Which NAS do list members prefer?

[SeeMoreDigital]

As I guessed might happen, Radxa has just released a new Penta SATA Hat that can be used on their Rock Pi 4 and Rock Pi 5, and on a Raspberry Pi 5. This provides 4 conventional SATA connectors (including power), plus an eSATA connector, all running off of the M.2 PCIe available on those various SBCs. See Penta SATA Hat. $49.

Oh wow... So in theory I could run 4no 2.5" USB connected HDD's and 5no 2.5" SATA HDD's at the same time!

Out of interest... What file systems are supported? Currently all my 2.5" USB connected HDD's are formatted to NTFS. This is useful because I often unplug them from my Synology NAS and plug them into other devices USB ports, such as TV's, my OPPO's and my Windows computers (to transfer media files more quickly).

Cheers

 

[zdjh22]

Oh wow... So in theory I could run 4no 2.5" USB connected HDD's and 5no 2.5" SATA HDD's at the same time!

Out of interest... What file systems are supported? Currently all my 2.5" USB connected HDD's are formatted to NTFS. This is useful because I often unplug them from my Synology NAS and plug them into other devices USB ports, such as TV's, my OPPO's and my Windows computers (to transfer media files more quickly).

Cheers

Yes, you could connect 4 disks via USB and 5 via SATA (4 internal-style SATA + 1 eSATA). I've never used more than 1 USB disk but there should be no issue with 4.

The supported SBCs all run Linux (various options available), so really whatever file system you like that Linux supports (nearly all) is available, including NTFS if you interchange with Windows. I use ZFS across 5 disks, although on my music NAS the 5th large disk is partitioned with 1 partition for ZFS and the other for XFS (where I store my stereo FLACs and Apple Music+TV library).

 

[atrocity]

Agreed, they should provide links. Allnet does sell suitable supplies. On one of my NAS boxes using this hat (the prior version), I used a SATA chassis which had a conventional PC power supply with ATX connectors, and I plugged one of those directly into the hat to power the SBC and the drives. The other 4 units all used one of the SATA RAID kits from Allnet, which included this 12V DC power supply (Allnet 12V DC supply) which plugs into the Rock Pi 4 and Rock Pi 5 board female barrel connector jack (EDIT - oops, after checking, this plugs into a female barrel connector on the hat). I’m not sure about power options for the RPI 5 - I assume like prior RPI’s you can power via the connectors on a hat, so the ATX or 12V barrel options should work there.

This would really, really simplify my backups...I'd save shelf space and outlets...

 

[zdjh22]

Oh wow... So in theory I could run 4no 2.5" USB connected HDD's and 5no 2.5" SATA HDD's at the same time!

I neglected to note that with SATA (with power) extension cables you can, as I have done, connect 3.5” SATA drives. That’s handy if you want very large capacity drives or drives that are non-SMR (and so have much higher write performance). OTOH if you just want to stack 4 drives on top of the SATA hat you’d need to use 2.5” drives, and you’d need to make sure they are thin enough. I wouldn’t recommend doing that without thinking about cooling (for spinning disks, that is - SSD would be OK).

If you can get your hands on an old multi-disk PC chassis with hot swap bays pretty much all you need are the SATA extension cables and an eSATA to SATA cable. The SBC and SATA hat are tiny and can be stashed away in a spare corner of the chassis (or you can probably figure out how to mount them so that you have easy access to the 4 USB ports for the other 4 disks). The aggregate read/write throughput will be better with the 5 SATA ports (which share 2 PCIe lanes) than with the 4 USB ports (which likely share a single PCIe lane with the network).

 

[svengaleekie]

I don't really know where to put this post, but I'll try here, it seems vaguely relevant, I have recently acquired a Synology DS215J NAS to replace a D-Link which started to play up (caused the whole internet to slow down).
I have in it 1TB & a 2TB drives a default "music" folder is created (also "photo" & "video"), it seems to have been created on the smaller drive which is not big enough for all my music files, surround included, only files in that folder are seen by my Blu-ray players. I can't work out how to get that folder on to the bigger drive. Does anyone know?

 

[esimms86]

I don't really know where to put this post, but I'll try here, it seems vaguely relevant, I have recently acquired a Synology DS215J NAS to replace a D-Link which started to play up (caused the whole internet to slow down).
I have in it 1TB & a 2TB drives a default "music" folder is created (also "photo" & "video"), it seems to have been created on the smaller drive which is not big enough for all my music files, surround included, only files in that folder are seen by my Blu-ray players. I can't work out how to get that folder on to the bigger drive. Does anyone know?

I use a ChinOPPO 203 which is a Chinese knockoff of an OPPO 203 Blu Ray player without the disc drawer. I use it to access .iso, .mp4 and .mkv files on the video folder of my Synology NAS drive for playback on my system. I enjoy accessing the menus from the DVD.iso and SACD.iso files on my flat screen TV. I have red book stereo and multichannel FLAC files in the music folder. The ChinOPPO essentially functions in the place of a PC.

Otherwise, I should point out that external drives have significantly come down in price over the years. If you have the discretionary income I would suggest that you consider upgrading the internal drives in your NAS for more data storage.

