Thread: Which NAS should I choose?

Hi guys,


It's just sorta a general wondering, so recently I've been thinking about purchasing a NAS for audio storage and stuff, I used to just simply store music with USB, but I read some articles about NAS, it seems to me that most audiophiles possess one to cooperate with their Hi-Fi gear at home, so maybe it does help further improve the sound quality(?


As you all may know, there are several brands of NAS out there, which one is the best fit for me as a NAS newbie haha? Synology and QNAP are quite popular I suppose, but what about others, what's the difference?


If you can also kindly share what's your system(like what device you use to connect to NAS) with me, that'd certainly be a great reference to me then.


Best,

Not sure a NAS is going to improve the sound quality but there are other benefits in any case. Having a safe(r) copy of your music files in a centrally accessible location (for access from any device - eg computer or streamer - on your network) among them.

Synology and QNAP are both good choices. In general I find NAS to be a pain in the butt, just a semi-necessary one.

I currently have two NAS (in the process of replacing an older Synology with a QNAP). I use it to back up all my important files, including my music collection. I do run Minimserver on the NAS that allows streamers to use the NAS/Minimserver as your music library, but I primarily use a proprietary NAS-like storage device to serve my music.

The way to pick will be based on features and price. If you stick to the two mentioned brands, start with your budget and your space needs (in TB).

Both manufacturers offer "find the right NAS" things on their websites. Try that or just browse their sites.

Once you know how much space you need, look then for features like how many drives are on the NAS. You want one with 2 minimum (of the same exact type and size), which you will "mirror" or set up as "RAID 1". This makes the 2nd hard drive an exact copy of the first, so if something went wrong with the first, you still have a copy of all your files. If you get a NAS with 3 or more drives you may be able to use something called "RAID 5" which also provides you the ability to have any one of the drives go wrong, and still have all your files from the 2 (or more) remaining drives. With RAID5 you give up a little storage capacity to have the benefit of that protection. I won't bore you with the details of how to calculate that, but think of it as giving up the capacity of one of the drives (called the "parity drive"). So if you have 3, you give up 1 and have 2/3 total "usable" capacity. In terms of storage efficiency, RAID5 is more efficient than RAID1, cause in RAID1 you always lose half your capacity, where-as in RAID5 you lose just the one drive worth. In RAID5 losing more than 1 drive means you lose your data, unless you have the ability to have more than one parity drive. More than 1 parity drive is probably unusual in a home NAS, so, have a separate backup copy of everything on your NAS, imo.

Another nice feature is "hot-pluggable" which means you can swap out a bad drive easily if that ever happens. Other features like faster processors (CPU), more memory/RAM, cache RAM, are all things where "more is better" up to the point of your budget.

One last word of advice: although it's usually an offered feature I do not recommend you allow access to your NAS from outside of your home network (sometimes called something like "personal cloud" or similar).

Thanks for the information pal, also one of my concerns is that the execution might be a bit difficult to me haha

Originally Posted by jmusica

Not sure a NAS is going to improve the sound quality but there are other benefits in any case. Having a safe(r) copy of your music files in a centrally accessible location (for access from any device - eg computer or streamer - on your network) among them.

Synology and QNAP are both good choices. In general I find NAS to be a pain in the butt, just a semi-necessary one.

The way to pick which will be based on features and price. If you stick to the two mentioned brands, start with your budget and your space needs (in TB).

Both manufacturers offer "find the right NAS" things on their websites. Try that or just browse their sites.

Once you know how much space you need, look then for features like how many drives are on the NAS. You want one with 2 minimum (of the same exact type and size), which you will "mirror" or set up as "RAID 1". This makes the 2nd hard drive an exact copy of the first, so if something went wrong with the first, you still have a copy of all your files. If you get a NAS with 3 or more drives you may be able to use something called "RAID 5" which also provides you the ability to have any one of the drives go wrong, and still have all your files from the 2 (or more) remaining drives. With RAID5 you give up a little storage capacity to have the benefit of that protection. I won't bore you with the details of how to calculate that, but think of it as giving up the capacity of one of the drives. So if you have 3, you give up 1 and have 2/3 total "usable" capacity.

Another nice feature is "hot-pluggable" which means you can swap out a bad drive easily if that ever happens. Other features like faster processors (CPU), more memory/RAM, cache RAM, are all things where "more is better" up to the point of your budget.

One last word of advice: although it's usually an offered feature I do not recommend you allow access to your NAS from outside of your home network (sometimes called something like "personal cloud" or similar).

Niceee, it seems like you're definitely an experienced audiophile haha, I recently purchased a Silent Angel M1T though, it's Roon Ready certified, so it's supposed to be good and working with NAS smoothly, cuz it got GbE Ethernet interface and stuff, how big the storage does your Synology NAS have?

Originally Posted by preston8452

Thanks for the information pal, also one of my concerns is that the execution might be a bit difficult to me haha

The interface does suck a bit but it's do-able with some patience. I probably made it sound more intimidating than it really is. All that RAID stuff is usually just a selection in the setup wizard ie "what RAID do you want--- 1, 5, etc". Once the choice is made the NAS takes care of setting it up right, and to you it just appears to be "one hard drive". You can probably get some Geek Squad help etc.

What are you looking to use the NAS for? Are you wanting to use it as a music server? If so, how?

If it's just for networked storage, it hardly matters. I've owned Synology and QNAP nas boxes, and used both as network music servers running Asset server or MinimServer. I no longer use them that way, and now for just networked file storage use a WD MyCloud.

I think I'd just simply use as a music storage for now, I'm not sure if it could perform as a dedicated as a music server or something, given I'm pretty sure it wasn't built to fulfill that purpose haha, so I may just connect the NAS to my recently-bought M1T, and see how it goes and the difference between USB storage though.

Originally Posted by preston8452

Synology and QNAP are quite popular I suppose, but what about others, what's the difference?

Do not buy anything other than Synology and QNAP.

QNAP may have better cost / performance for some models, but have recently been hit with ransomware several times.

We use Synology, in part because ioSafe is also based on Synology.

The Synology setup wizard is pretty easy, especially if you don't need to do anything more than store files. There are music and media server packages that can be installed from the package manager, like MinimServer or Plex. Some more complex things you might want to modify from default are around security or user accounts, but if you don't have any particular concerns in your environment then leaving it with the defaults should be fine.

If you want to make things easier for you moving forward, purchase enough hard disk capacity so you won't run out of space for the foreseeable future. Replacing a one of the multiple drives in the NAS with a larger one is generally a smooth process, but doing a migration to a new NAS enclosure can sometimes be tricky, depending on the old and new models. Also, I recommend using enterprise storage drives, like Seagate IronWolf or Western Digital Ultrastar or Red Pro.