NAS advice

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Hosman14

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Hi Everyone.

I've been looking into getting a NAS (with plex media server) setup on my home network. At first I was thinking of getting a Raspberry Pi and setting that up with a fast SSD as a NAS as it seems fairly easy to do and I want a Raspberry Pi anyway to run a Pi-Hole, but after researching a bit more, I'm wondering if it might be more worth it to just go with one of these all-in-one NAS systems and then get a cheap Pi 3 for the Pi-Hole. This does seem quite a bit more complicated, but I might be wrong?

I'd like to get more clued up on home automation and with that in mind get more and more hardware for different needs.

Some of my needs atm
Obviously want to use as little power as possible (I assume the Pi will use significantly less power than these NAS devices?)
Only think I need around 4-8TB storage at this time.
Will be in my office so it should not be very noisy.

I'm in no way a networking guru (yet), so would like some advice if anyone has opinions please?
Also if anyone has advice on specific NAS devices or Drives for both cases (Pi and AIO devices), I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks.
 
All in one NAS devices would be easier to setup and use than a PI-based NAS solution - unless you want to get your hands dirty then a Pi could be cool.

Setting up pi-hole on a Pi is quite easy
 
Yes that is what I found in my research. NAS devices do seem considerably more expensive though. Not sure if the ease of setup is worth the extra expense.
 
If you're a tinkerer and don't mind effort DIY will always be cheaper
You can get a multibay USB-dock and the PI to stack disks,or something like a Tiny Lenovo M93 and the like with a beefier CPU and run some more on it1713532399864.png
 
If you're planning to use Plex you'll definitely limit yourself if you go the Pi route, I would rather recommend getting a NAS with an Intel processor that supports Quick Sync.

Synology make some really nice NAS boxes, but they are pricey.

What is your budget?
 
Thanks, I can probably afford around R5-10k now, but would prefer closer to R5k. Might take a look if I can find one of those Synology NAS boxes 2nd hand.
 
The top prize is a NAS, but given your budget, you might want to explore the option of using an NVIDIA Shield as a Plex server, which also offers two USB ports for additional storage.

The NVIDIA Shield also supports a variety of codecs.
 
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I'm not really in a rush.. I'm just looking for a solution that will last a long time and can potentially be used when I get into home automation. If that means I need to wait and save more for a better NAS, that's also an option.

Think I'm more interested in what what people would buy or have bought for themself. It sounds like a NAS is the best option.
 
Hosman14 said:
I'm not really in a rush.. I'm just looking for a solution that will last a long time and can potentially be used when I get into home automation. If that means I need to wait and save more for a better NAS, that's also an option.

Think I'm more interested in what what people would buy or have bought for themself. It sounds like a NAS is the best option.
Click to expand...
Although my NAS is an older model (and newer models maybe better), to fully experience Home Assistant, I've had to run it on a virtual machine on the NAS.
Unfortunately, this setup has significantly reduced my access speeds to the NAS.
Therefore, I plan to run Home Assistant on its own dedicated machine to improve performance.
 
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