I've been after a NAS (or 'snasbox' as my wife calls them) for a while. I was originally planning on getting a Drobo 5N with two 8TB Seagate Archive drives with the idea of adding more 8TB or larger drives in the future. Unfortunately, as I've discovered, the 5N is pretty useless in terms of its maximum volume size and Drobo don't seem to be in any rush to update it.
The QNAP and Synology machines seem to support larger volume sizes - at least the Synology ones definitely do, I think the QNAP ones do but the specs on their site weirdly don't list volume sizes. QNAP don't do a 5 bay but do a cheaper 4 bay and more expensive 6 bay version (compared to the Drobo) and Synology do a cheaper 4 bay and a more expensive 5 bay.
I'd really prefer a 5 bay instead of a 4 bay but now we're talking ~£650 instead of the ~£450 I was originally planning for the Drobo. This has got me thinking about whether I could instead use that money to upgrade one of my PCs and repurpose the guts of one of them as a NAS box instead. I have an i7-920 and an i5-2550k system (both are mATX), either of which could do with replacing. I'd basically just need a NAS suitable case, power supply and maybe a raid card and the rest of the 'funds' could go towards the new desktop machine.
How does Freenass compare though? How 'rock solid' is it? I'm not too fussed about built in 'apps'. The storage is mainly going to be for Plex media storage and Time Machine backups. I'll likely continue running Plex from my desktop computer anyway. The main thing I want is an easy way to upgrade the storage space in future - i.e. a flexible volume that lets me just put in an extra drive and let it do it's thing to maximise it's use like how the Drobo does.
The QNAP and Synology machines seem to support larger volume sizes - at least the Synology ones definitely do, I think the QNAP ones do but the specs on their site weirdly don't list volume sizes. QNAP don't do a 5 bay but do a cheaper 4 bay and more expensive 6 bay version (compared to the Drobo) and Synology do a cheaper 4 bay and a more expensive 5 bay.
I'd really prefer a 5 bay instead of a 4 bay but now we're talking ~£650 instead of the ~£450 I was originally planning for the Drobo. This has got me thinking about whether I could instead use that money to upgrade one of my PCs and repurpose the guts of one of them as a NAS box instead. I have an i7-920 and an i5-2550k system (both are mATX), either of which could do with replacing. I'd basically just need a NAS suitable case, power supply and maybe a raid card and the rest of the 'funds' could go towards the new desktop machine.
How does Freenass compare though? How 'rock solid' is it? I'm not too fussed about built in 'apps'. The storage is mainly going to be for Plex media storage and Time Machine backups. I'll likely continue running Plex from my desktop computer anyway. The main thing I want is an easy way to upgrade the storage space in future - i.e. a flexible volume that lets me just put in an extra drive and let it do it's thing to maximise it's use like how the Drobo does.