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Which Synology NAS?

BJB Productions

BJB Productions

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 10, 2008
1,314
136
Hello! I run a small photography / video business out of my home. I've become increasingly interested in getting a NAS set up and then backing up to B2. I'm getting very confused about all the different models. Currently I only need to manage maybe 10-15TB of data. This will include archived projects, and also Time Machine backups.

- I'm currently looking at 64bit 4 bay enclosures
- I'm trying to not break the bank
- Some expandability and future proofing is good
- Which drives should I use?

Thank you
 
Really you should get the best one that you feel you can afford. I have a 5 bay one (DS 1511+ that I got back in 2011) because the 5 bay ones you can buy the expansion units for. So you can just buy a cheaper expansion unit and add more storage. Honestly unless you are transcoding a lot with it, the CPU won't make a whole lot of difference.

As far as drives. I really like the Western Digital 4 TB Red series. I started with the WD 3TB Red's, but have slowly started replacing them with the 4TB ones.

Remember if you are running a RAID array, you lose one drive. So if you have 4 4TB drives, that will only give you 12TB of space. Also remember while it is a backup for other data, a RAID array is not considered backups. So if the data on it is super important, consider using the built in online backup packages available on the NAS (but also remember those aren't free services).
 
gwilliams07 said:
Really you should get the best one that you feel you can afford. I have a 5 bay one (DS 1511+ that I got back in 2011) because the 5 bay ones you can buy the expansion units for. So you can just buy a cheaper expansion unit and add more storage. Honestly unless you are transcoding a lot with it, the CPU won't make a whole lot of difference.

As far as drives. I really like the Western Digital 4 TB Red series. I started with the WD 3TB Red's, but have slowly started replacing them with the 4TB ones.

Remember if you are running a RAID array, you lose one drive. So if you have 4 4TB drives, that will only give you 12TB of space. Also remember while it is a backup for other data, a RAID array is not considered backups. So if the data on it is super important, consider using the built in online backup packages available on the NAS (but also remember those aren't free services).
Click to expand...

Thanks. Yes, I was thinking of doing Backblaze B2. Then I don't even need to store all my data on the NAS. Or, I could just get a RAID from OWC and use Backblaze's backup service, but then all the data has to stay on my drive. Thoughts?
 
I don't have any experience with OWC, but looking at them, it looks like they are not really NAS's and more just external storage you plugin to a single machine. That is fine if you just have a single machine and don't mind plugging into it to keep your additional storage. Just remember 10-15 TB of data is a lot of data to store online and could cost a lot to store.

I'm a programmer, so I keep my Time Machine backups on it, but all code I do, gets checked into git repos that are online. I don't have to worry about trying to backup massive amounts of data online.
 
BJB Productions said:
Hello! I run a small photography / video business out of my home. I've become increasingly interested in getting a NAS set up and then backing up to B2. I'm getting very confused about all the different models. Currently I only need to manage maybe 10-15TB of data. This will include archived projects, and also Time Machine backups.

- I'm currently looking at 64bit 4 bay enclosures
- I'm trying to not break the bank
- Some expandability and future proofing is good
- Which drives should I use?

Thank you
Click to expand...
I went with a ds1815+ 8 bay NAS as it meant I could run 2 disk redundancy and also add an SSD cache (which uses 2 slots). I use WD Red disks in mine

I also upgraded it to 16gb ram and I have been very, very pleased with it - it just sits there and quietly goes about its business (which for me is a git server, Plex server, VPN server and also a lightweight windows VM along with the normal NAS stuff)
 
Phil A. said:
I went with a ds1815+ 8 bay NAS as it meant I could run 2 disk redundancy and also add an SSD cache (which uses 2 slots). I use WD Red disks in mine

I also upgraded it to 16gb ram and I have been very, very pleased with it - it just sits there and quietly goes about its business :)
Click to expand...
How do you back it up?
 
I might be in a similar situation to you - I run a small photography / video studio in Hong Kong with my partner and better half. She handles creative while I do the production / business side of things. We're both the lead photographers in our studio and we employ two full time staff and anywhere between 4-10 freelancers depending on the size of the job.

