To NAS or not to NAS?

[sam9s]

Congratts on your new purchase.. keep sharing how you will setup your NAS and welcome to synology club ...

 

[kmathan88]

Congratts on your new purchase.. keep sharing how you will setup your NAS and welcome to synology club ...

Finally received DS218+, initial impression is good. Tested it with direct connection to laptop.

Router which I am using don't have LAN option. Not sure how to bridge laptop wifi and ethernet. Waiting for this router to test more.

Ordered 4GB RAM as well.

 

[saketb]

I've always given a thought of having a Synology NAS but had already bought Netgear ReadyNAS beforehand. May I know the cost involved in having the Synology and warranty details and others if any. Warranty is important as I had an issue with my ReadyNAS which had developed a fan issue and it stopped working which shot up the temps too high and frooze, and when I claimed I got a new unit imported from Austria after 10 days. This was two years back.

I'm aware that one cannot compare the two because Synology is totally a different beast. Now I feel the need for a faster device as I've more users using simultaneously and need more power to drive it. Let me know the details. Thanks.

 

[kmathan88]

I've always given a thought of having a Synology NAS but had already bought Netgear ReadyNAS beforehand. May I know the cost involved in having the Synology and warranty details and others if any. Warranty is important as I had an issue with my ReadyNAS which had developed a fan issue and it stopped working which shot up the temps too high and frooze, and when I claimed I got a new unit imported from Austria after 10 days. This was two years back.

I'm aware that one cannot compare the two because Synology is totally a different beast. Now I feel the need for a faster device as I've more users using simultaneously and need more power to drive it. Let me know the details. Thanks.

I got 218+ from amazon.com, 298$, Crucial 4GB Single DDR3 for 45$ and WD 4TB Red drive for 125$

218+ comes with 2 years warranty (US only). 718+ and 918+ comes with 3 years warranty.

 

[sam9s]

I've always given a thought of having a Synology NAS but had already bought Netgear ReadyNAS beforehand. May I know the cost involved in having the Synology and warranty details and others if any. Warranty is important as I had an issue with my ReadyNAS which had developed a fan issue and it stopped working which shot up the temps too high and frooze, and when I claimed I got a new unit imported from Austria after 10 days. This was two years back.

I'm aware that one cannot compare the two because Synology is totally a different beast. Now I feel the need for a faster device as I've more users using simultaneously and need more power to drive it. Let me know the details. Thanks.

Warrenty is there if you purchase, from official India dealers like sound by design (gurgaon), or Amazon .in. If you get it imported from amazon.com or hand carry from US, ofcourse the warrenty will not be there.

 

[saketb]

Thanks for the replies. Will look at options and update accordingly.

 

[kmathan88]

So far the NAS is performing well. I leave it On from 6pm to 6am. It does go into power saving mode when there is no activity.
Synced my Google Drive (+Photos), around 80GB it downloaded. Photos and Moments take hit on the CPU (100% usage, RAM is less than 2GB used), and it is only for the very first time. I uninstalled photos and started using Moments alone. Once data is indexed, CPU was back to normal.

Tested video station with just one movie and couple of YouTube downloaded videos. Tried playing on mobile app, chromecast and browser, CPU is performing well. Mobile DS Video app is good. Hope I can stay away from Plex for now.

Download station is very good. Tried YouTube videos and it is brilliant. Android app is good.
At times, looking at the usage, I really wanted the Quad core CPU models (718+ or 918+), but way expensive for my usage.
Once the setting up is done, I don't think the CPU will be used that much Or I can schedule the activity over night when the usage is less.

Definitely there is a learning curve with DSM. Lot to explore.

 

[Rjoshi]

So far the NAS is performing well. I leave it On from 6pm to 6am. It does go into power saving mode when there is no activity.
Synced my Google Drive (+Photos), around 80GB it downloaded. Photos and Moments take hit on the CPU (100% usage, RAM is less than 2GB used), and it is only for the very first time. I uninstalled photos and started using Moments alone. Once data is indexed, CPU was back to normal.

Tested video station with just one movie and couple of YouTube downloaded videos. Tried playing on mobile app, chromecast and browser, CPU is performing well. Mobile DS Video app is good. Hope I can stay away from Plex for now.

Download station is very good. Tried YouTube videos and it is brilliant. Android app is good.
At times, looking at the usage, I really wanted the Quad core CPU models (718+ or 918+), but way expensive for my usage.
Once the setting up is done, I don't think the CPU will be used that much Or I can schedule the activity over night when the usage is less.

Definitely there is a learning curve with DSM. Lot to explore.

DS Video may be making thumbnails of every media (Plex does). That takes up a lot of cpu power. Disable it as you won't need the thumbnails anyway.
Use the DS photo to directly sync all your phone Photos to the NAS. PCs & laptops work on 2 way sync so you can backup & work from any device and it auto syncs.

