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Synology DiskStation DS920+ 4 Bay NAS $762.68 Delivered @ Computer Alliance eBay

730
TOPITUP

A decent deal for this month.
NOTE: Discount applied at checkout with coupon code TOPITUP.

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  • Quick question for NAS pros out there.

    If I already have this attached to a linux server (6th gen i7 laptop that my workplace wanted to throw away) that I leave it online 24/7 at home.

    What difference would the NAS make if I do not care much about RAID?

    • +5

      Probably power consumption, most of these nas have very lower power cpu ~15W, from what I see on wiki the laptop i7 are 25-45w, and if you are running it 24/7 you will eventually pay more in power bills.

      • +2

        In that case, can I run what I already have in my linux server in the nas?

        Mostly docker stuff like
        * postgres
        * home assistant
        * radarr
        * sonarr
        * transmission
        * nextcloud
        * nginx

        Additionally I have systemd-timer (like cron) to run periodic backup using borg and update my DNS (I have dynamic IP at home).

        And finally, does the nas have CLI interface I can SSH to? Or even just SSH capability to allow me to open a reverse tunnel to my home network?

        • +1

          Synology has docker, so I'm pretty sure you can run most of the those you've listed but please double check on https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/, as I dont run that many docker containers myself, only Jellyfin and Wireguard.

        • +2

          You can usually upgrade the RAM in these as well easily enough. (don't need to use Synology RAM either) - I run docker (sideloaded as mine doesn't officially support it DS418Play) to run my Unifi Controller for my Wireless AP. Does the job. You'll generally be CPU limited to a degree as they're often quite slow celerons or even ARM in some cases. This one looks like an okay 4 core but don't expect miracles in speed. It's nice to have it all in one box though, and just set and forget in some corner somewhere. And yes you can interface with the box directly via ssh though obviously advise caution on stuffing around too much in there :P.

        • Thanks for the short-list of home network features I must now research to determine whether I could benefit from or not.

        • +4

          I run all those services on my Synology. It runs linux and has ssh capability

        • +1

          you wont need that ddns script because synology provides dynamic dns and the client is rolled into the nas, so just cname your domain to the syno ddns and forget about it, if that works for you

          **Edit - going to add more:

          in reply to that point about what benefit does it bring if raid doesnt matter to you? im not being facetious, but RAID is my answer. The NAS boots from a raid, all your dockers are hosted on raid. so while raid isnt a backup, it absolutely is a way to keep things running while you organise a replacement drive. ie RAID isnt a backup of what it stores, its a backup of what its doing for you.

          ie if the boot disk dies in your laptop, what happens?

          other vague benefits:

          common, so lots of info on google if you're hanging out in edge cases.

          ease, no one should disagree that a linux machine can do more but the point is that the syno makes it way way easier and accessible so i feel you're more likely to use it or at least spend less of your evenings setting it all up

        • I have a DS220+ which I have thrown up into my closet and basically use it as a home server.

          As long as you have an Intel CPU (DS220+ & DS920+ both do), you can run docker and virtual machines.
          you have a web interface (DSM) and can enable SSH, im fairly sure its just a custom linux distro.

          Upside is its an all in one, quiet and low power device that works great and even has some free cloud support to manage or get files remotely (Quick connect), or set up ZeroTier

          Downside is upgradeability, technically these basic models dont go further than 8GB of RAM, however people have slapped in a few 16GB sticks and got upto 18-20GB of ram without issue.

          Also threes the support side of things, I had a DS414 which no longer receives updates, however still works flawlessly, i have given it to my parents and use quickconnect to manage it from my home, it has a Marvell CPU so doesnt support docker and instead relies on synology packages, which once plex server stops supporting that, ill have to kill it off.

          • @serpentxx: yeah good points ^^ and if you need some more compute speed, get one of those $200 micro pcs, like a lenovo m83 or dell equivalent, then just present an iSCSI LUN from the nas. (though single boot drive, so not as reliable as the NAS)

      • +8

        It would take years to justify a price of ~$760 to save an additional 20-50W compared to a laptop power bill.

