Preface

In recent years, the concept of NAS has become more and more widely accepted by everyone. With so many NAS brands out there, and the prices of different models varying wildly, I believe everyone is quite conflicted when making a choice. Therefore, this article of mine mainly takes the perspective of a heavy NAS user (having bought 8 NAS devices in total, with 5 currently in active service) to talk about some of my views on purchasing a NAS, hoping it will be helpful to everyone.

Before diving into the main text, I think what everyone needs to figure out first is whether you actually need a NAS.

The main advantages of a NAS are nothing more than the following points:

Low power consumption and low noise

Major brand NAS offer a wide selection of applications

Support for numerous data storage features, such as RAID, data encryption, data tiering optimization, etc.

Therefore: if you don't need it to be always on, then the advantages of low power consumption and low noise of a NAS are gone; if you only have some non-special needs that can be solved by installing software on your computer, then the advantage of rich applications is also gone; if you feel that data security is not that important and you don't have high requirements for access speed, then data encryption and data tiering optimization are also gone (RAID is not only provided by NAS; disk enclosures that support RAID do the same). If the advantages of a NAS have no value to you, then what is the point of spending a lot of money to buy a NAS? You might as well save this money to enjoy a few good meals (unless you are loaded, then do as you please).

NAS User Classification

I think current NAS users can be simply divided into three major categories: light, medium, and heavy.

Light Users:

Mainly used to store photos, videos, work files, etc. These users are usually ordinary people who do not have much technical background or do not like to tinker, so a "lazy-style" NAS solution is the most suitable. For this group of people, the performance of the NAS does not need to be too strong, and there do not need to be too many functions, as long as it meets their needs. Therefore, when buying a NAS, it is not necessary to go for a first-tier brand; domestic NAS can also be considered, as domestic NAS are usually very well-suited to local needs.

Medium Users:

In addition to the needs of light users, this starts to involve the realm of tinkering: computer folder synchronization, PT downloaders, remote backup, personal home media centers (Emby, Plex, Jellyfin), etc. These users generally have some technical foundation and usually have a heart for tinkering. At this time, the choice of NAS is very important. The recommendation for these users is to choose first-tier NAS brands: QNAP or Synology. As brands that have been deeply involved in the NAS field for many years, these two brands have rich product lines covering both personal and enterprise fields. Most importantly, many official applications will release APK installation versions adapted for these two brands, such as Emby:

This is very important for people who like to tinker. And crucially, even if some applications do not have official APKs adapted for them, these two brands have so many users that some experts will inevitably make them themselves, and we can just tag along :). Of course, the prices of these two brands are much higher than domestic NAS with the same configuration, and Synology is even more expensive. This depends on your budget.

Heavy Users:

These users (including myself) are usually upgraded from medium users and have more demands: virtual machines, Docker, databases, etc. These new demands mainly require high performance from the NAS, so they begin to evolve into several different branches:

The "Money Power" Class

This group of people has deeper pockets and can save time by spending money, solving performance issues by purchasing higher-end products from the NAS brand they are currently using. This method is actually the best because the brand hasn't changed and the operating interface hasn't changed, yet the performance issue is solved. It is the most efficient way, though it's not very cost-effective (then again, "cost-effective" has always been an adjective exclusive to the budget-conscious~). I used to belong to this group, but unfortunately, I have now fallen from that class.

The "Budget-Conscious" Class

What if your wallet isn't thick enough but you still want the experience of a high-performance, first-tier brand NAS? Believe it or not, it's actually possible, and that is Xpenology. If you don't mind the trouble, you can assemble a high-performance host yourself and install Xpenology software. If you want to save trouble, you can also buy pre-built Xpenology systems that others have already made on Taobao (I bought three of them as well). The price is worlds apart compared to genuine Synology (White Synology). Honestly, this is generally fine for normal use, and the key is that it saves a lot of money. Of course, there will be some hidden troubles. For example, the hard drive bay numbers recognized by the system may not correspond to the actual ones. If you want to swap hardware and just insert the hard drives in order to use them like a genuine Synology, that is impossible. Most importantly, you cannot open support tickets (cases). Don't underestimate this feature. When you encounter problems during use, ensuring no data loss might very well depend on opening a support ticket. I have opened tickets with QNAP several times, and they were resolved every time. This is still very important, and it is a significant reason why first-tier brands are so expensive.

Also, speaking separately, there is still a difference between genuine (white) and DIY (black) in terms of power consumption and noise control. Genuine ones are indeed much better (genuine ones are fine in the bedroom, while DIY ones are a bit of a stretch). Of course, this also depends on whether the NAS is always on, whether there is a silent cabinet (or if you are rich enough to have a dedicated server room), and whether you care about that small difference in power consumption.

