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Question NAS - Minimum requirements for read 4k movies

abuzed

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Aug 27, 2013
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Hello

I am looking for a new NAS that will be used to save my photos and used sometimes as a media server (4K eligible).
What I'm looking for is a 2-bay version (I have 2 unused 5 TB hard drives) that will be mounted in RAID 1.

I'm a little lost when I do my research on the Internet, some people talk about transcoding, some NAS have an HDMI port (must be 2.0 for 4k?), others people prefer used the DLNA (streaming ?)

I am looking for the most economical solution possible. Do you have any advice (HDMI vs DLNA), do you recommend a minimum of RAM or CPU?

Thank you in advance for your answers.
 
why raid? why not 1x5Tb disk for use, and 1x5TB disk for backup. Raid is about availability, uptime, can you afford to be without access whilst restoring from a backup? Remember with raid what happens to one disk happens to the other, virus? both gone, file corruption? both gone, ransomware? both gone, accidental deletion? both gone.

They are a perfect mirror with all of the bad consequences of that. You're also less exposed to the risks of a proprietary raid implementation and the issues you'd encounter if your NAS box died, can another box read your array (maybe not), likely they can read an individual disk though.
 
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why raid? why not 1x5Tb disk for use, and 1x5TB disk for backup. Raid is about availability, uptime, can you afford to be without access whilst restoring from a backup? Remember with raid what happens to one disk happens to the other, virus? both gone, file corruption? both gone, ransomware? both gone, accidental deletion? both gone.

They are a perfect mirror with all of the bad consequences of that. You're also less exposed to the risks of a proprietary raid implementation and the issues you'd encounter if your NAS box died, can another box read your array (maybe not), likely they can read an individual disk though.
You are absolutely right! Thank you for this pertinent remark that I will follow. Especially since a 1 bay case will be cheaper than 2, one more point.
 
As to 4k capability, it depends on your network speed and your encoding method. Is a gigabit network fast enough for your encoding? I know I can play netflix and amazon 4k over 100Mbit (my router only has 100Mbit out and a 35Mbit connection). But less encoded will need Gbe.
 
Check the Synology Website - I think they make the best ones and will do whatever you need it to do.
If you want to use DLNA they can do that, or you can buy one which does everything.
Generally if you use DLNA it will go through your computer for selecting things which reads it from the NAS and decodes using the computer, so the NAS is basically only storage, which are cheaper than ones that are needed to decode everything. Such as PLEX on your Computer will decode anything where as a cheaper NAS uses an ATOM cpu and may struggle, unless as stated is one that can stream
 
Synology will always get my vote, the entire system is great to use.
One of my systems I setup and get to use
RS2416+ with 8x6GB and 4x10GB (iirc) in RAID 10 which does DLNA into an i5 machine that runs Plex into 60 devices (tv/cinema)
Never had a problem with Synology, always up to date, great support as well.