        • Yes, I've just listed the CPU power draw as a comparison as I have no idea what his total power draw of the set up would be, but I would assume that its higher than a dedicated prebuilt NAS.

      • +4

        from what I see on wiki the laptop i7 are 25-45w

        This NAS has a Celeron J4125 with a 10W TDP, most i5/i7 U series notebook processors released in the last 5 years have a 25W TDP. TDP is not a direct indication of the CPU wattage, especially when idling or doing low CPU intensive tasks like serving files over the network. Even if we assume the worst case and take the TDP difference to be the actual power consumption difference it'll be just 15W not 25+.

        and if you are running it 24/7 you will eventually pay more in power bills.

        Extremely unlikely.
        Lets do some math,
        Extra power consumption for running a laptop CPU 24hs for a year (in kWh) = (15/1000)x24x365 = 131.4kWh
        Average cost per kWh in VIC is 28c source
        Total cost per year = 131.4 x 0.28 = $36.8
        Time taken to spend $762 @ $36.8/year = 20.7 years.

        Even if you double the power consumption difference and electricity cost it'll still take 5 years.

        • Wow, thanks for the very detailed power comparison.

          My laptop is i7 6500u. From quick glance, it seems to take the same amount of power with the one you linked.

          I might stick with current setup for a couple more years and see what NAS can offer in the future.

          Maybe when WiFi 8 with 10Gbit router became commonplace.

        • Thank you for doing the math on the power consumption.

        • Gonna weigh in here cause math is wrong (but not by much)

          the 920+ uses 9.7w with drives spun down (to run the whole system) I'll round to 10.- this is believable as the 420+ uses 8 ish in the same scenario

          Laptop has more stuff to drive than a nas, probably closer to 20w with Usb. Note I am not just talking about the processor.

          Electricity prices may have been .28c/kWh on average in vic in 20-21 per the link, but recently hiked up a lot, average now is in the mid 30s, so you're looking at 35c/kWh

          so you're talking 10wh difference, over a year .010x24x365 = 87.6kWh/year difference, or $31 (rounded up) per year difference between a laptop and a NAS.

          Economics change if you think about a desktop machine, which idles around 30-60W as a base. I had an 8 drive diy nas/server that was idling (with drives spinning) at 75-80W, and peaked about 100W. Idling with disks spinning the 420+ runs about 30W, so that's 50w saving or $150/year, being that my intention is to run this for 10 years or so, it makes good financial sense.

          Now if you add time saved in maintenance (with software.. ) that's a different story.

    • +3

      Synology software (and all sorts of 3rd party apps) is a big plus, also speed not being limited to USB speeds which I assume that Orico is.

      RAID is a big plus to assure no data loss

      • +4

        RAID is not a backup and NEVER should be treated like one.

        https://www.raidisnotabackup.com/

        • +4

          Sure, but it is a form of protection against data loss, like that poster said. That's the whole point of it.

          • +3

            @MrFunSocks: RAID such as 1,5 and 6 offer hardware level protection against hardware failures. The main purpose is either hardware availability or in the case of RAID 0 performance.

            To protect your data you must do backups.

            • @Hank Scorpion: And what happens with hardware failures? Data loss.

              I didn't say RAID was a backup, I said it is a form of "assure no data loss" as the person you replied to said, to which you said "it's not a backup". No one ever said it was a backup.

              • +1

                @MrFunSocks: I think the point is that if you want to "assure no data loss" then a backup will do a significantly better job of that and if you have backup then you don't strictly need raid.

          • @MrFunSocks: It's not just a poster. Scroll down, there is a lot of useful information there.

            • @Pest85: What do you mean? I was specifically talking about what the poster said about it being a way to assure no data loss.

              I've got a DS920+ btw, along with multiple cloud backups of all important data.

              • @MrFunSocks: I think he means that RAID will never “assure no data loss”

                IDC if it’s a toy NAS or a SAN with more capital invested in it than my superannuation - when u build, support and use these things thinking they were designed to protect you against data loss? You’re gonna get burnt. RAID in this context is designed to keep you running and bring home the bacon during a hardware failure. Nothing else.

