New to NAS and need some guidance

[McScooby]

He’s addressing your iscsi/switch comment, which I didn’t understand either. Can you explain what you meant?

Yes, most non-it folks don’t need iscsi. But it does speak to the Syno’s better feature set over the more basic ubiquiti nas.

If you'd followed, I didn't raise the iSCSI thing. Last time I used SCSI was in a 1992 Akai Sampler, so couldn't understand the relevance to a NAS.

Quick google, saw it was network related & tied to SANs (treating remotes as if local) hence switch, granted I got it wrong, but again why would OP need it, why bring it up?

 

[McScooby]

The OP isn’t the only one reading this thread, it’s on the front page. My comments are for the benefit of anyone looking to purchase a NAS.


I’m looking for a NAS solution myself. I had been waiting for an update to the DS1821+, but after Synology’s recent trajectory (lackluster hardware updates, dropping software features, increasingly strict drive restrictions), I don’t see any no-brainer recommendations.

Personally (different needs than the OP), I’m now looking to run TrueNAS Scale (or anything ZFS not requiring a subscription), but not sure which hardware yet. I’d go for UGreen NASync if they had ECC, or possibly for Asustor Lockerstor Gen3 if they had an iGPU (for the purpose of installing TrueNAS). UGreen would also be an option for the OP. The upcoming Minisforum N5 Pro is looking good spec-wise, but Minisforum has a bad track record regarding customer support and BIOS updates. I had researched the UNAS Pro as well, but between its functional limitations, slow development speed, rack form factor, and issue reports you find on the web, it doesn’t fit the bill either. A custom build is always an option, but comes with its own difficulties regarding hardware selection.

Yeah, it's an absolute frickin' minefield out there, one step forward three steps back, nothing's really changed since I looked in detail 7 years ago.

I get everyone has their own uses, mine are simple - storage, yours are whatever.

I'd said about UNAS as it's the closest thing you'll find that's Applesque plug & play, fairly priced with reasonable support & ticks the boxes the OP is looking for, aside from the Synology part. It's not the fanciest, but comes close as a storage device - seemingly way better aside from speed than the DAS' I use just now & the price cannot be beat.

Rackmount's out now with desktop flavours coming in not too distant future.

 

[klasma]

If you'd followed, I didn't raise the iSCSI thing. Last time I used SCSI was in a 1992 Akai Sampler, so couldn't understand the relevance to a NAS.

Quick google, saw it was network related & tied to SANs (treating remotes as if local) hence switch, granted I got it wrong, but again why would OP need it, why bring it up?

iSCSI is a standard NAS feature. It presents like a raw disk (block device) to the client (sending SCSI commands over the network), so appears as if it were a local disk. It can be useful for VMs, databases and the like, anything that needs/requires block storage instead of a file system structure. The usual NAS manufacturers all support this, so it’s a bit surprising that Ubiquiti doesn’t even have it on their roadmap, despite being an often-requested feature, and given Ubiquiti’s background in networking.

I brought it up as one example of a feature normally expected from NAS systems that the UNAS Pro doesn’t provide. So don’t buy blindly, but check what features you might need or expect from a NAS. I explicitly wrote “depending on use case” to indicate that it may or may not be an issue, but something to be aware of in the general case.

 

[foo2]

If you'd followed, I didn't raise the iSCSI thing. Last time I used SCSI was in a 1992 Akai Sampler, so couldn't understand the relevance to a NAS.

Quick google, saw it was network related & tied to SANs (treating remotes as if local) hence switch, granted I got it wrong, but again why would OP need it, why bring it up?

I did follow; you made a comment about iSCSI. SCSi is not iSCSI. iSCSI is a useful feature for VMware and lots of other use cases, but not explicitly mentioned by OP. Since all networking requires a switch/etc. of some sort, your comment was very strange.

Yeah, it's an absolute frickin' minefield out there, one step forward three steps back, nothing's really changed since I looked in detail 7 years ago.

I get everyone has their own uses, mine are simple - storage, yours are whatever.

