I’ve recently been testing the brand new Synology DS-216+ NAS ($299), a network-attached-storage product meant for consumers. Although Synology products include a variety of features, I will be focusing on two primary functions that I consider most essential and most useful to people today: Mac backup and home media management (TV shows and movies).
With Apple no longer shipping optical drives in most of their products, I think now is a great time to convert your home movie collection of DVDs and Blu-rays to digital files, which a NAS is great for storing. The Apple TV 4 was another big factor: with an app, I can now view all the TV shows and movies, stored on my NAS, from my TV.
Before I owned a NAS, I was worried about two things: whether the features would be useful and how much hassle would be necessary to get everything up and running. Hence, my review starts with an explanation of the setup steps involved …
Hardware Setup
At its dumbest, the Synology NAS is a USB hard drive. At its smartest, it’s an always-on network computer that handles a wide array of data, media and backup tasks. For any of this stuff, though, you need hard drives for storage. When you buy a Synology, you typically buy it standalone with empty drive bays.
This means the first task to getting the NAS configured is to decide what kind of hard drives you want: speed, capacity, reliability, manufacturer and such. You can get away with any consumer OEM 3.5 inch drive really, it’s personal preference.
Anything from Amazon will suffice for home consumer needs. Storage capacity depends on what you plan to use the NAS for, of course. Given the ever-falling price of HDDs however, it’s pretty cheap to pickup several terabytes worth of space. To get started quickly, I’d suggest getting two equal-sized drives from the same manufacturer. For my setup, I went with 2 x 3 TB WD-Red NAS drives from Western Digital, costing about $200 in total.
Installing the drives into the Synology is very easy. The main NAS caddy contains two bays. Take one of the bays out and remove the side strips. Then, slide a hard drive snugly into the bay. Re-attach the side strips to secure the hard drive in place, and then slide the whole lot back into the Synology. Just make sure to insert the bays the right way up and you can basically do no wrong — there’s a right-side-up indicator engraved into the plastic. Looking at naked hard drives can be scary for some, but installation into the NAS is very straightforward and simple. The clever design of the Synology bays eliminates the need for screws, or any tools at all.
Aside from hard drive installation, the Synology hardware is as simple to configure as any other home appliance. Plug in the Ethernet and power cord, then switch it on.
Software Setup
Before I tested this unit, I wasn’t sure what to expect with regard to setup. I knew about the easy-to-switch drive bays, but I had this feeling that the software configuration would be finicky and annoying. For the most part, I was very wrong. Setting up the Synology system is a breeze. After plugging in the unit, you visit a special website URL that acts as the web setup portal for the NAS. There’s a fair amount of waiting for initial loading to complete, but generally you just tick the boxes and progress.
Eventually, you gain access to the real Synology system — again exposed through a web UI. It looks like a desktop GUI, a weird conglomeration of OS X and Linux elements, but it’s all in a browser. This is fine but it is sluggish; any click takes at least a second for something to happen. Clicking on things is not as responsive as a real desktop computer by any means, however much it tries to ape the visual appearance.
Still, you don’t have to spend that much time in the fake OS, after you have set up stuff. I used the File Browser to configure some shared folders; one for Movies, one for TV Shows and one for the Time Machine backup destination. I wouldn’t say that ‘anybody could do this’ but if you have ever done anything remotely technical to a Mac before, there is nothing scary here. It’s mostly filling in a few forms and clicking Next. There are hundreds of online tutorials if you really want pictorial step-by-step guides for any feature, and the manual PDF included with the Synology is pretty good to boot. I think I referenced the official how-to guide once.
Synology bundles its own movie / TV show server apps, but I think they are mediocre. The iOS apps are bad. There is an Apple TV app now (search ‘DS video’ in the tvOS App Store), but I prefer a third-party solution. I use Plex. Just like an iOS App Store, the Synology NAS has a Package Manager. Downloading Plex to the NAS is as simple as clicking Install from the web GUI. Plex then asks for pointers to the folder structure; these are the shared folders that were configured earlier. And that’s about it. From then on, the Plex service runs autonomously. Client apps (available for Apple TV, iOS and much more) connect to the server automatically — you don’t have to fiddle with the server side unless you want to change something structural with the server itself.
