NAS for Numpties

psybear

psybear

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Prompted by another thread on here about a HP Microserver, I've started researching a NAS for the home again. There's another recent thread here about other options to a NAS but I've just read it and only understand some of the technology and terminology.

I'm not a complete IT numpty - in my family circle I'm probably considered the most IT-savvy, but I'm not on the same scale as many others here.

I have my iMac (majority of my time spent on it and most of my photo-editing - amateur-level), MBP for travel, iPad. I understand torrents, streaming, and use a Chromecast. I used to build PCs back when it was cost effective to do so. I've never built or used a home server, I understand RAID arrays but have never used them.

I currently back up my iMac using Time Machine to an external Hard Drive. I've often thought that I should also be backing up elsewhere also. I have just under 20GB of free Dropbox space and use it all. There isn't enough room there to back up all my photo library (think it's about 130GB). I've considered paying for more Cloud space but then thought maybe I should get a NAS instead. In the end I've done nothing....

I'd also like to be able to access my LR catalogue from anywhere.

So - I've resolved to do something about it and I think a Synology NAS is probably the way forward, with a couple of 3TB drives - probably mirrored? I'm hoping that the software will make this easy because this is new territory for me. And I'm wondering should I go for 4TB drives instead since my HD on the iMac is 4TB....

I'd appreciate any 'plain language' advice here. I've read the reviews on Amazon about how easy the Synology is to set up, but the langauge used suggests that the folk finding it easy are operating at a far higher level of IT knowledge than I have.

And here's a real 'numpty' query - in reading NAS reviews I read about a Synology Air model that offered wireless.... I assumed that they were all wireless? If I installed a NAS I planned to stick it under the stairs and hard wire it to the mains and to the router - but I assumed that I could then access it wirelessly from anywhere in the house and obviously over the internet from elsewhere? Is this not the case?

Another numpty query - these are obviously left on 24/7 - would I notice much difference to my electricity bill or is it no different in terms of power usage to me leaving my iMac on almost permanently?

Appreciate any assistance - and remember - Keep it Simple for Stupid here. :-)
 
psybear said:
And here's a real 'numpty' query - in reading NAS reviews I read about a Synology Air model that offered wireless.... I assumed that they were all wireless? If I installed a NAS I planned to stick it under the stairs and hard wire it to the mains and to the router - but I assumed that I could then access it wirelessly from anywhere in the house and obviously over the internet from elsewhere? Is this not the case?
Click to expand...

correct, you can plug a NAS into your router and access it over wireless. this does not make it wireless persay. I suspect the Synology Air lets you connect it to the wireless without the need for cables to the router.

however accessing the NAS over wireless (at any point) is not going to be particularly fast, especially for editing. if possible a cable from NAS to router and router to computer (preferable over gigbit) would be preferable.
 
psybear said:
So - I've resolved to do something about it and I think a Synology NAS is probably the way forward, with a couple of 3TB drives - probably mirrored?
Click to expand...

depends how many bays the unit you want has, i wouldn't necessarily worry about going mirrored as you'll have a separate backup copy right?

psybear said:
I'd appreciate any 'plain language' advice here. I've read the reviews on Amazon about how easy the Synology is to set up,
Click to expand...

really easy, the setup wizard is really straight forward.
 
psybear said:
Another numpty query - these are obviously left on 24/7 - would I notice much difference to my electricity bill or is it no different in terms of power usage to me leaving my iMac on almost permanently
Click to expand...
A good question. If you buy a model that has a sleep mode, that will shut down fans and drives to silence, it's going to be more economical.

I asked a similar question on another thread, but got no reply. Ordering online, they don't often say. I've sent back a Zyxel NAS for not going to sleep, and it's one of my top requirements, so I bought a fanless WD NAS that I knew went cold and would wake on access.
 
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Really appreciate those responses Neil. And I hadn't thought of the lack of need for the RAID - I had thought of the 'wasted' money I'd already spent on an external HD for Time Machine, so getting only one drive for the NAS saves me the cost of one plus it means my previous expense isn't wasted after all! (y)
 
I've a DS215 Play. I don't know that it goes totally 'cold' but it certainly does go to sleep and needs to wake up when first accessed.
The Synology set up is very easy. If you have 2 drives it does default to mirroring them, but I think you could choose other options. I would think that as your photos are 130GB, then 3TB mirrored would be sufficient for now.
With regards to your external HDD, use it as an external backup drive for the NAS, and then store it off site (if you have 2 or more you can rotate them).
 
LC2 said:
I've a DS215 Play. I don't know that it goes totally 'cold' but it certainly does go to sleep and needs to wake up when first accessed.
The Synology set up is very easy. If you have 2 drives it does default to mirroring them, but I think you could choose other options. I would think that as your photos are 130GB, then 3TB mirrored would be sufficient for now.
With regards to your external HDD, use it as an external backup drive for the NAS, and then store it off site (if you have 2 or more you can rotate them).
Click to expand...

See now you've got me all in a dither again.... I didn't even know about the 'Play' variants until I read your post Tim. Is it definitely the DS215 Play you have as I can only find the DS214 Play listed. But it looks more home user friendly than the 'standard' variant, if considerably more expensive?
 
A NAS will add around £25-30 to your average electricity bill. Most NASes will allow you to shut them down/start them up on a schedule. Some support wake e-on-lan, which means you can turn them off and send a special kind of network packet to them in order to switch them back on. There are various utilities and apps that support the sending of W-o-L packets.

The key thing is that the disks spin down into stand-by mode when they aren't in use. This reduces the stand-by power consumption of the NAS considerably.

