Hello,
After much research on the internet and YouTube videos, I have decided to set up a NAS, to use primarily as a movie server, and secondarily to share photos and documents.
I will have 2 users on my local network, and from 3 to 15 external users for movie streaming, with 3 to 6 of those external users also participating in photo and document sharing. It’s not likely that all 15 will be accessing the NAS at the same time.
I currently have about 350 movies, with 90% on DVD, 5% on blu-ray, and 5% on VHS source tapes. I plan on acquiring up to 100 additional movies, mostly on DVD but maybe a few blu-rays. (Not planning on any 4K movies.)
I also have many boxed sets of TV series (all on DVD), but that is a lesser priority than having the movies available for streaming.
I am considering purchasing a Synology DS1523+ NAS, for the following reasons:
• The extra 5th bay
• Optional 10GB adapter
• Optional two NVME caching SSDs
I have a few questions before purchasing a NAS:
QUESTION 1
The DS1523+ and DS923+ use the AMD Ryzen chip, which does not have transcoding, but has error correction.
The older DS423+ uses an Intel chip, with transcoding, but no error correction. However, there is no option for a 10GB adapter, or for memory upgrades.
My primary usage for the NAS will be as a Plex movie server. I will also be storing photos and documents, but those will be accessed by far fewer users, and response time doesn’t seem as critical as with movie streaming.
Will the older NAS with transcoding be better for me than the newer NAS with more speed and memory, but no transcoding?
QUESTION 2
I read that in a 4 or 5 bay NAS with RAID, 3 to 4 disks are used for data storage, while 1 disk is for redundancy. How can the data from 4 other disks all be redundantly located on just 1 other disk?
QUESTION 3
I am unsure whether to use 8TB hard drives, or SSD drives in my NAS.
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Hard drives offer greater capacity at lower cost, but the downside is noise and heat. I heard that hard drives over 8TB tend to be the noisiest, so if I use 3 to 5 8TB drives, will the noise level be minimal?
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SSD are noiseless and give off less heat, but they are more expensive and of lesser capacity.
The NAS will be in the same room as my primary TV, but then again, so is my DVD player now, and the noise level from that is minimal. When I play music from an external CD drive on my laptop, the noise level is also minimal. Are those devices an apples-to-apples comparisons to a NAS?
QUESTION 4
I am not clear about the video streaming process:
a) Is the entire movie streamed to the user at once, then they watch it from their local memory, or
b) Is the movie streamed while the user is viewing it, so that they are watching parts of the movie that were streamed to them just seconds earlier?
If “b” above, then what if two or more users are watching the same movie, but are at different parts of the movie? How does the disk’s read head accommodate needing to be in two places (for two different users) at the same time?
Will this NAS setup support the 10 to 15 external users with acceptable response times for streaming movies?