Time Machine backup setup is a bit more intricate. You have to do things like create a new user, add a Shared Folder, allocate X GB of space to the Time Machine client, etcetera. Could Synology design this setup to be simpler? Does it really matter? Probably not. Like with Plex, the steps only needs to be done once and then it can be left to its own devices. On the Mac side, OS X sees the Synology just like a Time Capsule, as another Time Machine destination with the size allocated as defined in the setup.
Obviously, there is a lot more the Synology can do beyond Plex and Time Machine. You can run your own email mailbox, host a web server on it, replace Apple Photos and much more. I want to focus on media and backup in this review because that’s what I find most compelling … and that’s what I use it for every day. I think the important takeaway is none of this is as hard or as scary as the alphabet soup of acronyms could imply. It could be simpler, for sure, but you really shouldn’t see it as a barrier to adoption. With setup over, it’s time to look at what using the Synology as a home NAS is like. Spoiler: It’s pretty great.
Using Plex and Synology as a Media Server
Loading content into Plex is straightforward. It’s a simple matter of dragging and dropping media files into the designated folder on the Synology. Plex will happily import most file formats, as it automatically transcodes the content on-the-fly to optimize the viewing experience for whatever device you are using to watch.
To help Plex attach the correct metadata, it is recommended to name files in a certain way. For instance, films must be labelled like ‘Daddy’s Home (2015)’. The rules are very simple — read the documentation on this for more information. Acquiring such content is the real tricky bit here: the official method is to rip your movies from optical media, using a disc drive and HandBrake. Obviously, there are other avenues to find TV shows and theatre films digitally. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdHE57Ct5W4
Once loaded, you can access your movies and TV shows through a variety of apps. There’s a browser-based client for Windows and Mac, as well as App Store downloads for iOS, Android, Apple TV and many more devices. The great thing is, because everything is being hosted on an always-on network-connected NAS, you can access your library outside of your home network too. It’s like a private cloud: you can be anywhere in the world and stream your personal video library to your devices.
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- Discover Movies
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- Movie Details
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- Show Overview
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- On Deck / Continue Watching
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- TV Episode Details
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- Advanced Search Options
A big draw for me was the Apple TV compatibility. With older Apple TV models, you had to jailbreak to get some semblance of a Plex interface. With Apple TV 4, Plex can simply offer an official client in the App Store as a free download. The app is great. The home screen displays shortcuts to the different libraries, shows and films that were only half-watched in a previous sitting (so you can quickly continue watching), and new unwatched episodes of a series (‘On Deck’).
The UI uses TVML extensively, meaning that the components and grids mirror Apple’s system apps. The app is logically structured, with shows separated by season. You can also just press Play at the show level and it will pick up where you left off. The detail views look good, assuming you have correct metadata for your content.
Big, blurred, poster art act as the backdrop for ratings, description info and other details alongside a cast list in the sidebar. Use the navigation bar at the top of the page for a myriad of discovery options including the ability to view your movie collection based on cinema air date, not just when the title was added to the Plex library. Plex also generates related recommendations for other movies in your library, automatically finding films by other actors or directors that you own.
The downside to Plex being based on TVML is that it can be slow to load on occasion. For example, after finishing a TV show, the whole page has to visibly reload so that everything is up to date. I think a truly native app would not have these issues. It is also easy to get lost in a deep navigational hierarchy, where the only path of action to get back is to spam-press the Home button to eventually return to the main screen.
Overall, these are minor niggles. I love the Plex Apple TV app. It even supports the Apple TV’s Top Shelf feature, so if you put the app on the first row of your Home Screen, it will display dynamic ‘Recently Added’ and ‘Continue Watching’ content in the shelf area.
