First time NAS Build

27ftBelow · December 24, 2022

Hey guys,

I've been meaning to build a home NAS for quite a while after watching so many videos and reading so many posts online, however have always been deterred by the seemingly high cost to set up

Financially I'm more stable now and looking to revisit the purchase, I headed down to a local shop that specialises in building NAS systems for homes and small businesses (asking about synology, truenas, unraid etc.), and they recommended me to stick with synology because its apparently the most beginner friendly with easy to use UI

This is the system they recommended:

Synology DiskStation DS1621xs+ 6-Bay DISKLESS NAS

Western Digital / HGST UltraStar DC HC520 12TB 3.5” SATA 6Gb/s 256mb 7200rpm Helium x 06

KINGSTON 32GB (2x 16GB) 2666MHz CL19 1.2V ECC DDR4 260-PIN SODIMM

Samsung 980 1TB PCIe Gen3 X4 NVMe M.2 Internal SSD

My requirements:

I have 10gbe internet and network setup throughout my house, so I wanted a system with native 10gbe port

I want to be able to access the system remotely (my family live in different countries)

On that note there will likely be around 10-15 users

I want to use the system to back up all our devices (PCs, laptops, phones, tablets, etc.)(not sure if we can replace icloud with this system as well)

Our family runs a few businesses and we usually work on documents and materials together, we currently use google drive and I wanted to use this to replace that, to store files and documents and work on them simultaneously etc.

I want to use the system as a central storage spot for all of our work and media (documents, photos, videos, recordings, etc.)

I want to use the system for media storage and consumption (store and watch/listen to music, tv shows, movies)

Possibly also use the system to store security footage

Lastly, not as important, but if possible, I was thinking of using the NAS to store games so that we do not need to download/install every time we purchase a new laptop/pc (I'm not sure if this is possible)

Would be a great help if you can give any advice regarding the hardware recommended, whether the list of requirements are possible/feasible, as well as any applications/programs that would be useful

I'm a bit perplexed when it comes to many aspects of this entire thing;

reading about storage pools and volumes (are these not just folders?, how would you recommend to implement or sort this out)

reading about RAID (was contemplating using RAID 6, but then read that I can use RAID 5 and have 1 spare disk running that will automatically rebuild when theres a single drive failure - would this make the system faster since it'll be running RAID 5 instead of RAID 6?)

I dont think I even truly understand what plex is or what is the use of the apps, is it like VLC player?, if I have VLC player on the NAS (can it be downloaded? or can any programs be downloaded and executed on the NAS?) then can i stream videos directly onto my devices (pc, tv, mobile etc) without downloading VLC on those devices?

I apologise in advance the the bombardment of questions, but whenever I try to find information online, it gets extremely technical very fast and I very quickly get lost

I appreciate any help and advice that any of you can give

Thanks in advance!

Electronics Wizardy · December 24, 2022

7 hours ago, 27ftBelow said:

Our family runs a few businesses and we usually work on documents and materials together, we currently use google drive and I wanted to use this to replace that, to store files and documents and work on them simultaneously etc.

Can't really replace google drive in this way easily. There is some software that can do similar things, but google drive and ms office are much more powerfull for multiple users at the same time.

7 hours ago, 27ftBelow said:

(not sure if we can replace icloud with this system as well)

You can backup photos, but the full iphone backups can only go to a itunes pc/mac or icloud

7 hours ago, 27ftBelow said:

Lastly, not as important, but if possible, I was thinking of using the NAS to store games so that we do not need to download/install every time we purchase a new laptop/pc (I'm not sure if this is possible)

You can , but there can be issuse. Steam with cifs/smb works pretty well, but some games are much harder. You could also setup a cache for games that way when you get a new laptop you can download at the max speed of the nas without using the internet.

7 hours ago, 27ftBelow said:

reading about storage pools and volumes (are these not just folders?, how would you recommend to implement or sort this out)

Storage pools are the virtual ddrive. Volumes are folders with some more functialoty. Id setup one big storage pool, them make volumes for different uses, like nas use, vm storage, security cameras and so on.

7 hours ago, 27ftBelow said:

reading about RAID (was contemplating using RAID 6, but then read that I can use RAID 5 and have 1 spare disk running that will automatically rebuild when theres a single drive failure - would this make the system faster since it'll be running RAID 5 instead of RAID 6?)

Id go raid 6. Performance will be similar in most cases, and you will have more redundancy than raid 5 and a hot spare would give you.

7 hours ago, 27ftBelow said:

I dont think I even truly understand what plex is or what is the use of the apps, is it like VLC player?, if I have VLC player on the NAS (can it be downloaded? or can any programs be downloaded and executed on the NAS?) then can i stream videos directly onto my devices (pc, tv, mobile etc) without downloading VLC on those devices?

Plex organizes your media and provides a nice interface, kinda like netflix and its interface. You can play files on a nas share with vlc, but it can be nice to see the movie images and be able to sort easily, and see what was played recently.