                • @2024: RAID assures you no data loss when one of the drives dies. You put a new drive in and your data is restored. How isn't that protection against data loss?

                  Again - I'm not saying they're a backup, I'm saying that RAID is has inherent data loss protection built in.

                  • @MrFunSocks: Simple experiment: if raid assures no data loss due to hardware failure: disconnect and destroy all the drives

                    You still got data?

                    It has resiliency built in. Not data loss protection

                    • @2024: It has data loss protection against one of the drives kicking the bucket. If you just have a bunch of individual drives and 1 dies, you've got data loss. If they were in RAID you don't.

                      • @MrFunSocks: Ok so a drive dies and you replace it. start the rebuild - all good. ETA 18 hours. Every drive is good.

                        3 hours in, a drive dies. Nooooo!

                        Data is all gone

                        Technically that is just 1 drive dead. You said it provides protection against that. I want a refund! But it’s all gone. How is that assure data loss protection?

      • +2

        also speed not being limited to USB speeds

        The Orico is USB3 - 5Gbps vs the NAS being a 1Gb ethernet? am I missing something here?

        • +1

          I guess none of it actually matters unless there is a 10Gbps LAN connection at home.
          1Gbps is around 125MB/s, that enclosure promise to give~450MB/s which is more than enough.
          Even the new HDD nowadays give 150-160MB/s which is more than 1Gbps LAN can handle.

      • +1

        RAID is a big plus to assure no data loss

        Ahh let’s fix this sentance shall we?

        RAID is a big plus to reduce the chance of down time

        • 👍

    • How is the Orico? I'm looking to increase storage on my Node304 server, but have heard those Orico Enclosures can run quite hot?

      • I don't have a nas, so I do not know how hot it really is compared to a nas.

        But it was quite hot in summer.

        • how many drives do you have in it currently?

          • @ONEMariachi: 7 at the moment.

            1 of them is constantly being used for sonarr, radarr and transmission docker.

      • Definitely not something you want to run 24/7 in my opinion, at least not without some external fans helping to cool the drive down.

        Orico has been known to corrupt file systems as well. Ive not experienced this myself but have known people that have had to resort to using drive utilities when SHTF.

        • any recomendations for getting more drives connected to my Node 304(I've filled all of the internal bays)? Or is the NAS addition the best option?

    • +1

      take out the battery so it doesn't cause dramas being on 24/7 (leaks, bulking, exploding, etc)

      • Good point, I shall do that once I reach home.

      • The laptop design doesn't have detachable battery! Lol!

  • good price, not sharp enough, plus

    should we by 920 or wait a bit for 922?

    • -6

      Define 'a bit'.

      • +7

        noun
        1.
        a small piece, part, or quantity of something.
        "give the duck a bit of bread"

        2.
        INFORMAL
        a set of actions or ideas associated with a specific group or activity.
        "Miranda could go off and do her theatrical bit"

        • -5

          Thanks Pricebeat, but if I wanted a smartass answer I would have asked… myself.

    • Agree. The 1522+ just came out few weeks ago. So hopefully the 922+ is coming soon.

    • +1

      Depends on your needs. It looks like Synology is moving to Ryzen for these prosumer models. The newly updated 1522 is Ryzen (1520 is Celeron J)

      Outright performance, Ryzen is ahead. But say if you want to run Plex and make use of HW transcoding, only the Celeron will do that.

      • +1

        Probably need to clarify that ryzen is only ahead if you don’t need media functionality, since intel is dedicating so much silicon space to quicksync encoder you absolutely should grab this if you want a media NAS

        • +1

          Thought that's what I said, guess it was unclear.

      • That's good to know, thanks.

        Will be interesting to see what CPU the newer model (922 or 923?) will have.

    • +1

      922 and 1522 have moved to AMD processors and do not support GOU offload. So if you are wanting this to be a Plex server (most of us do), then the 920 is a better option then then x22 models

      • 922… moved to AMD processors

        Link?

