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[audunth]

Hi all!

So, I'm considering getting a cheap NAS server so I can have my drives containing all my media outside of my computer, so I can access it from other computers on the network without having to turn on my main computer and get some redundancy at the same time. I thought I'd just set it up as a standard SMB share so I can map it like any other network drive on my computers and access my media that way. But are there better ways to set it up? Like a DLNA/media server and connect MC to it? I know a lot about computers and networking, but not much about standalone NAS boxes.

Any recommendations? I'd like data redundancy so 4 bays (RAID 5) seems like a more economical solution than 2 drives in RAID 1.

[wer]

I'll let others who enjoy it get into specific recommendations for different boxes...

But I'll give you two bits of advice:

1. Get a reliable NAS server, as opposed to a cheap one. And then put reliable drives in it. Do your homework. Read reviews. And then after you think you've made a decision, go to the user forums for the manufacturer and read for reports about bugs and problems in their firmware and OS.  Then reevaluate.

2. Don't run it as a DLNA server and have MC connect to it. Others may give you different advice, but I do not favor that configuration. It causes more problems than it's worth, by a long way, and it limits your flexibility and what you can do with MC.  MC works best when it has direct access to the media files. So run MC independently and let it access the files via an SMB share. Keep your library files on the PC running MC; you don't want MC trying to go across the LAN every time it reads or writes the library.

Good luck...

-Will

[tij]

wer is right ... you end up paying more if you go cheap way

i just want to add ... that RAID is not a substitute for proper back-up

[Scobie]

This:

Don't run it as a DLNA server and have MC connect to it.

A NAS is a great way to organise and serve your files but if you're using MC for media networking let MC do all the DLNA heavy lifting (it will have superior management functionality) and disable any local DLNA services on the NAS itself.

This frees up resources on the NAS and mitigates any issues of 2 controllers fighting over the server.

And yes don't go cheap and nasty on the NAS or the drives, you'll regret it later. I've got a QNAP with 4 WD red drives running RAID 5 and it does the job beautifully, and it backs up to cloud storage with native tools. There are other brands so have a look around to see what suits but I think this is the level of quality you should be aiming for.

[drsinder]

This is what I use on my MC server.

https://www.drobo.com/storage-products/5C/

[audunth]

Thanks for the answers, guys! I don't want to go cheap, so I've been looking at getting a Synology DS420j 4-bay NAS and some Seagate EXOS 10TB drives. I know RAID isn't a substitution for a backup, but I just want my system to be stable even if a drive fails. Media files aren't critical data (except for self-made videos, photos and such, which I would always have a backup for) and can always be re-aquired even if it takes time.

The Drobo solution seems like it needs a computer, so that wouldn't fit me, as I want to be able to watch movies etc. on my other computers even if my main one is off.

So if I map the NAS drive to the same letter on my laptop and my main PC for example, can I then sync the library and use MC on both independently with all my media? And can I set them up to sync automatically (whenever both are turned on) or do I have to manually sync the library?

[wer]

... and some Seagate EXOS 10TB drives.
...
So if I map the NAS drive to the same letter on my laptop and my main PC for example, can I then sync the library and use MC on both independently with all my media? And can I set them up to sync automatically (whenever both are turned on) or do I have to manually sync the library?

Library sharing has been asked about probably hundreds of times.  There are complications.  Better do a google search. Start a new thread if you want to get into the kettle of fish of library sharing.  To run two independent libraries that share the same media files at the same path, yes that you can do.

Regarding drives, it is important you do not put SMR drives in a RAID array; you should use CMR only.  Seagate does not clearly disclose about all of its EXOS drives whether they are SMR or CMR. Seagate has a list showing SMR/CMR for all its drives, but the EXOS line is omitted from the list.  So be very careful.  With WD, the Red drives are now SMR, but Red Pro drives are CMR.

[lepa]

With WD, the Red drives are now SMR, but Red Pro drives are CMR.

At least a little while ago large non-pro reds were still CMR too.

[michael123]

Better go with more bays and smaller drives - more resilient and faster (for RAID-5)

Seagate I try to avoid

[wer]

At least a little while ago large non-pro reds were still CMR too.

"A little while ago" is not now.  He's buying now.  Now, all the plain "Red" drives are SMR.

All the formerly-Red CMR drives, including the large ones you remember, have been rebranded "Red-Plus" or "Red-Pro".

This reuse of the word "Red" by WD is confusing and inconvenient, but less so than hiding the specs.