With this in mind, we churn through anywhere between 5Tb to 20Tb in a year's worth of raw photography files (this year will be a big one). I've posted our studio workflow in this thread here in case you're interested but in terms of Synology NAS setups, we are fairly small fry. We aren't shooting the Queen's jewels or anything ultra-valuable like that and (touch wood) we haven't suffered any large data losses yet. So all of this means that we do have to watch what we spend our money on.

I own three Synology units - I would say they are at best the consumer level choices though:
  • Synology DS416Play (4x 8Tb WD Red in SHR RAID setup)
  • Synology DS414j (4x 8Tb WD Red in SHR RAID setup)
  • Synology DS214Play (2x 4Tb WD Red in SHR - soon to be RAID 0) at home as a media server into a Samsung 50" smart TV
Once we start shooting more video, I can see us needing something with more bays and power. Right now, all of our studio computers connect to the servers via a a 10-port gigabit switch that is connected over LAN to a n Asus AC3200 office router.

We also have an Orico 4-bay USB3.0 SATA HDD enclosure with a random assortment of 3.5" and 2.5" HDDs from before 2014 that is connected to only one computer at a time via USB, though this is more for accessing random old personal files from way back when.

Word of advice: that 10-15Tb "only ever need to" is going to grow fast - depending on your workrate and throughput. We started off with a 12Tb DS414j four years ago thinking it would 'be enough' - how wrong we were! I'm already beginning to wish I had purchased an 8-bay NAS with 12Tb drives in it and I'm looking at 17.88Tb available space on our DS416Play!
 
For starting out I selected the D216j with 2 4TB Red drives. It works just fine for what I need it for. Backups are manual after I add files to the NAS and are stored on external hard drives for quick bug out scenarios. However, I am going to look at the G Suite from Google. It could be what I'm looking for and allow access anywhere. Price will be the factor there.
 
As an addition to my post above, I would wholeheartedly recommend Synology for small office work usage. However, for home media usage, I've had issues with subtitles not displaying correctly and would probably go for QNap at home in future - the added HDMI out is a massive advantage.
 
pixelatedscraps said:
I might be in a similar situation to you - I run a small photography / video studio in Hong Kong with my partner and better half. She handles creative while I do the production / business side of things. We're both the lead photographers in our studio and we employ two full time staff and anywhere between 4-10 freelancers depending on the size of the job.

With this in mind, we churn through anywhere between 5Tb to 20Tb in a year's worth of raw photography files (this year will be a big one). I've posted our studio workflow in this thread here in case you're interested but in terms of Synology NAS setups, we are fairly small fry. We aren't shooting the Queen's jewels or anything ultra-valuable like that and (touch wood) we haven't suffered any large data losses yet. So all of this means that we do have to watch what we spend our money on.

I own three Synology units - I would say they are at best the consumer level choices though:
  • Synology DS416Play (4x 8Tb WD Red in SHR RAID setup)
  • Synology DS414j (4x 8Tb WD Red in SHR RAID setup)
  • Synology DS214Play (2x 4Tb WD Red in SHR - soon to be RAID 0) at home as a media server into a Samsung 50" smart TV
Once we start shooting more video, I can see us needing something with more bays and power. Right now, all of our studio computers connect to the servers via a a 10-port gigabit switch that is connected over LAN to a n Asus AC3200 office router.

We also have an Orico 4-bay USB3.0 SATA HDD enclosure with a random assortment of 3.5" and 2.5" HDDs from before 2014 that is connected to only one computer at a time via USB, though this is more for accessing random old personal files from way back when.

Word of advice: that 10-15Tb "only ever need to" is going to grow fast - depending on your workrate and throughput. We started off with a 12Tb DS414j four years ago thinking it would 'be enough' - how wrong we were! I'm already beginning to wish I had purchased an 8-bay NAS with 12Tb drives in it and I'm looking at 17.88Tb available space on our DS416Play!
Click to expand...
Have you ever considered storing your media in the cloud with a service similar to B2? This allows you to stop stacking up tons of media in house.
 
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