I'd said about UNAS as it's the closest thing you'll find that's Applesque plug & play, fairly priced with reasonable support & ticks the boxes the OP is looking for, aside from the Synology part. It's not the fanciest, but comes close as a storage device - seemingly way better aside from speed than the DAS' I use just now & the price cannot be beat.

Rackmount's out now with desktop flavours coming in not too distant future.

The UNAS Pro requires one to be bought into Ubiquiti's console to manage the thing, right? That doesn't sound Apple-esque at all. It's just a low end ARM box that can put a share on the network; literally it can't do anything else, right? No hundreds of native Synology apps, no literally thousands of containerized Linux apps, nothing else - just SMB storage, right? No video camera management, no home automation, nothing? (VC would require a Dream Machine Pro, ofc) Reading this, it strikes me as incredibly plain: https://nascompares.com/guide/unifi-unas-pro-first-time-setup-guide/

The downside of the UNAS Pro is that it's -just- storage; there is no provisio to run apps on it, nothing. And the CPU is a low-end ARM CPU, rather than a far faster (but, granted, still not fancy) Intel CPU. The advantage of the Intel CPU, though, is it has the Intel iGPU, which has QuickSync, which makes the thing _very_ useful as a low end Plex server that can easily stream Plex video to the moon and back, and can transcode 6-8 1080p videos without a problem (with PlexPass). That's very, very useful; the ARM-based Ubiquiti box cannot do that. And since Plex is an explicit ask of the OP, this becomes a very important point.

OP: Get an Intel based NAS of some sort with iGPU. The Synology DS423+ is an excellent and reasonably priced choice that can run Plex as a Synology package, or, if you decide to dig into the ecosystem a bit, as a full standard-Linux-container, along with the thousands of other standard Linux containers (Radarr, Sonarr, Bazaarr, and billions of others) that make the Plex experience so incredibly good.

 

[foo2]

Exactly. If Synology thinks only the most expensive, premium disks can do the job, they’ve lost the thread. The whole point of RAID is to use redundancy as a lower cost path to performance and reliability. If a 5 bay system isn’t meeting the targets the solution is meant to be an 8 bay system— more redundancy, not more premium media.

They probably got sick of people populating their new NAS with SMR disks and being baffled at why write performance was so horribly bad.

Between that & the complete inability to do firmware updates (for most people, without some pretty extensive work) on disks in a NAS box, I can understand why tech support there would probably cheer when the disk restriction came into being; having known quality, CMR, easily managed with firmware updates and such - disks would make for a vastly better customer and technician experience.

I also understand why people are frustrated (when I look at Syno pricing). But - there's a script to get around this, so anyone even remotely technical has nothing to worry about even on the newest Synology hardware; get whatever disks you like.

 

[McScooby]

I did follow; you made a comment about iSCSI. SCSi is not iSCSI. iSCSI is a useful feature for VMware and lots of other use cases, but not explicitly mentioned by OP. Since all networking requires a switch/etc. of some sort, your comment was very strange.


The UNAS Pro requires one to be bought into Ubiquiti's console to manage the thing, right? That doesn't sound Apple-esque at all. It's just a low end ARM box that can put a share on the network; literally it can't do anything else, right? No hundreds of native Synology apps, no literally thousands of containerized Linux apps, nothing else - just SMB storage, right? No video camera management, no home automation, nothing? (VC would require a Dream Machine Pro, ofc) Reading this, it strikes me as incredibly plain: https://nascompares.com/guide/unifi-unas-pro-first-time-setup-guide/

The downside of the UNAS Pro is that it's -just- storage; there is no provisio to run apps on it, nothing. And the CPU is a low-end ARM CPU, rather than a far faster (but, granted, still not fancy) Intel CPU. The advantage of the Intel CPU, though, is it has the Intel iGPU, which has QuickSync, which makes the thing _very_ useful as a low end Plex server that can easily stream Plex video to the moon and back, and can transcode 6-8 1080p videos without a problem (with PlexPass). That's very, very useful; the ARM-based Ubiquiti box cannot do that. And since Plex is an explicit ask of the OP, this becomes a very important point.