Audunth, if you need a drive recommendation, go with the WD Red Pro drives. I have found them to be quiet and reliable, and if one fails, WD's warranty replacement procedure is good.

But do your research and do not use SMR.  The drive industry has gone through some changes over the last year, due to the controversy over SMR drives.  Do NOT rely on out of date information, reviews, or anecdotes to pick your drive.  It's easy to find a 2-year old review or test on the internet that is now garbage because the "XXX brand 6TB" drive being reviewed has since been changed to SMR.  Make sure you look at current specs.

[lepa]

Ok, it seems that there aren't any big ones as "red" anymore but they are rebranded as you said as "red plus" but anyway all the large ones should still be cmr including these rebranded "reds" which are now called "red plus"

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-red-hdd

But yes, you should buy CMR ones.

[tij]

+1 to CMR drives

Other things to consider are MTBF (mean time between failure specified in hours) and non-recoverable error rate (matters for very large drive in RAID arrays) ... these two is what most of time separate consumer vs enterprise drives

REDS pro (7200rpm) and plus (5400rpm) have 1mil MTBF and <10 errors in 10^14

Gold (7200rpm) have 2mil and unspecified error rate (likely 1 in 10^14)

Ultrastar (7200rpm) have 2mil and 1 in 10^15

Obviously later cost more 318usd for 8tb ultrastar vs 215usd for 8tb red plus

Also enterprise drives are likely to be noisier since that matters little in server rooms ... but likely RMA on enterprise drive will be shorter

EDIT: I planned for large 12tb x 6 raid arrays ... and was sick of te ripping after bunch of my Seagates failed ...  that’s why I went for Ultrastar

EDIT2: that’s not to say Seagates are bad ... in my case they ran in badly vented closed space for extended time (though roughly half of WD survived that torture and still running in my PC ... none of Seagate survived that) ... the point here is choose a well vented NAS box and allow some space for air to move around it to make your HDD last loooong time

[justsomeguy]

If you "know a lot about computers and networking" then why not try out FreeNAS? I think you could build a computer cheaper to run FreeNAS than buying synology. I wouldn't consider that a "cheap" NAS as in junk just cheaper as in money. However if you want something more turnkey then synology is good.

[tij]

If you "know a lot about computers and networking" then why not try out FreeNAS? I think you could build a computer cheaper to run FreeNAS than buying synology. I wouldn't consider that a "cheap" NAS as in junk just cheaper as in money. However if you want something more turnkey then synology is good.

Indeed ... if drive capacity you need goes beyond 6 Synology starts to get pretty expensive ... FreeNAS is a good option them ... time to time they have second hand SuperMicro chassis on ebay at a bargain price with server grade MB, CPU and RAM (these are very noisy though as they meant to be installed in server rooms)

PS: it was relatively easy to set up FreeNAS for me ... management can be remotely done (my FreeNAS box has no keyboard nor mouse)

[audunth]

Hi, and thanks again for info and suggestions! I didn't know about the SMR vs CMR issue, so after doing some research, it seems all Seagate NAS drives are CMR, except for some older Exos 5E8 drives. The WD Red Plus and Pro series are also CMR, but the new Plus 10TB is a noisy non-helium drive, and the Pro series drives are too expensive. The cheapest drives here at every size from 8TB to 16TB at the moment are Seagate Exos drives, which are also the top of the line (rated at over double the life length of the more expensive Ironwolf and Ironwolf Pro drives). Go figure...

The most quiet would probably be 12TB WD Red Plus drives, but I currently have 13 TB filled up, and 3x12TB drives would give me 24TB which is kinda overkill. Any other option would be Seagate drives, which are more noisy, but how much, when inside a cabinet with fans and at least 3 meters away, and mostly idle or very low load?

I don't believe building a computer for FreeNAS would be any cheaper at all, since buying used is out of the question, and buying from eBay is very expensive when considering the huge shipping costs and 25% VAT on top of that. Most used computer stuff on eBay comes out WAY more expensive than new bought locally. It want the small size and silence a purpose-built NAS can offer, and that seems impossible with standard computer cases. Either they are small or has no space for 4 hard drives. Yes I know the Synology NAS might not be super silent out of the box, but I'm pretty sure I can fix that pretty easily with some DIY vibration insulation (like using silicone or rubber bands to mount the drives instead of screws) and a couple of Noctua fans.