 

[paligap]

I currently have a 12tb external drive connected to my Vero 4K+ via usb. Periodically, as I add music and video files to my PC in another room, I physically connect the external drive to my PC and use a program called SyncBackFree to add the new files and delete files that have been deleted on the PC.

This process has worked well enough, but I’ve often wondered if I could just play the files from my PC via my LAN. Part of what has prevented me from doing so is my rudimentary knowledge of Kodi and streaming files over a LAN. I tried a test where I allowed streaming in the Windows Media Player on my Windows 11 PC. I successfully played 5.1 FLAC files on two blu-ray players (Oppo 103D and Sony X-800) in two different A/V systems in my house, but I was less successful playing M4A (Atmos) files or MKV video files. That makes sense for the Sony because those file types are not supported, but I have played both file types on the Oppo before from a usb drive, so I don’t know why it won’t play them over the LAN.

I would like to be able to play all these files on both A/V systems. To do so, I assume I’d have to have a media player in each system that can play all those file types. I already have the Vero 4K+ in one system. In the other system, I have a Fire Stick 4K Max and a Windows 10 PC, either of which I could set up Kodi on. If I can’t get either of those to work, I might get another media player.

Another approach that might improve and/or simplify my streaming on the LAN is to set up a NAS. The drive where my audio and video files reside on my Windows 11 PC is a QNAP 2-bay external drive enclosure with two 12tb drives in a RAID1 configuration. I recently bought a QNAP TS-262. If I keep it and set it up, I would back up the existing folders and files on my QNAP DAS, remove the two drives, and use them in the NAS.

Another concern I have is that folder names and structures are slightly different on my DAS and on the drive I connect to the Vero 4K+, and I don’t know if one is better than the other. On my DAS:

*I don’t have any album folders in the 3.Atmos folder, although they’re labeled as “Atmos” in the 1.Surround folder. Would it help to move them to the Atmos folder?

On my external drive:

*The video folders are in a “Video” folder on my DAS. From Kodi’s point of view, is it better to group music folders in an overall Music folder and video folders in an overall Video folder, or leave them separate?

 

[HomerJAU]

I would like to be able to play all these files on both A/V systems. To do so, I assume I’d have to have a media player in each system that can play all those file types

Yes. You can play all the files from a NAS on any of your media players with Kodi. Of course you can also play them from your PC. No need to create a stream. Kodi will read the files directly off your NAS once you give permission for those devices to access the NAS.

For Kodi you will need separate root folders for music, concerts and/or music videos (and movies and TV Series) for it to organise its media databases.

With a NAS you should also set up a RAID to allow redundancy. One disc can fail in a RAID containing 3 discs and you won’t lose any data. If you use a Synology NAS that supports btfrs file systems the NAS will auto fix disc rot. (Recorded bits changing over time).

 

[paligap]

Yes. You can play all the files from a NAS on any of your media players with Kodi. Of course you can also play them from your PC. No need to create a stream. Kodi will read the files directly off your NAS once you give permission for those devices to access the NAS.

For Kodi you will need separate root folders for music, concerts and/or music videos (and movies and TV Series) for it to organise its media databases.

With a NAS you should also set up a RAID to allow redundancy. One disc can fail in a RAID containing 3 discs and you won’t lose any data. If you use a Synology NAS that supports btfrs file systems the NAS will auto fix disc rot. (Recorded bits changing over time).

When you say I need separate root folders for music, concerts, and or videos would this structure that exists on my DAS work for Kodi:

*Everything below 3.Atmos are "working" folders. Do you recommend putting Atmos albums in a separate folder from surround albums?

Or would I have to structure it like the external drive I connect to the Vero:

I plan on using a RAID 1 on the NAS as I do on the DAS. Later, I might buy two more 12tb drives, put them in the DAS, connect it to the NAS, increase the pool (I think it's called) and configure as RAID 10.

 

[HomerJAU]

I think RAID 5 (3 discs) is the sweet spot with 33% of total disc capacity used for data redundancy and 67% usable storage. So 3 x 10TB drives gives you the equivalent of 2 usable drives. Also RAID 5 gives auto disc rot protection but RAID 1 does not (when using btfrs file system on the drives). Hence my recommendation. I know you need 3 drives but you get more storage space.

For Kodi you can have as many ‘Sources’ as you like. I have one for ‘Atmos’ as I can create a menu node that shows only ‘Atmos’ albums. Save for Concerts, Surround, Quad, Upmixes and Stereo.

But you should keep working folders under another root folder as you don’t want Kodi using those.

I have two 8TB shares, one for music (audio only albums etc), the other for Concerts and Music Videos. My movies and TV series have multiple shared folders over twos NAS due to their file sizes. (a 4K UHD movie can get to over 90GB) and a TV series can be over 200G

 

[stoopid]

I work at a MSP and we have migrated to mostly Ubiquiti equipment (security/nvr, access controls, network and wireless) for our clients. They recently started selling a NAS, and if it's like any of their other solutions it's probably worthy of a closer look. They tend to be very price competitive at the tier of features, and work well with other brands/solutions and truly seamlessly with all of their own products. https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/unas-pro