OP: Get an Intel based NAS of some sort with iGPU. The Synology DS423+ is an excellent and reasonably priced choice that can run Plex as a Synology package, or, if you decide to dig into the ecosystem a bit, as a full standard-Linux-container, along with the thousands of other standard Linux containers (Radarr, Sonarr, Bazaarr, and billions of others) that make the Plex experience so incredibly good.

Clearly you didn't follow. I didn't raise iSCSI, klasma did. I made a mistake, explained why I did and I admitted it, but cool, bring it back up again, knock yourself out.

Applesque is you buy the thing (without inflated drive prices) plug it in & it works and has fairly decent support, you mention it can't be used independently like Apple? Cool, point me to where I can use my Apple Watch & HomePods without another device?

It's not a computer it's a device that holds drives, that's it nothing else - it doesn't pretend to be.

You're right in your comments, it's not a fully fledged computer, it doesn't run apps, it probably can't do VM's but if you'd read the OP has a MacStudio, that funnily enough does all these things it misses out on & probably way better / faster & can connect directly using 10Gb Ethernet. I'd bet the Studio destroys the transcoding the Intel does and probably will in the future - but if not, just buy a new computer and the drives continue to work. It has TM support, can sync with Dropbox/Google and has the ability to share specific files with options to limit for security.

It OP wants a life of tinkering (although said they didn't), then by all means get a fully fledged NAS, they'll pay for it both in time and money.

I offered my opinion on what I thought the better trade off was.

I'm out.

 

[Analog Kid]

They probably got sick of people populating their new NAS with SMR disks and being baffled at why write performance was so horribly bad.

Between that & the complete inability to do firmware updates (for most people, without some pretty extensive work) on disks in a NAS box, I can understand why tech support there would probably cheer when the disk restriction came into being; having known quality, CMR, easily managed with firmware updates and such - disks would make for a vastly better customer and technician experience.

I also understand why people are frustrated (when I look at Syno pricing). But - there's a script to get around this, so anyone even remotely technical has nothing to worry about even on the newest Synology hardware; get whatever disks you like.

Yeah, I've no doubt there are benefits to Synology here, and I agree there's challenges to bring-your-own-disk arrangements, especially in a world where people always assume every problem is the company's fault and a scam of some sort. I'd bet they could lose half their customer base and still win financially by selling the drives.

And they will lose my business because it no longer fits my budget and use case and it does undermine much of the value of RAID as a technology. I'm disappointed because they make a quality product and when the time comes I'm going to have to roll the dice again and hope the next brand is as good. I appreciate that they are moving to this approach with new sales rather than a DSM update that changed the rules on older hardware.

 

[foo2]

Clearly you didn't follow. I didn't raise iSCSI, klasma did. I made a mistake, explained why I did and I admitted it, but cool, bring it back up again, knock yourself out.

Applesque is you buy the thing (without inflated drive prices) plug it in & it works and has fairly decent support, you mention it can't be used independently like Apple? Cool, point me to where I can use my Apple Watch & HomePods without another device?

It's not a computer it's a device that holds drives, that's it nothing else - it doesn't pretend to be.

You're right in your comments, it's not a fully fledged computer, it doesn't run apps, it probably can't do VM's but if you'd read the OP has a MacStudio, that funnily enough does all these things it misses out on & probably way better / faster & can connect directly using 10Gb Ethernet. I'd bet the Studio destroys the transcoding the Intel does and probably will in the future - but if not, just buy a new computer and the drives continue to work. It has TM support, can sync with Dropbox/Google and has the ability to share specific files with options to limit for security.

It OP wants a life of tinkering (although said they didn't), then by all means get a fully fledged NAS, they'll pay for it both in time and money.

I offered my opinion on what I thought the better trade off was.

I'm out.

I followed perfectly; you replied to a comment about iSCSI without understanding the details. Why you think it's important who first raised the topic is ... interesting.