Using Synology with Time Machine
With regards to using the Synology as a Time Machine box, there isn’t too much to say as the premise of Time Machine is that it gets out of your way. After doing the aforementioned setup, the Synology appears as a target drive in the Mac Time Machine preferences. It then proceeds to automatically backup at regular intervals. If you disconnect from the network and rejoin, it does the intelligent thing and remounts the drive without user intervention.
I have used standard USB network-connected drives with Time Machine before and have always encountered some friction or annoyances. The Synology works flawlessly. I haven’t had to troubleshoot anything since setting it up. The folder rollback feature on the Mac (where you enter the single-window timeline mode) does not seem to work with the Synology Time Machine’s implementation. I don’t really care about that though: for me, Time Machine is used as a straightforward, automatic, backup only. I have tested the restore to another Mac from Synology and it completed successfully, seamlessly.
My only criticism is that, whilst a Time Machine backup is happening, the Synology gets noisy as the hard drives spin up. If you store the Synology in a cupboard or basement, then this is a non-issue. If you keep the NAS in your living room, this is something to consider. Outside of Time Machine operations, the machine is barely audible.
Conclusion
Getting a Synology NAS has dramatically improved my life. I’ve only scratched the surface of what it can do, of course. In the future, I want to experiment with using the Download Station functionality, so it will automatically grab files from RSS feeds whilst I sleep. There’s so much more possible with a home NAS beyond backup and media server. But those two features alone are fantastic and make it worth a purchase for me.
The Synology DS-216+, the unit I reviewed, is available to buy for $299. Synology offers many different models, with differing feature sets and number of drives, for respectively more or less money. Compare all the available models on the Synology website.
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I love Plex and have been thinking of converting my system to a NAS System; however, Plex cautions people against using a NAS as the Server becuase of the need to transcode. If I make the transition, I will continue to use an older PC as the server while using the NAS for storage. According to Plex, most NAS systems do not have the processing power to transcode multiple streams.
100% True and it is the way I went. Synology NAS + Mac Mini Plex Server.
The combination of Plex + Sickrage is SO AWESOME.
You can have all your shows automatically download every week and Plex will have them ready for you to watch with a click of a button.
@Crzy_rio,
Wow, I’ve been using Plex for a while now. I had never heard of Sickrage, but looked it up after seeing your comment. I have it running on my seedbox with Plex (and Plex on my Mac Mini Server). I don’t know what exactly to say… my life is complete. Thanks for this!!!
@ kevicosuave
haha, once it starts working you’ll wonder how you survived with out it.
Theres also CouchPotato for Movies. I personally don’t use it because I am a bit picky on the movie end but is definitely worth the look at.
fyi: There was recently a huge quarrel amongst the sick rage community which resulted it being branched into 2 separate versions, Sickrage & SickrageTV. I would recommend Sickrage as it has more commits and actively developed.
I had the Synology DS214Play 6TB 2 Bay Desktop NAS a few years back and that was totally under-powered for any kind of transcoding. I’d always be wary of having a NAS as the server. Would only have one for increased storage.
So I moved to something with a little more grunt: a Mac Mini with x2 4TB Samsung externals for TV / Movies on each
Downloading:
TV – SickBeard, though recently moved to Sonaar due to connectivity issues
Movies – CouchPotato
Music – Headphones
PLEX Server to tie it all together. It’s a really easy setup and once configured, you don’t have to worry about checking for downloads.
Have an XBONE and ATV4 (had ATV3 jailbroken, though the ATV4 has a native PLEX app) HDMI out to the projector, though might move to selling the ATV4 as I don’t use AirPlay that often, plus the Mrs. prefers using PLEX through the XBONE.
You could have the Mini HDMI out to whatever you’ve got and then set it in cinema / full screen mode…
Either way, if you want control over your media and you don’t mind the initial cost of getting decent hardware to handle the transcoding, a dedicated PLEX server with externals / NAS is ideal!
