Hello everyone,
I have an old single-bay Synology DS115j with an HDD running in it which I bought back in like 2015.
I use it mainly to store TV shows/movies which I then share out on a folder to access from devices on my local network (PC, laptop, TV, etc.) or to backup random documents/files.
After many years of service I noticed it starting to make a disconcerting buzzing noise and I'm starting to think it may fail within the next year or two.
Some options I was thinking to myself:
Option 1: Buy another Synology NAS enclosure as a replacement, going with a Synology DS223J 2-Bay with 2 SSD's. Pricey option but should last me another decade along with the added redundancy of being 2 bays.
Option 2: Buy a 2-bay NAS enclosure with SSD's as a replacement but go with another company rather than Synology. Is there any other brands for NAS enclosures other than Synology that are suggested? I'm not looking for anything fancy so if there is something out there simple, reliable, and cheaper than Synology I might go that direction.
Option 3: Cheaper option, keep my old Synology one-bay and swap out the old HDD with a new SSD. Having an SSD in there should give it a few more years of life since SSD's have a much lower failure rate.
Option 4: Something I haven't thought of yet?
Would be great to hear what your guys thoughts are, thanks!
Synology is still a great option if you want plug-and-play not worry about it type hardware and service. I would just get another one if I were you. If you are trying to eek more life out of your current setup, I agree replace the hard drive and see if the noise goes away.
I also bought a Synology DS115j in 2015. About a year ago, I replaced it with a DS220+ (the predecessor model to the current 224+) with old-fashioned HDD's. I also looked at QNAP and at turning an old PC into a NAS before deciding that I'd liked my Synology NAS enough to buy another.
I went with a "plus" model because a) I wanted to try out self-hosting services via Docker packages, and b) the 115J always seemed to be pushing its CPU and RAM close to the limit and I wanted something with some headroom.
The 115j is old enough that Synology's data migration tool doesn't run on it. I ended up using the Hyper Backup method to move data and settings, which took a while but worked well.
My understanding is that SSDs would be bottlenecked by a gigabit Ethernet connection, so putting them in a 223j would give you a silent NAS but no better performance than HDDs.
I have a Synology DS223j. It was my first foray into a NAS. It's pretty underpowered to host Docker images. Learned that the hard way. It's great for files. I like the software and the interface. At 2 drives, I should have bought bigger drives to start out (2x8TB currently).
I recently converted my old gaming PC into a Proxmox server and went with TrueNAS Core with 4x8TB drives on the secondary controller. It's not a huge amount of space, as the drives were small, but I can always swap out one at a time and expand down the road. This is the setup I should have done in the first place, but I went with an out of the box solution at first due to lack of knowledge and laziness...
You could also go Scale, but I found the base CPU usage is higher on Scale than Proxmox running a Core VM.
Note to all, don't pass though both SATA controllers if your Proxmox is installed on a drive connected to one of them. Oops
ClockworkHouse: He means the comic The Dark Knight Returns, where Batman and Superman get in a fistfight over Gotham. Not The Dark Knight Rises, where Batman and a loudly farting orchestra get in a fistfight over your attention.
As a weird alternative. I went with this for my home server/storage running UnRaid.
https://www.amazon.com/MINISFORUM-UN...
I didn't get that exact one, but similar. It's a mini pc with an n305 processor. I use it for hosting all of my media, running jellyfin, sonarr, radarr, all of the r's. It's pretty great. It's strong enough to do transcoding without any delay. It was only about $250. Mine came with one M.2 slot and an extra SATA connector. So I have it running 2 drives at the moment. If I decide I need more space, I'll pop in a usb 3.2 enclosure to it.
I also have ran a few game servers on it at the same time. Enshrouded, Palworld, etc, all running in docker containers. No issues with a handful of people on them.
What I liked, extremely low power consumption.
I'm planning to go down the NAS route, primarily for storage (photos, video etc) and backup.
Current options are
Synology DS-224+
QNAP TS-262
Terramaster F2-423
Has anyone in the hive mind got any good or bad experiences with these ?
I'm currently leaning towards the QNAP based on the DS-224 having older hardware and no expansion capability, but am stuck for choice - it almost sounds like my best bet would be QNAP hardware with Synology software, which is obviously not going to happen.
"Suburbia holds more than you'd care for" - Mark E. Smith