  • +5

    good price and a top unit.
    I run :
    Home Assistant
    Pi-Hole
    Plex
    Minecraft server (Java)

    all at the same time with no issues (I did add 8gb of ram to it as well)

    • Would you consider adding a 10GbE add-on card to it?

      • for me ? nope.

        I have no need for it.

    • +3

      This is pretty much what I want to use a nas / server for. How do you find the performance of Plex with remote play? And the performance of game servers?

      Otherwise I’m considering doing a truenas custom nas build. But the energy efficiency of thr nas is also tempting. Do you run sonarr radarr and a download client in the nas too?

      • +3

        I've got this exact NAS with 8Gb RAM, don't have an issue at all with transcoding 4K. I also run Sonarr, Jackett, Radarr, Sab, Deluge, PiHole, JDownloader2, SyncThing, Unifi, Portainer and my Powerwall dashboard, and the CPU doesn't go above 5% when not transcoding, and maybe 15% when it is…

        • +1

          Do these services prevent your HDDs from sleeping? I moved pihole to a pi zero for that reason.

      • No issue with plex.

        The MC server is fine.. I've notice a little bit of block despawn lag when three of us are in there. but it only happens a little bit and only everynow and again. Maybe once every 4 or 5 mins of play?

      • Not sure if you already know but just make sure your ISP also supports port forwarding to use Remote Access, otherwise you have to use something like Tailscale I think

        • +1

          CGNAT is what you want to ask them. It needs to not be CGNAT.

  • +1

    If you only need it for syncing photos from iPhone, I think it's better to have iCloud with 2TB($14.99/month) than this one.

    I'm using icloud 200GB plan(4.49/month), so just need extra $10 per month to upgrade to 2TB.

  • Wishing there's a deal for DS1621+, price has been constant for ages

  • +38

    Replies for a lot of people in this thread - I have a 420+ which has a very similar feature set:

    1. It will run plex and do transcodes
    2. It (the 420+) uses about 33W at the wall at idle with 3 disks spinning, 40W peak. the 920+ uses 2W more. You can set up drive spindown but to do it with plex is tricky.
    3. You can SSH into it
    4. You can use BTRFS and SHR to have all sorts of configurations of drives ( use this to work out the combinations https://www.synology.com/en-au/support/RAID_calculator ) - this uses mdadm, lvm and btrfs on top - eg it uses combinations of raid 1 and raid 5. Thus you can recover it using a linux computer if required. This also means you can set up replication and snapshots (you need an extra package for this from the package centre)
    5. The synology packages allow you to run backups from ios/android phones seamlessly
    6. With some tweaking you can run multi stream smb or link aggregation on the ports
    7. the 920+ is expandable with the 517+ which gives you another 5 drives in the setup
    8. 3rd party memory works, but you need specific memory sticks - search reddit for info there. Maximum that works is an extra 16gb.
    9. Hyperbackup allows easy backup to cloud providers like backblaze b2 - you can use other backup software though through docker/packages
    10. You can use up to 5gbit usb3 network interfaces to this if you wish
    11. You can run docker and most docker packages on these
    12. You can run vms on these if you have the memory
    13. These have nvme cache slots - they run pcie2.0 - don't use write cache cause you can break your raid, read cache is ok
    14. You can replace the fans with noctua A9 flx
    15. I would (and have) buy a second power brick for it in case you get stuck in future without one. They are pretty standard across the synology range and a 3rd party one is probably going to be fine. You don't need this up front, it's just some "cheap" insurance
    16. Should you wait for the 922+ - depends on why. The 922+ will probably have 2.5gbit or at least a slot for it, if this is a key selling point for you, then by all means wait. If it's power you're concerned about, the unit will use about the same. It may be based on ryzen though therefore not have hardware transcode for plex. If you intend to run a lot of intense stuff on there, then I'd wait and see or get the 1522+ instead, though for my home I've not needed more than the 2 core in the 420+..
    17. If you find it noisy, you can add velcro tape (the soft side not the hook side) to the drive rails to quieten it, I have my nas sitting on a rubber mousepad to absorb some vibration.
    • +8

      Comments like this is the reason why I love the NAS community (which I recently joined!). Thanks!