Yeah, using a Mac to transcode will obviously be better than a Synology standalone. However, the newer NAS units (like the one I reviewed) include more capable processors that can handle transcoding pretty well.
What you describe is very useful and easy too, though, and a point that I didn’t bring up in my article. That is, to install Plex on multiple locations, like the NAS and your home Mac (the Mac uses the NAS as the file storage). That way you can have the always-on element of the NAS and use the more powerful Mac for transcoding when needed.
You can use a NAS, but you really need one with a Intel Processor. These are more costly then the cheaper NAS with like a ARM processor. Transcoding on the fly can really come in handy. I use my Windows PC as a PLEX server, but it’s running anyway for other software downloading stuff on it’s own and putting it up on PLEX automatically. I won’t get into that area.
Using something like a Mac Mini, they’re pretty cheap, get a used one and use that to handle the transcoding. They are also low power. They can go to sleep like the NAS and then wakeup when needed on it’s own. you get a bit of a delay when trying to access PLEX when it’s bee sitting as the NAS and maybe your computer is waking up. But it’s a good way to save power and some wear and tear.
I have a 4 Bay ReadyNas with 4 3TB WD Red HDD, so over 8 TB of space and it’s almost full. I’d like to get another NAS where I could use 6TB drives in, maybe 5-6 bay, but really don’t have that kind of money right now.
PLEX is like your own Personal Netflix type service. Except there’s no monthly fee and it’s all content you like. It also doesn’t disappear at some future date. I can watch all my content on all 3 of my HDTV’s in my house. I can also watch on my iPhone and iPad by streaming, though I think I can also dump the content onto my device for local storage if I want to. I can be at my brothers and Airplay to his Apple TV anything on my NAS. Which means yes, PLEX works on even a cheaper AppleTV3. Just use your iPhone or iPad and Airplay to it!!!
PLEX will automatically download all the Metadata for the Movie or TV program. Naming is pretty simple. For Movies it’s simple “Name (Year)” Because there’s a number of movies that have Remakes. So you want PLEX to make sure it grabs the correct Metadata. For TV programs, it’s Name S00E00. Which is Season and Eposode #. So Season 8 Eposode 2 would be Name S08E02.
One Minor thing. Sometimes shows are Aired on TV in one order, and then put on Disc and some Episodes can be in a different order, and so Descriptions of the Episode will be Off along with other metadata.
Now having to get up and hunt for a disc makes having your collection in a Digital format great. I Rip my movies, and then stick the Disc into one of my 300 Disc Binders and then throw the disc case away. Then I can put all my discs into the closet. It takes up a fraction of the space and I have them just in case as a backup!!!!
No need for Plex on the Synology.
There is a DS Video app for AppleTV from Synology, and it works great.
Should update the article to correct that.
I was not aware of this, I think it came out recently or tvOS search is just very bad. I have updated to reflect the existence of it, but I still think Plex is a better option.
The transcoding ability of Plex on Apple TV 4 are really bad. half of the files i have can’t be read. I had a better experience in transcoding with Infuse (although the browsing experience of the plex library is weak and slow). Btw Synology already released an app for Apple TV for DV videos. but again here like with Plex most of the transcoding is not working at all. I can t wait for someone to build something that just works
it’s not plex’s fault. it’s 1) your files (if they are not h264 plex can’t just mux them without transcoding) 2) NAS CPUs are REALLY weak for transcoding. Plex has nothing to do with it. the easies thing to do is buy a case like node 304, put in 6 HDDs, install whatever operating system you like (windows 7 + plex + sharing is the easier) and be happy with it. you’ll need like 300 bucks (without HDDs), i doubt a good NAS costs less, but at least you’ll have a decent computer+nas that can do everything, from transcoding to being a COMPLETE server.
yeah sure. i hear you but the promise of NAS + Plex has a plug and play “just works” solution is not true. you need to run plex on some sort of more powerful hardware
Most all mf my files are MP4 type format, H256. PLEX works great. my PC does the transcoding. The Metadata for the library I have on my Windows PC Locally and on a 250 Gig SSD drive. If you put that stuff on your NAS, it can slow PLEX down quite a bit. It’s also a noticeable difference going from a local HDD, to a local SSD drive.