I have a DS211j which, I couldn't get the disks to spin down. Switching to a proper server, on which I installed linux, meant I could use a utility called hdparm to tweak my disks firmware. All the five HDDs in my server spin down after twenty minutes. The server uses a low powered SSD for the bood drive, which obviously doesn't spin down.

The HP Microserver is great value. You could always look at using it with Xpenology or FreeNAS - that latter of which I'm lead to believe is fairly trivial to set-up. At least for folk who can throw a computer together.
 
The figures for the DS215+ are:

20.77 W (Access)
8.96 W (HDD Hibernation)

In context Google suggests that a sky box uses between 20 and 40 W (some debate whether it actually has a low power standby).

I can tell you that in our 3 bed house with a large old plasma tv (and sky box) on most of the evening, dehumidifier running constant (old house gets damp) and my N40L (plus 4 bay DAS, backup drives, network kit running off it's smart ups 1500) its mid £40s/month.
 
psybear said:
See now you've got me all in a dither again.... I didn't even know about the 'Play' variants until I read your post Tim. Is it definitely the DS215 Play you have as I can only find the DS214 Play listed. But it looks more home user friendly than the 'standard' variant, if considerably more expensive?
Click to expand...
Just checked, it's a DS214 Play, not DS215
The names mean Disk Station 2 Bay 2014, so a DS215 would be this years model.

All varients run the same software as far as I know, the play version is significantly quicker (not that I utilise much of the aditional power).
 
It's quite easy to work out a rough energy consumption for always-on devices:

Find your energy suppliers electric tariff per kWh: £0.15
Divide by 1000 to get cost per watt of energy: £0.15/1000W = £0.00015
Always-on devices so times by 24 hours in day = £0.00015 * 24 = £0.0036
This is your cost per Watt, per day.

Now multiply by device draw, so NAS at 9W when hibernated = £0.0036 * 9 = 3p per day, or ~£12 per year.
 
LC2 said:
Just checked, it's a DS214 Play, not DS215
The names mean Disk Station 2 Bay 2014, so a DS215 would be this years model.

All varients run the same software as far as I know, the play version is significantly quicker (not that I utilise much of the aditional power).
Click to expand...

Thanks for that Tim.

Whilst I appreciate the advice on here regarding the great value represented by the microserver, I think a Synology NAS is the way to go for me, given my needs and most importantly my level of IT knowledge.

There is a significant price difference between the DS215j (at £129.99) ) and the DS214 Play at £240.95 . I also see that there is a DS215+ at £257.14. Basically I could get the DS215j model AND a 4TB drive for roughly the same cost of the 214Play or 215+ variants...

If the software is the same, then presumably it's the R/W speeds that are the significant difference - yet according to what's on Amazon, there's not a huge difference in this regard between the DS215j and the DS214Play, but a significant difference with the DS215+:

DS215j 111.41 MB/sec and writing over 87.49 MB/sec
DS214Play 111 MB/s Reading, 101 MB/s Writing
DS215+ 209.61 MB/s and 139.42 MB/s

Again remembering that this is a Numpty thread, when would I even notice these speed differences? Presumably all three are perfectly capable of streaming stored media to other devices? Or is there more likely to be buffering/lag with the slower 215j?
 
I thought that the major advantage of the Play versions was that they could do video transcoding in hardware.
 
@hollis_f is spot on. It's all to do with video transcoding. Now... I don't use it, but I believe it allows the NAS to convert videos to a format you can play on your other devices if the stored format isn't suitable.
The other big benefit of the play is the speed at which it creates all the thumbnails in the 'Photo Station' app. I can't see a way to permanently turn off the thumbnail creation, so the faster it completes it, the better.
 
LC2 said:
@hollis_f is spot on. It's all to do with video transcoding. Now... I don't use it, but I believe it allows the NAS to convert videos to a format you can play on your other devices if the stored format isn't suitable.
The other big benefit of the play is the speed at which it creates all the thumbnails in the 'Photo Station' app. I can't see a way to permanently turn off the thumbnail creation, so the faster it completes it, the better.
Click to expand...

Thanks for both those. And the thumbnail creation speed might make it worth for me on its own as I have a lot of images.
 
I have the DS214 and am very happy with it. I spent a long time comparing the various 2 bay models before I decided. You can compare the differences on the Synology website here https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/compare/DS215+/DS214/DS214play/DS215j

The play version has a better Intel CPU vs the Marvel CPU on the non-play version, which I believe is one of the main factors in thumbnail generation performance. I do find when I sync a load of RAW files to it, it will take a while to generate the thumbnails, and the NAS will be quite slow if I try to do anything else on it at the same time, but it's bearable. I personally wouldn't go for the budget 215j as it will be even slower (half the RAM as well).
 
Mark Ross said:
I have the DS214 and am very happy with it. I spent a long time comparing the various 2 bay models before I decided. You can compare the differences on the Synology website here https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/compare/DS215+/DS214/DS214play/DS215j

The play version has a better Intel CPU vs the Marvel CPU on the non-play version, which I believe is one of the main factors in thumbnail generation performance. I do find when I sync a load of RAW files to it, it will take a while to generate the thumbnails, and the NAS will be quite slow if I try to do anything else on it at the same time, but it's bearable. I personally wouldn't go for the budget 215j as it will be even slower (half the RAM as well).
Click to expand...

Damn, another model... I found that tool and have five models now spread across it (what you have above plus the 214se). I dod notice thought that only the budget 215j model has a low power mode!
 
psybear said:
I dod notice thought that only the budget 215j model has a low power mode!
Click to expand...

My DS214 goes to sleep when not in use (all the lights go off and the power button flashes slowly). I guess "low power mode" must be some other power saving feature, although not sure exactly what it does.
 
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