Hello, not sure how on-topic is this, but I'll ask anyway. Since I'm wrapping my head around this topic for long time to no avail.
I'm planning to buy NAS mostly to store my music, pictures and documents on my place. At the beginning I'd like to keep it simple so I don't plan to install billion things on it. I would definitely want to install adblocker like PiHole/AdGuard. I'm also eye-ing Tailscale for remote access (no public IP) and Jellyfin/Emby for music streaming at home. So apart from usual NFS/SMB file shares, let's say there are these three apps I'd like it to run at the beginning.
The NAS has to be as quiet as possible, so even thought it's more expensive, I'll have to go with SSD drives. Looking at prices two 2 TB (in mirror RAID) should be doable and should be enough space for me, at least for now. I'm no hoarder.
I have few other "must-haves":
- decently working companion app that automatically backups pictures from at least 2 android phones (my wife needs to deal with it and she's not really friends with tech stuff)
- possibility to upgrade storage other than just replacing drives for bigger ones
- simple, easy to use (both setup and "rescue") scheduled backups to external USB drive
- I knew I had something else but it completely slipped out of my head
That brings me to what's available. I almost pulled the trigger on Synology DS423+. It looks reasonable powerful, I can put 4 SATA SSDs and 2 M.2... that's what I thought. But it turned out it's not possible to use M.2 as storage with anything but Synology's own overpriced drives that aren't even available in my country. So, it's just four SATA drives, which is... "not great, not terrible" as some would say. What seems to be a big plus is the DSM. Everyone I know really praises it. Plus it seems to have very good reputation in terms of longevity of devices.
Then there is QNAP. Apparently their system QTS is not as polished as DSM, but everything needed should still be there. There's similarly priced, similarly equipped TS-462. It's just dual-core CPU, but has more RAM (not upgradeable though) and it seems it can accept M.2 as storage at least. As per internet research, the build quality is just as good as Synology.
And then there's Asustor, which I heard about years ago and then completely forgot they exist. Last week my friend mentioned this name, so I checked their offering too. Well, Nimbustor AS5402T looks absolutely the best on paper! Well, it only has two regular drives, because it's got FOUR M.2 slots! I assume it's because SATA is on decline, but M.2 SSDs are cheaper than SATA nowadays so it's actually better for me to have the numbers reversed. And it's cheapest on top of it. So where's the catch? I presume the ADM system is piece of shit. Right? Or is it build quality that's bad? Reliability? IDK.
Which of these three do you think would be the best for my needs? I'm more than open to other offerings and suggestions too! Thank you very much!
What do you mean by "possibility to upgrade storage other than just replacing drives with bigger ones"
That's pretty much all you can do with a fixed number of drive slots.
Today's NAS's use some form of ZFS/BTRFS, so they're really good at handling new drives. Though I think dynamic expansion is just coming on line in the latest versions, and may not be in production just yet
QNAP sells extensions unit https://www.qnap.com/en/product/tr-004
They usually connect with USB (at least for home grade devices), but my understanding is that they are not seen as block devices so the nas has access to all the single drives like they were internal.
Oh, cool, that's slick. I didn't know this existed!
I meant I probably should not buy 2-bay NAS with just USB2, if that still exists. There'd be not much to expand to once I put those two starting drives in. So preferably more bays/slots to put another drive there once the need arises. Or use expansion units like all of these offer (Synology is eSATA I believe, others have USB).
Ah, OK.
Yea, not sure if these units can yet support expansion of a data set.
BTRFS and ZFS technically have the capability (from what I recall) in the latest versions, the question is does the device you're looking at support the capability? I haven't looked into enough of them to know for sure.
That said, my ancient Drobo can do this, but... It will only see the new size once you upgrade all the drives. It will resilver with a new larger drive but until all drives are upgraded it won't use the extra drive space of an added larger drive.
(And yes, Drobo is garbage, this one was free, I had some spare drives and I use it as a third local storage device, kind of a spare I don't really trust).
Honestly I've never even heard of brand called Drobo.