Move to TrueNAS or Stick With Synology?

[knoxgibson]

Howdy LTT gang - I've been running (2) 8TB HDDs off a 2-bay Synology NAS for a few years and running media server software on my personal computer (the NAS hardware was just too slow for transcoding). I feel like I'm being bottlenecked between the NAS and my personal computer though since I use it sometimes while it transcodes and such, so I'm going to build a moderate PC dedicated to communicating with the Synology NAS instead. But then I started thinking, if I already have the new computer, I wonder if it'd be worth it to make it a dedicated TrueNAS station instead? The biggest issue is I don't have a good way to transfer files from and back to the 8TB drives since apparently you have to format them to ZFS. I would love an option to just plug in my existing drives into the PC directly and not have to format or mess with file transfers leading to possible corruption. My (2) 8TB drives are mirrored on Synology btw. Thanks for the advice in advance

[Electronics Wizardy]

If your using the HDDs in something other than a synology you need to format them. But it should be pretty easy to format them and restore backups.

 

 

[johnt]

What's your budget? You could easily use an interim device like an M2 mac mini to process your transcoding. If you are watching the movies locally (on the same network) then consider a different client software that does not rely on transcoding.

[aggie113]

external USB drives that are 12+TB are pretty affordable.  They may not be 7200rpm drives, but speed is less important when it only acts as a bridge.

[OddOod]

Welcome to the forums!
You could use something like Tdarr to automate your transcodes during times which you aren't using the PC.
That being said, I am a fan of dedicated hardware doing dedicated things. I have a Virtualization server (Unraid) for all my docker and VM needs, then I have a separate NAS and backup for said NAS (both Trunas) doing nothing but storage things

[aggie113]

If you're still looking at Synology, the price on this unit is pretty low.  I'm sure it will attract more bids towards the end, but I've been able to score some great deals on used Synology "upgrades" on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/286401597423