    • Great post.

      FWIW I wouldn't have drive sleeping ever again. I did similar before, and the only 2 drives I've ever had bad sector's in, were being slept each night.

      I replaced my fans with Noctua on a 918. Honestly couldn't hear the difference really. I think the PSU noise overrides it anyway.

      Now you'll get me checking about my NVME config, but I have 4 8tb drives without raid as a big 32tb volume.

      Ive added cushioning for the drives, and from memory underneath the unit too. Does help.

      • There is no psu noise on the 420+ and 920+ as they have a power brick..

        As for the NVME slots, with some tinkering they can be used as storage instead.

        • Thanks, so the 918 differs in that regard?

          Because it's quite obnoxious in a Study with a very quiet PC, and I'd literally 'upgrade' one day just to get rid of that noise.

          Just checked too, my cache is read only. Only really using Plex (internal and externally) so unsure if I really needed it (and the ram upgrade I did….)

    • Sidebar: 4k/10bit/HVEC with all the trimmings is about 10MB/sec, so you can run about 10 streams off one of these with a 1gbit link.

      Also if you must run write cache, then use enterprise nvme drives or synology branded nvme drives.

    • "You can replace the fans with noctua A9 flx"

      I have a 916+ and i did this. I get endless notifications…

      "the fan has stopped working"
      "the fan has started working"

      etc. My guess is that it's examining the power draw and thinks they have died for some reason.

      • yah this isn't a problem for the 420+/920+

  • Before you add hdds to your nas, what’s a good software to check them ?

  • I'd be very tempted to buy a 920+ at sub-$700, I'm still holding out for the potential upcoming 922 models. I'm so tempted to give my old 414play the flick before then because it is really showing its age.
    I'm considering shuffling my current computer to adopt unraid instead, and upgrading my entire system. My only concern is that it may be overkill for my needs and chew power.

    • Hoping it will go down to $650ish when 922+ comes out.

  • DS922 coming out soon.
    also DS920 $829 for the 920 ?

  • +1

    it's strange, NAS price has gone a lot higher these years, I remember paying only sub $300 for a QNAP 4bay 1+1gbps ethernet only 3,4 years ago
    Your better off building a NAS yourselves nowadays

    • +1

      What model was it though? You can get a 4bay Synology for $439, (ds420j) but its the entry level model and lacks the x86 cpu that gives you more software support., ie docker, VMs etc

      It's the software and features that come along with it for free which justify the more expensive NASes like the one in this post over a DIY or entry-level NAS for me.

  • Anyone have any recommendations for HDDs to go along with this? Any current deals?

    • +1

      WD Red.

    • delayed due to being a new user - seagate ironwolf/exos or wd red/gold - whichever provides the most tb/$ in your price range

  • Still $700+ after all these years

    • +1

      You pay for the software.

      The synology software is very easy to use, and you can get a whole heap of things running on it easily - you're paying for that time savings.

      Synology provides:

      replication
      duplicate management
      backups (easy)
      ups monitoring
      easy remote access
      easy Plex setup
      easy photo backup from phones
      easy monitoring without having to set stuff up
      straightforward upgrade path
      low power consumption
      warranty/support
      copy on write data integrity
      growing the nas size by either changing up drives one at a time or adding drives without messing around at the command line

      Among other things.

      For ~700 and the lack of time required to do these things, is it worth it to you? - that is the question to ask

      • You are good

      • How does it compares to QNAP ?

        • +1

          QNAP does not have SHR or equivalent and does not have a lot of the ease of use. Synology typically has lower end hardware in comparison, $ for $. IMO synology is a better investment.

  • Tried adding came up to 781.08 after discounts. Deal over?

  • Jacked, deal over now.

  • It's still available for $764.10

  • +1

    It's $730.15 with AFPAYDAY at the moment.

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