What's your latest purchase?

Nice setup, I am also considering something between Synology/Qnap/Unraid or TruNas.
I started with a Synology 2 bay starter Nas afew years ago and now i want something better but can't decide...
Are the WD's 5400 or 7200 rpm

 

What are you going to do with the Synology when you find your upgrade? I wouldn't mind upgrading from my 1 bay DS118.

 

I have a 212J, I currently use it as backup storage with raid 1 to have some redundancy. I'll be using it as a back to whatever storage I build or buy. So back up of a back.

On a side note: I don't know what you're using your 1 bay for but I hope it's nothing important because if that NAS or HD dies, you're going to have a very bad day. I hope you at least have a UPS connected to it.

 

I started off with a qnap 2 bay with a fairly weak processor, the software was really nice but with 2 bays it was limited on raid configurations. I then pony'd up and bough a Wd MyCloud DL4100 4 bay nas box with an intel atom processor. It worked really well as a storage server, but i wanted it to be able to run plex on it so i would have to have my gaming pc running 24/7 to host plex. It worked ok, but any time it would try to transcode it would show its weakness.
I then started using some automated "gathering" so i had all "gathering" programs on my gaming pc and then the nas just handled storage. I was due for an upgrade on my gaming pc, so i took the i7 7700k machine and looked at freenas and unraid, ended up going with unraid because i had read that it was easier to setup and a little more user friendly. I've been using it for probably about 2-3 years now, and it took a bit to get it up and running nicely, but after that initial learning curve, its been rock solid!

If you are going to go with a nas box, look at what software you want to use and then make sure that the nas box supports it natively (pm me if you want to dive into what software to look for). I would highly recommend that you get a minimum of 4 bays. If you go 2 then you can only run raid 0 (dont) or 1.

The wd drives that i got are model 'US7SAP140' which corresponds to the WD Ultrastar DC HC520 7200-RPM SATA interface drive, HGST model numbers WUH721414ALE6L4 and WUH721414ALE6L1.
Model Numbers: WUH721414ALE6L4 – 14TB SATA 6Gb/s 512e Base (SE) with Legacy Pin 3 config:
W = Western Digital
U = Ultrastar
H = Helium
72 = 7200 RPM
14 = Max capacity (14TB)
14 = Capacity this model (14TB)
A = Generation code
L = 26.1mm z-height
E6 = Interface (512e SATA 6Gb/s) (52 = 512e SAS 12Gb/s) ** 512e models can be converted to 4Kn format and vice versa
the rest of it is not really important.

I didn't run any stress tests on the drives before i started (the parity rebuild would be more than enough and they came back with 0 errors) to put them in so i dont know if they actually are 7200rpm, i'm getting about 200mb/s transfer speeds, which is good enough for me.
Only bad thing with these is that you might have to put a piece of tape over the first 3 pins of the power plug. Currently i'm using a molex to sata power splitter, so i dont have to worry about it, but i did order some Kapton tape for when i clean everything up.

 

I'm using a WD Red NAS hard drive. I have monitoring and regular maintenance on it. I have never lost a spinning drive without several warning signs. And yes, I DEFINITELY have it on a UPS.

And that is only one part of my backup solution. I also have cloud-based backup of all data files.

 

Had to pick up the brad nailer also.

 

A little juice for the first desert trip of the season….. lol

 

I’ve finally worn out my 6112s after 70k miles. It was time for an upgrade!

 

Tried that and the Rose. Not worth it!

 

Those newly released? Had no idea Bilstein had an aftermarket option other than 5100’s and 6112’s.

 

$98 Walmart special hopefully find a good deal on better one over the holidays but this will do for now

 

unRAID is an awesome setup. Being able to mix and match drives and sizes is huge! I’m sitting at about 110TB right now, but this thing literally serves my whole home with media via Emby and runs all the computer systems we have. Not to mention all the docker containers and virtual machines you can run, VPN tunnels so all of the families internet traffic no matter where they are or what network they’re on, is routed through home first… This is my setup, highly recommend unRAID to any of those wondering.

 

Picked these up yesterday! Took a two+ hour drive down to the LA area but I’d say it was worth it. Those 6112’s are hard to find.

 

What UCAs did you go with?

 

MCM

 

They’ve been around for a few years but hard to track down

 

I've got a Synology DS218j. It's nothing special - I literally use it just to back stuff up across the network.

HOWEVER...mine broke just outside of warranty about a year ago or so (maybe 2 months outside of warranty).

I mention this because regardless of this fact, they said "We'll replace it free of charge." The nerd in me wants to try Qnap and Drobo and all the other companies (lol) but I have to admit I'd be hard pressed to buy anything other than Synology just because of this fact. Good customer service is a pretty big deal to me.

 

Good to know. I have been impressed with my Synology (my first Synology, not my first NAS). They seem like a company that stands behind their products.

 

Yeah I’ll say, still haven’t been able to find them anywhere online.

 

Damn! What case are you running?
Any gpu's in there?

 

It’s a Dell R720XD enterprise server. It does have 2 Nvidia Quadro P2000’s for video transcoding and VM GPU passthrough.

 

2021 Giant Trance X 3 mountain bike. Cant wait to go riding and test it out.

 

Just pulled the trigger on the standard DD 10", can't wait!

 

That's awesome.
I have a single p2000 that sips the power and transcodes 1080p like butter. Seems to struggle with 4k, but I don't usually mess with 4k, since I'm on a 1tb data cap with Comcast. If I end up somehow with unlimited data and start getting into 4k I'll grab one of the Quadro rtx cards.
I ended up using tdarr to reincode all my media, saved quite a bit of storage. The p2000 did all the work.

How much power does your system draw?

 

Same (concerning it not being my first NAS). I've run unRAID, FreeNAS, and even beta tested not one but two RAIDs for WD and got to keep them. But in the end I realized that if literally all I wanted was for stuff to be backed up with minimal interaction, I'd be happy with QNAP or Synology, etc. I deal with data mgmt, servers, server hardening/security, etc. all day long and literally wanted almost nothing else added to that load once I get home. LOL

I already had 2 SAS drives from a previous NAS I'd been given; so I just had to buy the NAS enclosure itself. I think I paid like $130 for it. Aside from the one hiccup, it's been working flawlessly.

 

I’ve got the gigabit with unlimited. It’s $30 more a month for unlimited data. As for power, I mean, I’m not keeping track since I’m running 2 Dell R720XD’s, 2 UPS’s, a UniFi Dream Machine Pro SE, a 16 port 10GbE switch, 48 port gigabit switch, and a miner for Ethereum with several GPU’s. What I can tell you the miner more than pays for my monthly electricity bill with plenty left over.

 

Shiiiiiit. I was pretty impressed with the power draw on mine, its only a 7700k with a p2000 and about 12 drives. It uses about 70watts with a drive or two spun up, and haven't seen it over 150watts with everything running.

You mining on your unraid machine or separate? I've thought about utilizing my servers idle time with mining, but never pulled the trigger.

 

I am running the miner on a different machine. It's a Rosewill 12 bay rack mount server case with an ASRock Fatal1ty Z370 Gaming K6 board and an I7-7700K running HiveOS. The GPU's are a mix but are mostly AMD RX580's 8GB. I'm only pulling about $15 a day with my hash rate, but hey...it's $15 a day, everyday