I'm sure a Mac Studio can do far more than the vast majority of NAS hardware, but that completely misses the point of an always-on, always-running (never asleep) NAS, running applications, containers, VMs, and more. That's the benefit of the (Intel + iGPU) NAS, that the Ubiquiti unit cannot accomplish. No interruption for MacOS updates (recall your friends watching video from your Plex server won't like that), no interruption for anything. That's why we buy servers, and why we differentiate servers and clients. It also ignores Syno's rich ecosystem of applications that tie into the Syno storage very easily and very well.

Any mention of Apple-esque & drive prices in any context other than "WILDLY" inflated drive prices (seen the 256GB->2TB upcharge for a mini lately?) is a riot! Thanks for that!

The Ubiquiti UNAS Pro does one thing: SMB over 10gbps. If that's what you want, it gives you 7 bays for $500, which is well priced for exactly that featureset, but that's an incredibly limited featureset for 2025.

"Tinkering" to me is minimized with the Synology; the applications are purpose-driven and made to be simple and fast to deploy for either Mac or PC.

 

[foo2]

And they will lose my business because it no longer fits my budget and use case and it does undermine much of the value of RAID as a technology. I'm disappointed because they make a quality product and when the time comes I'm going to have to roll the dice again and hope the next brand is as good. I appreciate that they are moving to this approach with new sales rather than a DSM update that changed the rules on older hardware.

Understood. But do bear in mind you can defeat all of this trivially with a script that has now been in use for about a month or so, driven by a community that's been doing similar things with Syno units for years. In other words, if you wanted to, this issue is fully fixed.

 

[Analog Kid]

Understood. But do bear in mind you can defeat all of this trivially with a script that has now been in use for about a month or so, driven by a community that's been doing similar things with Syno units for years. In other words, if you wanted to, this issue is fully fixed.

That'll be a help for a lot of people. Using expensive hardware in a way that's not supported and may eventually be more effectively blocked isn't a gamble I'd like to take. We'll see if I think differently when I eventually need new hardware, but I have a few years I think. By that point there may be a viable alternative, or Synology may have backtracked, or added some third party drives to their list.

 

[foo2]

That'll be a help for a lot of people. Using expensive hardware in a way that's not supported and may eventually be more effectively blocked isn't a gamble I'd like to take. We'll see if I think differently when I eventually need new hardware, but I have a few years I think. By that point there may be a viable alternative, or Synology may have backtracked, or added some third party drives to their list.

If you look at how Synology handles the installation on non-supported disks, you'll quickly see this is not that big of a deal:

1. Syno supports moving old volumes to new hardware, fully - any drives, no limitations.
2. That means they MUST continue to support old (3rd party) drives
3. They cannot differentiate a system that had the one-time "install" script run on it from a 'supported' drive move from old hardware (because ... there is no difference)

Granted, if you want to expand / repair a volume (after that point) with a new disk, it needs to be a Syno disk. Unless... you run a script to fix that too. .

This is just Linux. It's not magic. The community has been doing this and similar things for years and years.

 

[JamesMay82]

I am no NAS expert, but I did get a synology DS223J last year to do local Time Machine backups & it works great (also photo backups) but if I were using it for anything more demanding, I think something with more RAM would be welcome.

What speeds do you get for Time Machine? I think I would find it hard to adjust after being spoiled by external ssd.

 

[foo2]

What speeds do you get for Time Machine? I think I would find it hard to adjust after being spoiled by external ssd.

The NAS is always on, always running, always available. Would you even notice when a backup is taking place, or how long it takes?

 

[JamesMay82]

The NAS is always on, always running, always available. Would you even notice when a backup is taking place, or how long it takes?

I would because if I had to leave the house In a hurry I wouldn’t want it to be slow and the same for If used it for hosting my apple photos library.

I just looked up my router which is a BT smart hub 2 here in the UK.

Ethernet ports 4 (1 Gbps)

Dual-band WiFi 5 802.11ac/a/n 4 x 4 MIMO + 802.11b/g/n 3 x 3 MIMO (2.4GHz and 5GHz)

What realistic speed can I expect out of a NAS?