 

[kmathan88]

I will be setting up my NAS next week. Plan is to have all media files moved to NAS and run Video station for streaming to Fire TV stick, Chromecast, ..
And map the same media folder to Nvidia Shield and run plex server / kodi. So I get best of both, Video Station in Synology and Plex server in Nvidia Shield. Emby is also a good option I believe. Please comment.
Also I will be recording stream from 1 Amcrest IP camera either at 1080 or 2K.

I have a spare 64GB SSD (Sata 2, 5+ years old drive) which I can connect to Nvidia Shield for Plex database or store some frequently used media.
Or I can use it as 2nd drive in NAS. Open for suggestion.

 

[sam9s]

I hated EMBY is all I can say. Plex server is the way to go, for me always.

 

[kmathan88]

I hated EMBY is all I can say. Plex server is the way to go, for me always.

Needed some help.

I setup plex server in Nvidia Shield 16GB (with 120GB SSD configured as internal storage) and all media files stored in Synology 218+. Direct play on shield works great and no issues in that. But when I try streaming in fire tv stick or android phone (S7 samsung), it stutters a lot. Not usable. I am doing something wrong with the plex configuration ?

NAS and Nvidia Shield is connected via 8 port 10/100 switch and then to Google Wifi. Network is slow ? Should I consider getting a Gigabit switch ?
Media I am trying to stream is usually 15+ GB mkv Atmos files.

Or should I consider moving Plex server to Synology 218+ ? DS station seems to play fine but with ac3 audio.

 

[sam9s]

No 10/100 is more than sufficient to play any ISO. But fire stick is using wifi I believe and that might be the culprit if too high bitrate file is being played, unless its wifi AC.

dont move the server shield is more than capable to transcode all types of files .....

 

[kmathan88]

No 10/100 is more than sufficient to play any ISO. But fire stick is using wifi I believe and that might be the culprit if too high bitrate file is being played, unless its wifi AC.

dont move the server shield is more than capable to transcode all types of files .....

Issue is only when streaming with TrueHD audio (7.1). If I switch to 5.1 in audio option, streaming is smooth. For now, I am using direct play in both fire tv stick and mobile. I will stay with Nvidia Shield for plex server.

 

[sam9s]

true hd should not be a problem...... whats the bitrate of the file you are playing ...... play any 5.1 file with same or more bitrate than that of that trueHD file and see what happenes ....

 

[kmathan88]

true hd should not be a problem...... whats the bitrate of the file you are playing ...... play any 5.1 file with same or more bitrate than that of that trueHD file and see what happenes ....

I am yet to check the bit rate. For now my usage shifted to Nvidia shield in living room tv and Chrome browser (office laptop) for media streaming.

Exploring synology dockers. Running PlexPy (I am a fan of trakt).
Still using quick connect, port forwarding is giving issues.
Working on Home Assistant and PiHole as well.

 

[kmathan88]

@sam9s

Need some suggestion on useful dockers for Synology home use.
For now running PlexPy, PiHole, HomeAssistant and MQTT. (Still configuring mqtt to use Smartthings)
Got Static IP for ACT and configured VPN Server - L2TP/IPSec. Yet to try OpenVPN.
Planning to try FTP and WebDAV Server.

Looking for something similar to Domotz Network Monitoring. Something for home use / free. Any suggestion ?

 

[kmathan88]

Any suggestion / inputs on synology docker ?

Update: Configured OpenVPN. But for some reason L2TP/IPSec seems faster.

 

[sam9s]

I didnt enjoy, I dont know why, I still prefer VMs

 

[huansweet]

good question
I think a WDTV media player and the Oppo will give out the same kind of video/audio playback. The only difference is that the Oppo that you are referring to does much more functionalities compared to the WD like the disc playback, 2 channel analog out, 7.1 channel out etc. But when it comes to the picture and audio quality both of them will be same as your going to take out the output using the HDMI port which is digital unlike USB where the issues like jitter, power etc crop in. But I think these issues does not effect HDMI standards.

 

[huansweet]

good question
I think a WDTV media player and the Oppo will give out the same kind of video/audio playback. The only difference is that the Oppo that you are referring to does much more functionalities compared to the WD like the disc playback, 2 channel analog out, 7.1 channel out etc. But when it comes to the picture and audio quality both of them will be same as your going to take out the output using the HDMI port which is digital unlike USB where the issues like jitter, power etc crop in. But I think these issues does not effect HDMI standards.

I downloaded many movies to my computer (yeah, I am a movie fanatic), maybe the movies are too much that the hard drive capacity of my computer is not enough, but I don’t want to delete any one of them. Some movies are in MP4 format, is there any MP4 to DVD converter recommended? I think it will be wonderful to burn my loving movies to disc for storage.