I checked out Infuse. I thought it SUCKED! it couldn’t even do the most basic thing, Show Movie box Art of my Movies because each of my movies are in their own folder. For Infuse to work right, all you movies need to be in the same Folder. That was my #1 problem with it.
I’ve thought about buying a used Mac Mini and throwing like a 500 Gig SSD into it. The Database for PLEX can be on that for Fast speed and the Movies on the NAS of course. The Mac Mini can handle Transcoding and it’s low power. PLEX is also far, far more flexible. I’ve been using it for around 4 years now and it just keeps getting better.
Infuse works but it has it’s limitations and really can only do a fraction of what PLEX can do. You can get more advanced using other software that’s getting stuff Automatically, Plex automatically processing and it’s just there ready to watch when you startup PLEX on your Apple TV or ROKU or whatver else. In fact my Apple Watch will let me know what and when something is being downloaded using Prowl. I get home and it’s ready to watch on PLEX.
It’s the power of PLEX if you dig down and really learn how to use the more advanced features.
All my videos on my Plex server (running off my PC at the moment) are MP4 1080p 5.1 and I play them as source on my Apple TV in the Plex app with no issues at all.
I have a 12-drive Synology with 6GB RAM and it’s quad-core (this guy: http://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Network-Attached-DS2415/dp/B00SWEM4DW/ref=sr_1_14?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1458066486&sr=1-14&keywords=synology). I love it, it is the best NAS I’ve ever owned but it really struggles to play Plex if more than 1 or 2 people are streaming videos that need to be transcoded (which is common in my environment). I previously used a Mac mini to run Plex but because they don’t have anything quad-core I’m currently using a 2011 15-inch MBP with a quad-i7 which is working flawlessly transcoding up to 8 streams at a time and even handles 4K files very well.
Synology with Plex is great if you’re in a single user environment but with 2 or more it really starts struggling.
I’d love to have one of those. I have a 4 bay Readnas with a ARM processor. It’s pretty slow just sending files to and from it. But it streams Movies fine generally, though my Windows 7 PC is doing the transcoding. It has a I7 processor in it. 12 may be to large?!?! I’m thinking their 8 Disc version. I’m about Maxed out now with 8.2 TB I think it was with my 4 3TB WD Red HDD’s.
I’m not trying to start a debate of drobo vs synology, but the reason I chose drobo was I was told with drobo I can add different size drives and didn’t have to make sure they were all the same size and others didn’t have that feature. Is that true? Do the drives have to be the same size on synology?
Synology offers something similar, SHR (Synology Hybrid Raid) which offers single disk redundancy and can be used with drives of different sizes. Synology also has a method for recovering this array using Linux if the NAS dies.
No, they don’t have to be the same size. It’s recommended (and better if they are, IMO) but not required.
I think this is a really good article. The author not only provides info, but explains why he has come to that conclusion. Plus, as me not being an American, love the line: “spam-press the Home button”.
How did you connect to your Synology Box, USB, Cat5, Wirelessly?
I had looked at getting one but decided not to. My plan was to attach the Synology to my Airport with Cat5 and then wirelessly share it as a backup drive as well as a NAS for large file storage for everyone in the house. Before I did that though I experimented with a USB drove plugged into the AirPort. The results were less than satisfying. Networking it was no problem but it kept falling off and I’d have to clear the dead connection and remap. Would that have been a flaw with the Airport? A weakness in OS-X? Is networking a NAS wirelessly just not reliable in general? Would the Synology do better in this situation?