Also if I stored my photos library on here and I was a way from home would i be able to access the library to import/export etc? Or is the remote access mainly for finder stored files?

 

[foo2]

I would because if I had to leave the house In a hurry I wouldn’t want it to be slow and the same for If used it for hosting my apple photos library.

I just looked up my router which is a BT smart hub 2 here in the UK.

Ethernet ports 4 (1 Gbps)

Dual-band WiFi 5 802.11ac/a/n 4 x 4 MIMO + 802.11b/g/n 3 x 3 MIMO (2.4GHz and 5GHz)

What realistic speed can I expect out of a NAS?

Also if I stored my photos library on here and I was a way from home would i be able to access the library to import/export etc? Or is the remote access mainly for finder stored files?

Obviously you’d want ethernet on the NAS going to the router, and you’d prefer that all your Macs be ethernet too.

If you do have ethernet all around (GigE obviously) then the max you’ll get is around 110MB/s or so - ethernet line speeds. Small files will be slower; large files (think .ISO files) will hit that 110MB/s number.

Remote access works fine; you can tailscale in or you can use Syno’s functionality to get in; I have a Ubiquiti router so I use a Ubiquiti method to get onto my network; any or all will work fine. They literally put you onto your home network.

I admit I am baffled at your comments at leaving your house. The backup is hourly (or whatever you set it to; I use daily); you can leave your house anytime you want. The backups are incremental too; they’re constantly running, constantly going. If I needed to leave my house quickly, I would do so, and where the TM was in the backup process wouldn’t even enter my thought process; it will resume once I returned home. The convenience of always being connected to the backup (while at home, anyway) is of huge benefit here. What is the greater issue?

 

[myhaksown]

I use a UGREEN DXP6800 Pro it’ll do everything you’re looking for and it looks phenomenal has great hardware and doesn’t lock you down on drives like Synology does. Plus the price is pretty damn good for what you get another nice thing is that you can directly connect to a Mac using a thunderbolt cable if you get one of the models with thunderbolt ports and let me tell you my 2019 MacBook Pro is insanely fast to back up and move files using thunderbolt .

Plus everything you want to do is either native or super easy to set up the only thing that doesn’t come by default is Plex and it took me all of five minutes to get it set up and running in Docker.

 

[JamesMay82]

Obviously you’d want ethernet on the NAS going to the router, and you’d prefer that all your Macs be ethernet too.

If you do have ethernet all around (GigE obviously) then the max you’ll get is around 110MB/s or so - ethernet line speeds. Small files will be slower; large files (think .ISO files) will hit that 110MB/s number.

Remote access works fine; you can tailscale in or you can use Syno’s functionality to get in; I have a Ubiquiti router so I use a Ubiquiti method to get onto my network; any or all will work fine. They literally put you onto your home network.

I admit I am baffled at your comments at leaving your house. The backup is hourly (or whatever you set it to; I use daily); you can leave your house anytime you want. The backups are incremental too; they’re constantly running, constantly going. If I needed to leave my house quickly, I would do so, and where the TM was in the backup process wouldn’t even enter my thought process; it will resume once I returned home. The convenience of always being connected to the backup (while at home, anyway) is of huge benefit here. What is the greater issue?

Sadly my computers are all just wireless. My router is in the living room where it’s wired to the TV and gaming consoles and apple
Tv.

What speed do you think I’d achieve wirelessly?

Im way out of touch with a modern nas.. my last experience was a time capsule and i remember that taking days to do the initial Time Machine back up.

This thread has got me interested in it again.

My comment about leaving house urgently is an unlikely Scenario but I just meant if backups are slow it will take ages if I had to rush off in the middle of one..

 

[foo2]

Sadly my computers are all just wireless. My router is in the living room where it’s wired to the TV and gaming consoles and apple
Tv.

What speed do you think I’d achieve wirelessly?

Im way out of touch with a modern nas.. my last experience was a time capsule and i remember that taking days to do the initial Time Machine back up.

This thread has got me interested in it again.

