Question NAS or External Harddrive On Router

[daskuppler]

Hello Everyone,

I'm looking for options to condense my computer storage and make it more accessible for the entire household. I have an Asus AX58u for your router and have several devices connected to it wired and through WiFi. Everything on WiFi utilizes WiFi 6, all older devices are hardwired. I'm looking for at least 12TB of storage for music, pictures, and media streaming over the network. My understanding is that the Asus router allows an external drive to be setup as a cloud server as well. 99% of the time there would never be more than one device streaming a movie or music from the network storage. Would an external hard drive be able to handle this or would it be too slow to play a 1080p movie over the network? Or would a NAS be a better option?

Cheers,
Andrew

 

[USAFRet]

NAS, no question.
The external drive on a router....the router has a minimal brain to deal with this.

A NAS hardwired directly to the router can easily deal with multiple simultaneous users.

 

[daskuppler]

Is there an NAS you would recommend? Something relatively affordable.

 

[kanewolf]

Is there an NAS you would recommend? Something relatively affordable.

The "j" series of Synology are the entry level. Like the DS220j -- https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS220j
Synology, QNAP, Thecus are the "big three" for small commercial NAS. Asustor would be #4. The software suite is as important as the hardware. All four of the companies listed have "demo" versions of their software that you can play with via their websites.

 

[USAFRet]

Is there an NAS you would recommend? Something relatively affordable.

Depends on your level of "affordable", and space needs.

I have a 4 bay QNAP, TS-453A. Was about $450 when I bought it 4 years ago. Then, fill it whatever drives.
As noted above, the applications are at least as valuable as the hardware.

These things are very feature rich and stable.
Mine has been in 24/7 operation since Jan 2017. Only time it is OFF is if I'm on vacation or similar.

It houses my movie and music libs, nightly or weekly backups from all the house PC's, 24/7 recording from 2 of the house security cameras...