539
Jonsbo N4 case (6 HDD) - 523

ITX route:
Asrock B760M-ITX/ac (4 SATA) - 749
Fractal Node 304 case (6 HDD) - 428

Synology, you won't be wrong.

I'm technical guy and like an idea of DIY because of cost effective and customizable based on own taste but question is whether this is reliable, flexible to transfer file from mobile device and protectable from cyber attacks ?

TIA.

This post has been edited by invest2229: Jul 28 2024, 10:58 AM

Look like you are recycle your existing hardware to be NAS. What is your recommendation if I got none of those hardware, what to buy?
Some said use Raspberry Pie etc.

Synology limitation to me is lack of HDMI port. As what you suggested to overcome this problem is to have another device ( TV box ) where will be extra device. Prefer all in one..

I plan to use NAS as media storage and connect to TV as display and hope this will not burden the NAS.

That's the reason why quality power supply is listed. There are some better quality boards too.

Security is software. Its entirely you and the software vendor.

Better don't.

Just use a low powered mini PC for the TV.

since your budget is 3K, there are many options, such as suggested by TristanX.

Very cheap option, can get a old dell or hp desktop. just have to check number of sata and nic speed (edit: + hdmi if u needed it). plenty of those on shopee for like 2 to 300 rm whole set. 200rm to create a huge "intranet" storage device is really value for money: cheaper than even a single hdd cost.

I have no experience with niche small boards like raspberry or zima, but watching youtube it seems like a lot of work with many separate components to bother for expansion.They are really underpowered and u have to get separate psu to power the HDDs if you have like 2 to 4.

This post has been edited by Wedchar2912: Jul 28 2024, 02:18 PM

If you going to use it as media player, long term wise better go with PC as it's hardware can be upgraded to support newer codec and higher bitrate.

But it might be less reliable. Hardware failure, OS error causing data corruption.

Your important data better to have it backed copy on other device such as another NAS for storage only.

Pi 5 will work if you only have low expectation, i.e. single drive, don't mind running the multiple drives over powered USB hub, don't mind gigabit LAN speed, not many resource-intensive services can be run concurrently. I used to use it.

Cyberattacks - Use Linux (For home user, ubuntu server is usable. Rocky's stable updates are too slow for my likings.) and patch it from time to time. Use best practice (i.e. proper user account control, don't expose any port to public IP unless strictly necessary). If you still scare about the files, have another backup machine running and do daily rsync to do mirror-ing to that machine.
File transfer - Setup samba yourself / with OpenMediaVault. You can access your files via SMB (natively available in PC, requires third party file explorer to support on phone)
Media player - Host jellyfin in the NAS. If you have android TV, install jellyfin app and call it a day, otherwise get Chromecast with Google TV to act as media player. The jellyfin app provides nice UI to browse & play the videos stored your NAS. Jellyfin also performs on-the-fly transcoding in case of unsupported codec.
Bonus - Run Ollama as your free ChatGPT, home assistant as your smart home endpoint, NextCloud as your Google Suite/Drive replacement, Pi-Hole as DNS-based ad-blocking solution, Frigate as your smart CCTV (video streaming & recording triggered via object recognition)...

I'm running one (Ubuntu server + services deployment done in Docker) and it has been working well for past few years.

-----
As for the build...

Entry build
i3 12100 RM489
MSI Pro H610M-E DDR4 RM399
Kingston Value DDR4-3200MHz 16GB x2 RAM RM350
WD Blue SN580 500GB RM239
WD Blue 6TB x2 RM1498
Silverstone VIVA 650W Gold PSU RM299
Casing RM500

Total: RM3774

AI build
Ryzen 5 8600G RM1049
ASRock A620M-HDV/M.2+ RM389 (or MSI B650M Gaming WiFi for 2.5Gbps LAN @ RM658)
Kingston Fury DDR5-5200MHz 16GB x2 RAM Kit RM539
Zotac RTX3060 12GB RM1369
WD Blue SN580 500GB RM239
WD Blue 6TB x2 RM1498
Silverstone VIVA 650W Gold PSU RM299
Casing RM500

Total: RM5882

Since the drive is SMR, so it is not feasible to do RAID-1. Just setup daily rsync from first to second drive will suffice.
AI build contains processor with NPU and NVIDIA GPU. They can accelerate AI workloads such as Ollama, Frigate, automated image tagging by object identification...

This post has been edited by kingkingyyk: Jul 29 2024, 12:13 PM

Any NAS also possible infected with ransomware. Because they are basically built with Linux/Unix core. Only because Linux-based and macOS-based ransomware are much much lesser than Windows-based. So you hardly notice it but it is possible to get hit by ransomware too. At the moment, only OS that haven't hit by ransomware was the new Harmony OS but if you running on old Harmony OS then yes it is possible.

have a Pi4, the only way to connect HDD/SSD to it is via the USB ports, which is not ideal. read/write speed is also very bad

Raspberry Pi is honestly weak for that kind of setup

some old Dell/HP/Lenovo office PC will be a better choice

though their power usage would be higher

Pi 5 is much better.

I would recommend proper NAS drives for main disks. I killed many budget HDDs on my NAS.

Also, Ryzen 7000 setup has terrible idle power. Is 8600G (not CPU only) that good?


Ryzen 5000 tests here:
https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/4192804/+7800

This post has been edited by TristanX: Jul 30 2024, 11:17 PM

It depends on your torrent program, settings & usage. I have Deluge with 1GB RAM cache running fine over years.
Idle power is bad on those with modular design, but not for monolithic. After all 8600G is just a 8645H packaged in AM5, where efficiency is important in mobile part.

https://pcmag.infogram.com/1p9z3y96nnr7gja7...vvljqzs3k5v0ndr

This post has been edited by kingkingyyk: Jul 31 2024, 11:17 AM

If you want to go the Raspberry Pi route, I would suggest looking into the Radxa Penta SATA Hat for RPi5 (SATA Hat Overview).

This is available from Allnet Be careful that you select the RPi5 version since the PCIe cable interface is different.

You need to be careful of the SATA cable connection. Although they sell a 5-bay NAS enclosure, the interface on the NAS enclosure is SATA only whereas the Penta SATA Hat only has the SATA+Power connector. I don't know where you can source the specially built SATA cables - Image 5 and 6 shown on the Allnet website.

I have hacked together a RPi4 based solution using the previous version of the Sata Hat (without PCIe, so it goes through the 2 USB ports), with a different 4-bay NAS enclosure (which came with its own power supply). The SATA cable between the SATA Hat and the NAS enclosure was the biggest PITA to solve (I needed Male-Female SATA cables, which is next to impossible to purchase nowadays).

I'd also suggest not to stack 2.5" HDD on top of the SATA Hat as shown on the Radxa website. If you put it in an enclosure, you will need some way to efficiently remove the heat, otherwise it will keep crashing (my previous experience). Once I transitioned to a proper NAS enclosure, I could also use 5.25" HDD in place of measly 2.5" HDDs.

Another caveat of using HDD is that nowadays, most consumer HDDs are SMR, which will give you grief if you try to create a RAID array.

If you would like to use SSDs, there are other solutions (Argon One V3 case) (which I have not tried, and has potential SSD longetivity issues when used in a NAS). There are even RPi5 HATs with 2 M.2 NvME slots.

This post has been edited by tcwan: Aug 9 2024, 09:53 AM

Tip: for us, it is cheaper to buy from Radxa's Aliexpress than Allnet.cn, its cheaper and also free shipping
*taxes apply