The Synology is connected via Ethernet to the router. I have never had it unmount in the way you describe happened with your USB hard drive. However, I have heard that connecting USB hard drives to the AirPort is very flakey. I do not think the Synology NAS will have the same issues.
I made a “poor person’s time capsule” in a way similar to what you’re talking about and in experimenting found that bus powered drives don’t work well for mounting when Time Machine tries to get things to spin up. Not all desktop drives do either. I ended up with a WD 4TB My Book for Mac drive. 4TB for $129 and it’s quiet, mounts every time and Time Machine has never balked. I have two machines backing up hourly and I’ve never had an issue.
In order to do this one needs the latest AirPort Extreme (the tall one).
It’s funny that this review came up. I have a Qnap currently and I wanted to upgrade the hard drives. When I went to check out the pricing on the WD Red drives I noticed that WD had come out with a the EX4100 which include Red Drives. So, example… This Sinology DS-216+ would cost $300. If you purchased Qt 4 WD Red drives ($150 each) you would be at $900. You can purchase the WD, with Plex, 16 TB, and all the associated apps for the same price. Difference being that the entire enclosure including the hard drives would be warrantied with the same company as vs having to go to two different companies. Tech support would be one company as vs. two… eliminating the headache of one company blaming the other for faults with the unit (Synology blaming problems on the Red drives and vs. verses).
I’m currently researching if the WD Ex4100 series has as many of the same options/apps as the Synology/Qnap NAS drives. Plex with 2gb of ram for transcoding is already on board. But Dropbox integration, Torrent client and web server performance I don’t know about as of yet. This new Synology looks good but I think WD with their newer competitive pricing might be about to each everybody else lunch.
The WD NAS is running an ARM processor, which won’t handle Plex transcoding. Though the WD is a 4bay while the Synology is a 2bay. If all you’re looking for is storage and plex I’d recommend finding another machine to run plex server (any dual core 2GHz+ Cpu would work) and get the WD to just hold the actual media files. If you wanna do anything more, Synology is the way to go.
If you get a NAS, you don’t have to fill it up all at once! In fact I think it’s better to only add HDD’s at you need them. Start with 1, but you’re not protected, so get a second one right away. Then it’s in RAID 1 which is really a direct copy of one HDD to the other. Then when you add a 3rd, the NAS will switch to RAID5. Now you have 2 HDD’s full of Data and any one can fail and you can restore. Then you can add a 4th and get that much more storage. Doing it this way. You don’t a load of money all at once. Also you can end up with a 4 bad HDD in a batch getting them all at once. If you lose 2 HDD’s at once you’re screwed!!! If you lose 1, and waiting for a new HDD to come in and another fails, you’re screwed. If you lose one and in the middle of restoring the Data onto the new HDD, that extra wear and tear on another HDD causes one of them to fail and you lose your Data!!! So if you can space out buying your HDD’s, that would be better. If you can’t, if might be better to get half at Amazon and half at Newegg, just so you don’t have the same group of HDD’s.
I’ve also found over the 4 years of using PLEX, it’s BEST to have your Database on your Computer that’s doing the transcoding instead of having to send it over to your computer from the nas and then from the computer to your PC. It also makes it much faster to have it on a SSD and not a HDD. I have 2 SSD’s in my PC. The first one is for Windows, my C drive so Windows boots up fast and all my main apps. Everything else is on a normal HDD. I have a 250 Gig SSD just for the PLEX Database, which can get pretty big in size with all the Metadata, and Movie trailers, and whatnot. your Database will pop on on AppleTV or the ROKU so much faster!!! Searches are far faster, etc. All your movies are on the NAS still, just the Database, you put on the SSD.
Look how much your’s is taking up now and double it or whatever depending on how much space you have left on your NAS.
You really shouldnt use Raid 5 in an array smaller then 6 HDD’s. There simply isnt enough striping. If you have 4 or 3 and 1 crashes, you will likely be unable to rebuilt it using the striped data from the other disks. You want to use raid 1 for secure backups, which means you only get 50% of total capacity.
