Comparing Nas

Verb

Can anyone give me better advice on which one to choose. I am potentially going to use it for a Plex server...

1 - D-link ShareCenter DNS-340L
2 - NETGEAR RN10400-100EUS

tberry6686

Judging by the reviews on amazon I wouldn't buy either. I currently run 2 NAS at home, a Qnap and a Synology. I've only had the qnap about 6 months but it has been rock solid, the Synology I have been running for about 3 years with no issues at all (apart from running out of space, hence adding the Qnap).

Qnap and Synology cost a bit more than the ones you have listed but there are good reasons for this. Support is excellent, reliability etc.

They both have very good reputations among users with almost every review being excellent.

nidO

If you absolutely have to get a cheap one, get the Netgear. They have a very limited set of features but they do work well enough.

If you want a decent one, look at Qnap, Synology, and Thecus. They'll all be much better than either of your options in pretty much every measurable way, but are more expensive.

Edit: Be sure to consider your future potential needs as well. With the D-link and Netgear, when you buy it assume that the features it comes with are all it'll ever have. Software updates/improvements from these manufactures will generally be few and far between and will usually not add/improve much to your device.

With a Synology/Qnap/Thecus, you will be most likely getting around 3-6 years of software updates which will generally consist of at least a major release or two per year, usually adding fairly worthwhile new features/improvements.

wymondham

Synology every time!

Verb

I'm looking at the following

Synology DiskStation DS414Slim 4 Bay Desktop NAS

Is this a good idea??

Fightsback

Verb wrote: »

I'm looking at the following

Synology DiskStation DS414Slim 4 Bay Desktop NAS

Is this a good idea??

Only if you want to use 2.5 inch drives instead of 3.5inch drives, hence the name slim

You need to look at the standard DS414 (or DS415) if you want a 4 bay unit to house 3.5 inch drives.

I own a Synology and would recommend them highly, they come with great software tools and I've found them to be very reliable.

If you want further buying advice on synology please ask away.

nidO

It is if you're sure you know what you want.

The Slim model is the bottom of the range 4-bay unit which will work fine but if you're wanting to do anything like media transcoding (your original query mentioned Plex) it will be slow.

As it's a slim unit it will also only take 2.5" drives so you can't use normal desktop drives in it, be very sure you're aware of this before you buy it.

For most uses, the DS414j will be a better option - It's considerably larger and only has one LAN port rather than 2, but is faster and takes normal 3.5" drives, and only costs a small amount more than the slim model. The next bump up is the DS414 (with no j or slim in the name) which performs a lot better, but is a fairly sizeable hike in price.

John_Gray

Verb wrote: »

I'm looking at the following
Synology DiskStation DS414Slim 4 Bay Desktop NAS
Is this a good idea??

What RAID are you going to use?
If you use RAID-1 you will get the disk capacity of two of the four drives.
If you use RAID-5 you will get the disk capacity of three of the four drives.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, the only way out is to read up on it!

If you're spending that amount of money on a four-bay NAS box, then you need to know your RAID, and probably also buy the WD RED drives intended for NASes.

Doshwaster

I've had a 2 x 2TB Synology NAS for about 3 years now and I really can't fault it. It does everything I could want and there are also a lot of features that I haven't explored. The only problem is that it is almost full - either I'm going to have to start deleting stuff or I need to look at an upgrade.

Synology may not be the cheapest option but you get rock solid reliability, performance and support.