[HtpcUserAri]

In addition to FreeNAS, you may want to look at unRAID. The license fee for it is well worth its flexibility and the time saved in configuring. There are pros and cons for each NAS distro, but unRAID runs like a champ on low spec machines - which means low power utilization and thus lower total cost of ownership. Doesn't require ECC RAM like the ZFS file-system based NAS's do. Runs Docker with ease. Has great support.
For me, I run a server MB with a low-power Xeon CPU (used from eBay), two SSD "cache" drives, one "parity" drive, and then can add other drives of any size that I want (just make sure parity drive is largest drive - can update/upgrade it in future if needed). I've been running it for 10 years, have had a few drive failures, and it lets me know about and then recovers from them like a champ.
Just another NAS to consider among the plentiful other offerings.
My rig ended up costing significantly less than a comparable pre-built NAS, is more flexible, and doesn't use much electricity. Motherboard: ASRock C236 WSI (8 SATA III ports on a Mini-ITX). Processor: Intel Xeon E3-1235L v5, 4 Cores, 8M Cache, 2.00 GHz, 25W TDP. RAM: 16GB ECC. Case: LIAN LI PC-Q25B (8 drive bays: 5 hot-swap, 3 fixed). Cache: 2xSSD 512GB. Array: 18TB with 1 Parity

[Gedeon]

A small Linux box with some sata ports and USB 3.0 could do a great work acting as NAS and as DLNA servers running JRiver. Even with "cheap" SMR drives.

You just need to configure Snapraid and Mergerfs.

I guess most data doesn't change every day, even every week or month. So only frequently changed files do need higher reliability (if those are important)/ real time raid.

[millst]

I doubt you'll be able to compete price-wise with an off the shelf NAS. To me, seems like the best fit for OP.

Those that custom build usually have different goals e.g. require data integrity (and pay more for it). If you have old equipment lying around that can be repurposed, that might swing the price equation the other way. However, people don't always factor in the cost of power. That "free" computer might cost you a lot more in the long run.

I use a custom-built FreeNAS box. It's not just for media storage. I keep all my important stuff on there, too. I wanted the integrity features of ZFS. That was worth the extra cost for me. If you don't need that, something like Unraid is a better fit for less critical data like media.

[Gedeon]

ZFS is great for work, continously modified files, and really important stuff you need to keep online without disruptions if a disk fails.

IMHO, ZFS is too overkill for big media files in a home environments. And the TCO of a NAS 24x7 with CMR drives could be really more expensive than solutions like snapraid  with SMR (IMHO is better than unraid). The mergerfs layer just gives you a clean way to keep an unified view of the content for JRiver/Network/DNLA no matter where is truly stored the file.

At the end a NAS can be easier to setup, which would save you time (hence money ?). Other custom solutions, like a Linux box, demand you way more time to setup but will always be more flexible, and taking a bit of care your drives will last longer since only those with accesed content will spin up. And  with snapraid like solutions, parity drives are stopped until you sync or scrub.

Another advantage is that, if you have at least 2 parity levels (three disk at time should fail to lose data), is almost impossible to lose files, since several of your disks won't even share enclosures, power supplies, model, etc... Really low chances that a hardware failure will trigger other drives failures.

You always can have one or two out-of-raid disks to keep/download the most recent stuff, and once checked/viewed (maybe once or twice a week) move those files you really want to keep to the "main vault", launch a sync and your data will be really safe.

[jmone]

Here is how I do it.

2 x Windows Box : One is my "Main" PC, and the other for "Backup").

Each runs a copy of "Drive Pool" that lets you:
- Group std HDDs of any size into a Pool and presents it to windows as a single blob
- You can select folders / files to be "duplicated" if you want redundancy (though I use the backup server for this)
- All my drives in these pools are formatted as ReFS (each drive is still visible as a "normal" drive if you want - no RAID )
- I have an NVME drive in each pool that acts like a high speed write cache, and new media is then automatically moved to std HDDs (archive drives)
- the two PC's are connected by 10gbe so back is quick and easy even for large volumes. 
- for backup I use Free File Sync to check for differences between the two, and only if I'm happy then do I commit the change to the backup PC (eg helps with incorrect deletes etc)
- As I need to increase capacity, I buy new large HDD (eg 16tb), put that in my MAIN PC's pool, move data off one of the older drives are then redeploy those to the backup server. 
- I share the MAIN Media pool using UNC so all MC Library Server clients all the same path as the MAIN Library

It works, is simple, has redundancy, and importantly is high performance if you Library Server needs to transcode for DLNA Clients etc.  It's can even be "cheap" if you have enough SATA Ports and Drive bays in your PCs (though I'm using IBM m1015 in flashed to IT Mode for extra sata ports & SAS Expanders).