What I don’t get is why people would want to INcrease the chance of failure by using RAID. I simply pop in a larger disk in an external enclosure which hooks up to my Mini, that sits beneath (not literally!) the TV. (no need for any of this Plex stuff either)
I just ended up returning a new DS216+ and would recommend staying away from it if you are interested in your data. With new Seagate NAS drives in RAID 1, I setup several encrypted shared folders and moved my data into it. Then, a day later I had reason to access some of those files – guess what I could not access even though the storage manager was showing the drives healthy? Yep, all my encrypted data was inaccessible. Every access returned a message of I/O error, try again later. Synology tech support was completely useless. Thankfully I still had online backups of the data and was able to recover. My guess is that BTRFS is not ready for prime time and synology has not worked out all the bugs with it.
If you are using a mini mac & Apple TV’s why use Plex at all? I run a Mini Mac, 1 x Apple TV v4 & 3 Apple TV’2 v2 and just run a copy of iTunes on the Mini Mac.
I spent a long time ripping and using handbrake, MetaX and Subler to ensure that all the metadata is correct for each movie/TV show. We ensure that all the age ratings are correct and use Apple TV age restrictions to limit what my children can watch. I run 12TB Lacie drive off the back of Mini Mac with with Sinology DS1512 running as a backup and this is then backed up to the cloud using Crashplan.
That should have been Sinology and not Sinology (Damm autocorrect).
I do pretty much the same. And also ripped everything using handbrake. Not on that Mini obviously, but my MP (probably you as well; swell).
$300 for a device that takes two disks? I spent $89 on a USB3-based box that holds 4 disks and use Windows Storage Spaces as a poor-man’s RAID (file duplication). For $269 I got a box that hold 8 drives. One low-end PC is all you need to host as many of those boxes as you need for as much file storage as you need. I have over 50TB of video backups in just such a setup (and I use Plex on that box to serve them up)
If you have links for these <$269 devices, I'm certainly interested in investigating them. Note the Synology isn't just a hard drive bay — it has its own processors, its own RAM. It's a computer.
His $89/$269 isn’t; it’s just a HDD bay. Your option is a ‘better’ one.
Had a NAS dropped it for my Seagate 3tb 3.0 USB interface external. Attached to a 2012 I5 CPU Mac Mini with an SSD and running Plex. Mac Mini with the SSD runs like beast don’t blink an eye when my video starts you might miss it. I live encode all of my videos and tv shows as they are all in MKV format. That way I can stream to a multiple of devices and not worry about the format. Thats why we use Plex.
As a long time Synology NAS user, I would recommend using something other than Time Machine. I recommend getting a CrashPlan Family account and running the CrashPlan service headless on the NAS. You then use the Synology CloudStation client app on your laptop to sync whatever folders you want to backup to the NAS. Then you just run the CrashPlan client from your laptop, but have it connect to your NAS IP address. You then choose the folders on the NAS that you want to backup to the cloud. It works great, and you get the added benefit of getting your family members machines backed up as well under the Family plan. Crashplan has no backup size limits that I’m aware of. As a photographer it’s worth it. I’ve got 500GB of mostly DSLR photos now safely backed up to both the NAS and the cloud. If you are interested, just follow the Synology CrashPlan Package author’s setup instructions from here: (http://pcloadletter.co.uk/2012/01/30/crashplan-syno-package/). Scott Hanselman blogged about this setup a couple of years ago, and he’s been running it successfully since: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/UPDATED2014HowToSetupCrashPlanCloudBackupOnASynologyNASRunningDSM50.aspx
Which is the best, Synology or Qnap (for home and for business)?
So you don’t use iTUNES, with your NAS? Plex is ok, I prefer infuse which seems to work much better on Apple TV. I don’t see PLEX replacing itunes though, as some of us use apple music
How would you setup itunes to access your NAS?