I had the idea of building a NAS for a long time, but to be honest, for ordinary users like us, it’s really not a very cost-effective option. In my thirties, I don’t have much interest in looking at young ladies anymore. The only use of NAS is to back up data. Now, the prices of various cloud storage memberships are getting lower and lower, and the speed is also faster. The only disadvantage is that there is a possibility that your important data will be “harmonized”.
There were two main things that prompted me to finally decide to build a NAS:
- The hard drive on my work computer suddenly failed. Although I didn’t lose any data, I was still worried. Most computers these days use solid state drives, and once they fail, there’s often no way to recover the data. My computer is a Thinkpad X1C flagship from last year. I’ve been using it for about a year, and the startup time suddenly increased to more than three minutes. So I contacted the after-sales service for repair, and they diagnosed it as a hard drive failure. This incident also made me realize the importance of data backup.
- I configured Apple TV at home. After configuring Apple TV, it seemed a bit of a waste to just use it to watch IPTV. Moreover, there is such a powerful app as Infuse that is exclusive to iOS. I felt that it would be a waste not to configure a NAS for local video storage.
Prompted by these two incidents, I bought a Synology 923+.
The upgrade from the previous generation 920 to the 923+ is almost negligible. The processor doesn’t even have a graphics card. However, since many apps these days have soft decoding capabilities, I can only console myself that the graphics card doesn’t seem so important. It has all the necessary interfaces, but it doesn’t give you the corresponding hardware to upgrade the cache or the 10GbE network port. You can do it, but you have to pay extra.
I’ve been using this NAS for a while now, from last year to this year. Here’s a brief overview of its basic features and some of my experiences using it.
A word of warning to all those who are planning to build a NAS: the cheapest part of building a NAS is the NAS itself. It’s like raising a dog. The cheapest part is buying the dog. The cost of raising it afterwards is really…
The all-black matte texture gives the QNAP a more technological feel, to be honest. However, based on Synology’s strategy of buying software and getting hardware, QNAP will still find it difficult to shake Synology’s position as the No. 1 of NAS.
It has four 3.5-inch hard drive slots, equipped with physical keys to prevent children or uninformed relatives and friends from accidentally pulling out the hard drive.
I chose the Western Digital 10TB enterprise hard drive for this NAS. Compared to NAS-specific hard drives, enterprise hard drives offer better value for money and also come with a 5-year warranty.
The price of four hard drives far exceeds that of the main unit itself.
I chose the 10TB capacity because of budget constraints. Also, the next step up from 10TB is helium-filled hard drives. Based on the fact that helium-filled hard drives start leaking as soon as they leave the factory, I personally think that air-filled hard drives are more suitable for home use.
The interior looks simple, but I learned a new adjective to describe it: professional. Hahaha, the white iron gives a strong sense of professionalism.
The original factory configuration comes with a 4GB ECC memory. It should be enough, but Synology allows you to use the extra memory space as cache. So, following the principle of “it’s better to use it than to leave it empty”, I also inserted a 4GB ECC memory into the other slot.
The bottom has two M.2 slots. I chose two original Synology solid state drives for this NAS. This is because only original Synology solid state drives can directly support the storage pool function. Of course, there are also some experienced users who can rewrite the background code to allow third-party solid state drives to be used to create storage pools.
Other than the high price, Synology’s own solid state drives have no other缺点. Since I usually back up small files not in a central way, I am still using them as cache for the time being, which is a bit of a waste of resources.
The back has two Gigabit ports and a 10GbE port, but you have to buy it separately. I also bought a 10GbE port from Synology.
Sure, here is the translation of the Chinese article to English, with refined language:
I bit the bullet and upgraded the original solid state drive and 10GbE port a while ago. The price of these few items is about the same as the main unit.
There are currently third-party alternatives available, but I’m not sure how well they match. However, I actually feel that the Gigabit port is already enough. With a Gigabit port and enterprise hard drives, the read and write speed can also reach more than 100M, which means a movie can be transferred in just a few minutes.
There are also two USB ports on the back, which can be used to connect to a UPS. In the event of a power outage, the NAS can automatically shut down to prevent damage to the hard drives.
There are also two large fans on the back. Many users choose to use dust covers to prevent dust from entering. I directly put the machine in a semi-open cabinet in the basement and covered the cabinet opening with a dust cover, which can also effectively prevent dust accumulation.
At the same time, in order to protect the hard drive and prevent sudden power outages, I also equipped it with a UPS power supply. This APC uninterruptible power supply can be said to be a good partner for NAS. I saw that many users chose this one.
The last two pictures show the Synology NAS placed in the storage room of the basement at home. I cleared out a space in the cabinet and covered the outside with a dust cover. The ventilation is not ideal, but it seems to have little impact after using it for a few months.
I put two Xiaomi temperature and humidity meters to monitor the temperature and humidity.
In terms of usage:
I use Raid 1 for disk slots 1 and 2, which means that the two disks are mirrored to each other. So even if one of them crashes, it doesn’t matter. This storage pool is used to store experimental data and important files. 3 and 4 are basic disk groups, which means that the two disks are used together. This part is used to store videos and other less important things. The reason why I didn’t use Raid 0 for disk groups 3 and 4 is because I don’t have high speed requirements. Raid 0 is too risky. If one disk crashes, all the data will be lost. With basic, the data on the good disk will not be affected by the damage of the other disk.
For daily use, you can log in directly from the outside using Synology’s Quickconnect. The speed is acceptable, but not fast. I am currently working on setting up a fixed IP.
For those who are doubting whether to get a NAS, you can take a look at the following suggestions:
First, the cost: The machine costs 4000+ and the hard drive costs 1300X4. This is the most basic configuration, which costs about 8000. If you add a 10GbE network card and solid state cache, it will cost another 3000. The total price is more than 10000. Compared to the annual fee of 100+ for Baidu Netdisk, you can pay for 80+ years, and this does not include the later maintenance costs, such as the 10-year lifespan of the hard drive and the electricity bill.
Speed: Many people think that NAS is faster than ordinary network disks. This is a misunderstanding. It is okay in the local area network at home, but if you are using it outside, using things like inner network penetration, it is not necessarily faster than network disks, and there are too many limiting factors. Network disk members can basically fill up your upload bandwidth. When uploading to NAS, it is not only limited by the upload bandwidth, but also by the network speed of the place where you put the NAS. If you have 10GbE bandwidth throughout, then pretend I didn’t say anything.
Security: The security of NAS comes at the cost of RAID arrays. For example, RAID 0 has no security at all. If you set up a backup RAID, such as RAID 1, the storage space will be halved. RAID 5 and RAID 6 have the risk of rebuild failure. According to my settings, my actual storage space is less than 30T.
Target user group: Based on the fact that many cloud disks like to harmony, for those who have important data to store and are worried about accidental deletion, NAS is definitely the target group. For example, those who do scientific research, one measurement of data is several thousand or even several ten thousand, the data is scattered and in strange formats, and it is easy to be accidentally deleted when stored in the network disk. Once even a few k of data is missing, the entire set of data will be废掉. In this way, the cost of NAS is simply trivial.
The fun of NAS is turn from side to side. It is basically impossible to get it right and enjoy it afterwards. I have built it several times and upgraded it several times. Only I can understand the happiness of it. Hahahaha