I've tried lots of other options:
- Cheap NAS Box:  Terribly unreliable and poor throughput
- RAID Controller in a PC:  CHKDSK and my Raid Controller had a fight one boot up.  Scrambled the entire array.  Never Again.  Took weeks to re-rip everything. 

[Hilton]

I Agree with jmone 100%  Stablebit DrivePool.

Drivepool by Hilton, on Flickr

Drives by Hilton, on Flickr


I have a variation on his setup with upto 8 drives in external JBOD enclosures connected via External USB-C 10Gig.
I also have the same setup on another PC in the house connected via ethernet and use GS Richcopy 360 to do backups between the 2.

No RAID to worry about, no rebuilding, buy drives in pairs, one for each PC and use 1TB NVME write cache infront of it for ripping and DrivePool clears the cache every night or when certain thresholds are met. 

With these bigger drives now the chances of having multiple failures during a rebuild are quite high, so standalone drivepooling works well.
You can then share them on the network as network shares just like a NAS.  A little more work to setup but better piece of mind.

Drives are external and can be mounted on anything if needed and you have MAX Read/Write speed on your main PC. Which in my case is my MC server and workstation.
This serves out multiple 100mbit 4K streams no problem. (this below is copying 4 files simultaneously at 150MBytes a sec. so its more than fast enough and I even archive some my older steam games on here and they work just fine.)

Probox-4x transfers usb-C Gen2 WD RED 8TB 600MBs by Hilton, on Flickr
Usb-c gen2 probox by Hilton, on Flickr

ProRaid-USB-C 3.1 Gen2_ by Hilton, on Flickr

Use an addin card if you dont have one... or as Im doing now, latest Nvidia GPUs have a USB-C Gen 2 port that works great.

2 port USB-C Gen2 controller by Hilton, on Flickr

I also got a 10M Optical USB-C gen 2 cable that puts the Drives and noise in my 19" rack away from the PC.
They have a couple of variations on the cable with different male/female combinations.
https://www.amazon.com/COSEMI-Active-Optical-Cable-Fiber/dp/B08C23YSD1/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=COSEMI%2BActive%2BOptical&qid=1603369398&sr=8-3&th=1
Optical_USB-C by Hilton, on Flickr

[stevemac]

FreeNAS used here, but if I had my time again, probably do what Hilton and jmone have done.  When it comes time to upgrade hardware I'll probably head down the "Drive Pool" path

Some things to consider

• Need to research / learn about FreeNAS, ZFS, Pools, vdevs and underlying hardware.  There are gotchas
• FreeNAS needs server grade hardware - ECC RAM and appropriate motherboard / CPU.  (You can get them 2nd hand at reasonable prices)
• Whilst never having an issue due to improper shutdown, I chose to install a UPS (again 2nd hand).  It handles the FreeNAS server, NTU, Router, switches
• FreeNAS can run virtual machines.  Historically I've had multiple VMs running, but now only one debian machine running MC - which acts as the MC server for all clients.  Initial setup was difficult, especially getting the VM instance with MC to run headless.  There are some great guides on Interact
• with FreeNAS and VMs - no way to make the NAS storage directly available to the virtual machine (I have not checked for ~18months - so might be doable).  Mine is mounted as CIFS (SMB) share
• Does the server need to transcode? - if yes, how many at once, as this dictates CPU and network requirements
• Review your network.  In my case the server is connected 2 x 1GBE in LAGG / LACP.  Copying files to the NAS maxes out the network connection  I'd prefer 10GBE, but the network gear is still financially unattractive - but getting better though!

regards,

Steve

[jmone]

@stevemac, I too initially went down the LAGG path but it was not that great.  I'm now 10Gbe between the two servers are the price was pretty reasonable.  Got some 2nd hand X520-2 and SPF+ adapters as my switch had a couple of SPF+ ports (Unifi).   Liked it so much I ended up getting a dedicated 10Gb switch (Unifi again).  It is soooo much faster backing up a bunch of UHD BD rips (as long as my NVME drives I use a cache don't fill up that is!)

[wer]

...and SPF+ adapters as my switch had a couple of SPF+ ports...

You mean SFP, not SPF.  You're buying network interfaces, not suntan lotion. 

[jmone]

Woops!    well at least my Fibre will be UV protected!

[stevemac]

@jmone - highjacking this - what model switches were / are you using?

My non-sunblock SFP ports on Cisco switch and Unifi US8-150w are all 1GBE.

thx,

Steve

[jmone]

US-48-500 is my "core" switch that has 2 x SFP+ that I used for ages.  Ended up with a US-16-XG as well.