My comment about leaving house urgently is an unlikely Scenario but I just meant if backups are slow it will take ages if I had to rush off in the middle of one..

Attach the Syno box to the router under the TV via gigabit ethernet; it will be fine there.

Your wireless speed will then depend on your clients; a simple speedtest.net will give you a good idea.

The 'days to do the first backup' is a one time thing. You could just attach your Mac via ethernet for the first backup if that bothered you, but once it's done, it's done; there's nothing else to worry about.

I can't imagine why a daily incremental backup would take any time at all; mine mostly finish in minutes if that.

If the router is Wifi 5, you could flip it to Wifi 7 or Wifi 6E for better speeds and coverage.

 

[foo2]

I use a UGREEN DXP6800 Pro it’ll do everything you’re looking for and it looks phenomenal has great hardware and doesn’t

The ugreen dxp6800 pro is a great solution; it starts at $1100 at Amazon. For most, that's a _lot_ of money unless you really need that fast CPU / more drive bays / 10GBe that it offers. I would call it a significantly higher end solution than the standard $400-$500 Synology boxes, at 2.5x-3x the price.

One thing to consider is ugreen's NAS support is unknown - they have all new NAS products in the last year. Granted, you can hack them (too) and put any OS you like on there, which is one advantage; some buy their products just to put UNRAID on them (which might tell you something about their own OS...)

 

[mk313]

Attach the Syno box to the router under the TV via gigabit ethernet; it will be fine there.

Your wireless speed will then depend on your clients; a simple speedtest.net will give you a good idea.

The 'days to do the first backup' is a one time thing. You could just attach your Mac via ethernet for the first backup if that bothered you, but once it's done, it's done; there's nothing else to worry about.

I can't imagine why a daily incremental backup would take any time at all; mine mostly finish in minutes if that.

If the router is Wifi 5, you could flip it to Wifi 7 or Wifi 6E for better speeds and coverage.

100% this. I have my Synology drive attached via ethernet to one of my eeros int he basement. I attached the MacBooks to the same eero via ethernet for the initial Time Machine backups & it took a few hours. Doing them wirelessly would have taken a lot longer (I initially tried wirelessly, but cancelled that). The Mac's have been connected wirelessly since then and I've had 0 issues backing up. They work fine. When I leave the house & come back, the Time Machine backups stop & start back up with no issues. I never even think of them.

 

[Howard2k]

Only have a bit of time, so this won't be as short and cogent as I would like...

Like the OP, about a year ago I started looking at NAS options, and there are many. As background, I've been using various Mac minis over the years to serve the household and business, and I've been generally happy with it. I saw the features that NAS would bring, but at the same time I had two other thoughts in the back of my mind - would a change bring or lose functionality, and how difficult would making that change be.

In the end, I decided to remain on MacOS and use DAS, but to get a bit more serious about it. The decision was driven by the fact that my needs just didn't support using a NAS and the changeover costs. I had (and still have) a lot of large hard drives, and they're all in various Apple formats (HFS/APFS) and encrypted. Just getting that data onto another box would have been an effort.

I bought a thunderbolt disk enclosure, and shucked the individual drives to place them into the 8-bay enclosure without any issue, which cleaned things up very nicely.

I also made the conscious decision to not implement any RAID (and yes, the "I" stands for inexpensive). First of all, these are already backups of individual files stored on other Macs, so I'm OK with that - YMMV. Secondly, most of the files/assets are not all that valuable, and if I lose an entire disk, it wouldn't be the end of the world in any way. But this is me and my situation.

Another reason for not implementing RAID was power consumption and noise. I didn't want a whole array of disks spinning 24x7 when the usage pattern just didn't support that. A requirement was that the disks would spin down when not in use. Now, I'll admit I never found an answer on the NAS side for this, so it's possible that you can have RAID on a NAS that only spins up when someone is accessing files... but I never found any mention of that.

Now, if I want to convert to RAID at some point, I can still do so. But I haven't seen the need for it yet. But please, make your own considered decision on this. I do 3 2 1 but by spreading files around machines (so no lectures on backups please - not all retained data is valuable).