The "Transcendent" Class

For this group of people (including myself), upgrading a NAS for performance feels too cost-ineffective (mainly due to lack of money). Isn't it much better to spend those extra thousands of yuan to build a mini PC yourself? The hardware configuration and performance are infinitely higher than a NAS at the same price point. Therefore, I started to promote the "back to basics" route for NAS, letting the NAS return to its core function as a storage device: storage. Thus, I used the money saved from upgrading the NAS to buy a mini PC: CPU i5-13400; SSD Samsung 980 Pro 2T; RAM 64GB. Isn't this configuration amazing for running virtual machines, LXC, and Docker? As for the NAS as a storage device, I divide my choices into two categories:

QNAP NAS + QNAP Expansion Storage

Why choose QNAP? Because of the existence of the TR-004 and TL-D800C expansion storage units, expanding system capacity becomes very simple (and crucially, cheap). You can compare the prices of Synology's expansion storage to see what I mean, so the key is still a lack of money (QNAP is truly a blessing for the budget-conscious). This part of the storage is mainly used to store resource types I frequently access, such as movies, TV series, cartoons, variety shows, music videos, etc.

Xpenology

I had too many hard drives left over from previous drive upgrades: eight 6T drives and eight 8T drives. To fully reuse these hard drives, I bought two 4-bay Xpenology systems and one 8-bay Xpenology system:

This part of the storage is mainly used to store resource types I don't access often, such as nostalgic movies, documentaries, concerts, etc.

When choosing this method, the only thing to note is that the purchased QNAP NAS model needs to support TR-004 or TL-D800C expansion storage, which can be checked through the official compatibility list.

Important Parameters for Buying a NAS

In addition, I will also briefly talk about my views on purchasing NAS hardware. There are a few points everyone needs to pay attention to:

2.5G Port (or 5G, 10G)

This is not necessary for average households, but if you have requirements for transmission speed, such as frequently transferring large amounts of data (movie resources, asset libraries, etc.), then it is necessary. For example, every day I have to copy downloaded resources from my PT downloader NAS to other NAS for organization (once the movie library gets big, saving them by category is very necessary; I will write a dedicated article to share my experience when I have time). At this time, the 2.5G port is quite important. However, please note that it only makes sense if both devices transferring resources to each other have 2.5G ports. Otherwise, if one is 2.5G and the other only has a 1G port, the transfer speed will still be 1G, which is basically pointless. But here is some good news: as long as there is a USB 3.1 interface, you can buy a USB-to-2.5G port module online for a few dozen yuan, plug it in, and use it. QNAP is very generous in this regard; models from several years ago already have USB 3.1 interfaces, so there is no need to force yourself to buy expensive models just for the 2.5G port.

2.5-inch Bay

This is actually quite important to me. With a 2.5-inch bay, you can install an SSD as a system drive without occupying a 3.5-inch bay. If you don't have one, you can only reluctantly insert one less 3.5-inch mechanical hard drive (this is the case with my TS-453Bmini, which is equivalent to losing 16T of space directly, so painful). However, if you don't care much about whether to use an SSD as a system drive, then this is not a big deal.

Hardware Decoding

This actually isn't that important to me now, because I usually play videos using local decoding on the playback device. However, if you want to set up your own personal media library (Emby, Plex, Jellyfin) and often watch through a browser or client, you still need to consider the hardware decoding capability of the NAS. For models without a dedicated graphics card, it relies on the CPU's integrated graphics, so the CPU factor needs to be a key consideration when choosing a model.

Number of Drive Bays

Generally speaking, for individual users, a 2-bay NAS plus 2 large-capacity HDD hard drives should be more than enough, and a 4-bay NAS is the absolute limit. In addition, personally, I do not recommend using RAID technology; it really doesn't make much sense. For truly critical data, buying a mobile hard drive for cold backup might be more cost-effective (this is purely personal experience and may not suit everyone). If expansion is considered, then a 2-bay or 4-bay NAS (preferably with a dedicated 2.5-inch slot to install an SSD and support for TR-004 or TL-D800C) can be used, and if expansion is really needed in the future, it can be achieved through expansion storage.

Others

Of course, there is another DIY solution now, which is the "all-in-one" solution. This involves running a NAS (which can be open-source or Xpenology) via a virtual machine on a single device. I won't go into too much detail about this.

Actually, I wrote this article because in my home data center solution, NAS selection and deployment plans (centralized, distributed) are very important. Because my capacity requirements are too large, already exceeding most small and medium-sized enterprises, I face huge expansion challenges. Moreover, I don't have much money, so cost-effectiveness is the primary requirement (otherwise, wouldn't I just submit a request to the procurement department?). This is also an important reason why I promote the "back to basics" route for NAS, which ultimately gave birth to the current distributed independent storage solution.