Been looking, looking and looking for a 4/5 NAS for Plex (1080p & 4K) and data backup. I’m not after a DIY hack, or a server (already have one).
Have 3 Seagate 16TB drives on their way. Plex plays on an Apple TV 4K, and not much is transcoded - mostly audio on 4K videos from what I’ve seen.
Have had my eye on a Synology DS918+ or DS029+, plus the Terramaster range. Would love it if anyone with NAS knowledge that could recommend a decent model capable of the above, and a good price.
TIA!
whatever NAS you getting make sure it runs on intel processor and has at least USB 3.0 ports
I’m not an expert but if you check the Terramaster deals here you’ll see some warning comments and reviews.
I saw some of those comment, but from memory they were the ARM or Celeron J1900 CPUs.
I use a QNAP with WD purple video surveillance drives and it's been a really reliable and stable unit. I use it for Plex between family and a few friends and for cloud storage. Had a few users loading it up at the same time without much of an issue.
That being said, I have never tried streaking any 4K content, only 1080 at the most.
I have never tried streaking any 4K content
Not sure why you would even consider subjecting the 4k content to that.
Got the F5-221 in the last deal, and threw a couple of shucked 12 TB drives in it, have it running as a Plex server on an Nvidia Shield, and it runs perfectly. Have a folder just for 4K movies and since the Shield does the transcoding it runs well.
Also have shared folders to my PC, as I have drone and travel pictures i can edit easily. For this purpose its great i wouldnt pay double the price for a Synology, even though i was about to, also will enable some docker containers to run Sonarr/Radarr soon.
It also casts well to an Amazon fire Stick 1080p in the other room when needed. The UI can be a bit clunky at first for sure but once its setup i havent had to touch it again.
YMMV
Which shucked drives did you get to put into the Terramaster? Is that deal (for the drives) still available?
I was looking at that model as it has the same CPU as the Synology DS918+, but was thinking of throwing in some extra memory. Hopefully @clear pops up with another deal on it, or the F5-421/F5-422.
I got a Synology DS918+ and run Plex on it just fine (streams 4k content to one device fine but it gets temperamental with two 4k streams. Multiple 1080p streams works great). I run a piHole and Unifi controller off the server via docker and Windows VM. Been using it for over two years without a single issue.
How does it go with one 4k stream and one/two 1080p streams?
You mention that you've got a server, then I say keep the Plex running on that server and have the NAS do what NAS should primary do and store data for network accessing. This will mean you do not have to worry about that processor is in the NAS and have the PLEX server processing the file separate to the NAS. Which any NAS should be able to deliver content.
Then just make sure you have the bandwidth and the space to store your data.
But as long as you have all devices that can play your content natively, then you shouldn't have much issues with transcoding or multiple streams.
I need to seperate them unfortunately.
A DS918+ if you can still find stock somewhere as it should be cheaper than the newer DS920+ and you won't be missing out on much in the newer generation, but it's been looking like slim pickings for DS918+ stock in the past few months.