I also upgraded the network to 2.5G, and am set to go to 10G if needed.

Before I get into the benefits of this approach, I didn't/won't have to:

• Select a NAS vendor, which is not a clear-cut exercise as one can see in posts above
• Have a learning curve on a new NAS OS
• Move data (days? weeks?)
• Buy additional disks just for moving data (not insignificant in my case)
• Have spinning disks 24x7 (probably)
• Faff around with RAID levels and adding/removing disks

What did I get? A reasonably robust file server that I'm familiar with and is supported that covers pretty much everything the OP was looking for. Turn on file, media and screen sharing and you have a fairly formidable platform.

The screen sharing is an ace in the hole for MacOS - specifically, high performance screen sharing. For those that have used Remote Desktop on Windows, it's the same thing. Both the screen and audio are piped to the viewing Mac, and it works extremely well. You need AS Macs on both sides of the connection, but if you do, prepare yourself for a treat. Do note that only one person at a time can share the screen, but it brings you anything your server Mac can do right to your other Mac.

At the same time, the mini has an HDMI port so that gets connected to the 4k tv, and spare BT keyboard and trackpad complete the setup if I want to use it as a regular Mac.

Costs were fairly low for this; the 8-bay Thunderbolt enclosure was $750 and is both performant and solid physically. I did buy a m4 mini but didn't really need to, the m1 mini I had was sufficient. The disks I shucked. I have an external 2tb SSD on USB that stores my Photos library, which is shared via Home Sharing to AppleTVs.

Infuse handles the media side on ATVs and other Macs. I have not yet dipped my toes into *arr yet but that's probably coming. On the fence about Plex, as Infuse is working very well and not seeing a need for it, but as I understand it Plex will work with Infuse (yes I know Infuse is subscription and I hate those but it's working very well and I think there's a lifetime option which isn't all that expensive).

Frankly, things are working great, couldn't be happier. One thing the OP wanted that I haven't tried and am reluctant to do so is remote file access. It's a security hole I'm not going to open without good reason, and right now I don't have that reason.

A few things along the way:

• A minor nit, but just selecting "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" doesn't seem to work out of the box. I had to set the value via pmset a couple of times to get the disks to spin down, but we got there
• I love love love iStat menus for keeping an eye on my Macs and what they're up to, but in this case it was hitting the disks periodically and thus spinning them up. Even turning off all disk monitoring functions didn't help, so I got rid of it on the server entirely, which is sad, it's a great app and I have it on all my Macs
• The new m4 mini has HDMI CEC so it was turning on my TV when I didn't want it to. Fixed by a CEC blocker adapter
• While I could have the m4 server sleep altogether and wake it over the LAN, I decided the power draw was small enough to just leave it running. This also allows Photos to do photo analysis on the library whenever it sees fit.
• Also wake on lan related: on the m1 server I started with, with my upgrade of the network to 2.5G I used a USB ethernet adapter, and yep that doesn't work. It has to be directly attached via the ethernet port, so that nudged me toward adding the 10G option on the m4.

Overall I'd say DAS on Mac brings more benefits than many realize, and it can be economical and still performant with flexibility.

Sorry about the novel, I warned you!

My Synology will shut off the disks when not in use. In addition it's scheduled to shut off at night. And lastly, 5400RPM drives will give a reduced performance, but also less noise. I use a DS218j so with a single Gigabit interface I'm good to take that 5400RPM performance hit.

 

[nebo1ss]

Never owned a NAS before, but I'd like to fix that and I could use a little guidance. My intended uses:

• Plex Media Server
• Data backup/syncing (to replace Dropbox)
• Photo storage/backup/syncing (with good photo management, searching, browsing, etc)
• Remote File Access (from laptop or mobile device)
• Shared file access (from various computers of everyone in my family)

Not interested in building my own rig and I'd much rather buy something pre-built and ready to go out of the box, so I'm looking at something from Synology right now. The number of options are overwhelming, though.

I will be the only user, so it's unlikely that I'd be watching Plex, backing up data, and browsing photos simultaneously.

Having never used a NAS I don't know yet if I'll use it as a standalone device connected directly to an ethernet cable, or if I'll connect it to my Mac Studio desktop computer, which I typically leave on and running all the time.

My Spectrum internet service is 1 Gbps down, 40Mbps up. I currently use an Eero Pro 6e, which supports a maximum wired speed of 2.5 Gbps.

Any suggestions for a RAID 0 option from Synology? What about a RAID 5 option?

Not sure if there is any other relevant information that would be helpful, so let's start there. Any suggestions would be sincerely appreciated!

I have been using a Synology NAS for a number of years. Have pretty much the same type of requirement as you and also using Eero Pro 6E for networking with 3 units. I would recommend you connect the NAS as a stand alone device with an ethernet cable for the best flexibility. My unit is equipped with 4 disk drives and I run RAID 5.

 

[nebo1ss]

I am curious what is your use-case where you need 4x8TB drives with Thunderbolt interface. Networking your computers neuters your Thunderbolt speed though, so you're not any better off than a NAS. Plus, Thunderbolt drives use more energy and get insanely hot.

Personally, a Synology NAS is more power-efficient for large, shareable storage. You also get great apps to organize your photos, music, videos, DLNA/Plex server, Docker, and VMs too. My NAS is my personal cloud and the family's iPhones and Android automatically backs up their photos/videos directly to the NAS from anywhere in the world. I also record 7 surveillance cameras to my NAS and have a dedicated 10gbe connection between my DS1522+ and my main MacBook Pro, and 1gbe for all other networked devices. It is plenty fast enough to edit 4K video straight from the NAS and transfer speeds are blazing fast. My Thunderbolt 4 drive is faster, for sure, but the NAS offers a better balance of capacity, performance, resiliency, power efficiency, and expansion.

Exactly. The Apps are a great extra benefit to set up your personal cloud, organise phots etc etc.

 

[drrich2]

Question on noise. People planning a NAS have a choice; very expensive but silent SSDs vs. cheap but 'some noise' traditional hard disk drives. Let's say for sake of argument a 4-bay NAS with 2 to 4 disks in a RAID 1 configuration for mirroring, if that matters.

Given that NAS are often used for storage intensive functions (e.g.: backup more than one device in the home, large photo library server, etc...), and most people are budget conscious, I imagine the HDD path is more popular?

Which means some noise, but how much, how often, and how problematic is that?

Probably impossible to definitively answer; people vary in noise tolerance, how much background noise their workspace has for it to blend into vs. silent to make it stand out, etc... Which is frustrating, because this is important.

In the old days, I could tell when a desktop PC was on because of the steady fan noise that was just a part of computing. With Apple Silicone Macs, and especially the MacBook Airs (no fan!), users have gotten accustomed to mostly silence.

To further complicate things, for the best performance some on this thread recommend a direct ethernet cable connection from NAS to main Mac. Most homes aren't wired with ethernet cable through the walls. The contrary recommendation I've seen elsewhere for dealing with noise was to put it in a closet.

I suppose one could run an ethernet cable under the closet door and along the bottom edge of the wall around the room to the computer desk. A key advantage of ethernet is the option for fairly cheap, very long cables (try that with Thunderbolt!).

Any of you care to comment on your perception of the noise issue with HDD-equipped NAS units? Particularly in fairly quiet environments?

 

[ultratiem]

Having never used a NAS I don't know yet if I'll use it as a standalone device connected directly to an ethernet cable, or if I'll connect it to my Mac Studio desktop computer, which I typically leave on and running all the time.

Bro… sounds like you already have a NAS and just need to enable file sharing on your Studio and then get yourself an external storage bay lol.

The point of having a Network Attached Storage (NAS) is to have it working off your, cough, network. You tuck it away in a closet, never to look at it again.

It sounds like you don’t need one and just need more storage space. Also Synology has been steadily working itself into the ground if you’re dead set on a pre built. Be wary.