Network-attached storage (NAS) is simply the ticket for storing and streaming your personal movies, music, and digital images round the home and even the world over. It will be similar to Spotify, YouTube, or Netflix, besides with your personal media.
NAS can also be immensely helpful for backing up and synchronizing the information in your computer systems and cellular gadgets. Backing as much as native storage is way sooner than counting on a cloud service comparable to DropBox or OneDrive, and the identical goes for restoring an unintentionally deleted file or recovering from a crashed system.
It’s additionally straightforward to arrange a NAS field to perform similar to these cloud providers, enabling entry from anyplace on the earth. In truth, NAS field builders have taken to calling their merchandise “private clouds” in an effort to make the idea extra acquainted to shoppers.
Updated July 20, 2020 so as to add our Asustor AS5202T (Nimbustor) NAS field assessment. This extremely energy field options 2.5GbE ports that may be aggregated to realize knowledge charges as much as 5Gbps. It additionally has what it takes to be a robust media streamer, together with a 2GHz Intel Celeron processor, 2GB of DDR4-2400 reminiscence, and HDMI 2.0a, so you possibly can join it on to your 4K TV. And it’s inexpensive sufficient to turn into our high choose within the mainstream media-streaming NAS field class.
To get the most effective of each worlds, most bins will sync with cloud storage providers, offering one other layer of knowledge redundancy and disaster-recovery choices. If you expertise a catastrophe at house—a flood, fireplace, or earthquake—you’ll a minimum of have the peace of thoughts that comes with understanding your knowledge is safely backed up at one other bodily location.
A phrase on pricing: Not all NAS field producers additionally construct laborious drives, so lots of them promote these bins “unpopulated;” i.e., with none laborious drives put in. When you’re evaluating costs, be sure to know whether or not or not the drivers are included. If you’re not accustomed to formatting a tough drive or establishing an array of drives, you may discover it extra handy to purchase a NAS field that’s populated and able to go proper out of the field.
Best NAS field for media streaming
The price ticket is intimidating, however there isn’t a higher resolution for streaming media, together with 4K UHD video on to a sensible TV through HDMI 2.0. This field may even make a super Roon server, due to its capability to help an SSD for the Roon Core along with internet hosting a pair of 3.5-inch laborious drives in your media recordsdata. If you’ve got the community infrastructure to take full benefit of it, you’ll have the ability to switch recordsdata in a flash due to its help for 10-gigabit ethernet. On high of all that, the chassis is totally passively cooled for near-silent working.
Best mainstream NAS field
The two-bay Asustor Nimbustor 2 (mannequin quantity AS5202T) knocked our socks off with its price-to-performance ratio. Selling for simply $299 on the time of our assessment, it boasts 2GbE ports that help hyperlink aggregation, a quick Intel Celeron CPU, 2GB of DDR4 reminiscence, and an HDMI 2.0a port, so you possibly can join it on to a 4K TV and stream all of your favourite archived motion pictures. This one will likely be laborious to beat.
How we examined
Speaking of testing, right here’s how we benchmarked them. Each bins was mapped underneath Windows 10 on a sooner Core i7-3770 system with NVMe SSDs after which benchmarked with CrystalDiskMark 5. Additionally, backups of 40GB of knowledge had been carried out to examine real-life throughput towards the benchmark. We streamed 1080p—and the place doable, 2160p—video recordsdata to a number of consumer gadgets, together with two second-generation iPads, the take a look at PC, two Android telephones, and a Windows Phone. A DLNA media server was used at any time when doable; when it wasn’t, we used Plex Media server and the related consumer app.
Each of the bins reviewed right here proved able to delivering knowledge quick sufficient to stream 10-bit colour, 2160p (4K UHD) video at 60 frames per second. A field that may try this, can simply stream 720p and 1080p video to a number of gadgets. That implies that streaming efficiency was mainly a non-issue for these drives, although we’ve famous the place a specific field was excellent.
Adequately quick backup and synchronization was one other baseline that every of the bins met, although some had been significantly sooner than others. The WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra, Netgear ReadyNAS 212, ZyXel NAS520, and TerraMaster F2-220 all topped 100MBps writing knowledge sequentially. The QNAP TS0251a, Seagate Personal Cloud, and Synology DS216play didn’t. The Seagate, at such a low worth, was no shock, however QNAP and Synology have a rep for pace. These are usually not the corporate’s quickest bins.
Regardless, solely preliminary backups or synchronization are typically time consuming, so subsequent partial backups will likely be comparatively fast even on the slower bins. Each of them ought to deal with backups for 4 or 5 PCs and all of the cellular gadgets you possibly can throw at them.
Features to search for when searching for a NAS field
There are generic options you’ll discover on something desirous to name itself a NAS field nowadays, together with: help for an administrator and a number of customers, help for SMB (Windows) and AFP (Apple) community protocols, and a configuration interface accessed through a Web browser. Nearly all NAS bins are based mostly on some type of Linux and most provide a plug-in, or app structure so as to add much less widespread options.
But there’s an array of options that adjust in high quality and abundance that it’s best to examine earlier than you make your resolution.
Backup You can all the time map your NAS field as native drive and again as much as it the way in which you’d a USB drive, however most NAS bins have options which are significantly extra highly effective and automatic. Look for FTP for easy backups, TimeMachine help for backing up Macs, and Rsync for syncing with different NAS bins. Some producers provide their very own proprietary server/consumer app options, comparable to QNAP’s QSync.
ZyXelCard reader An SDHC or comparable card card reader on the entrance of the NAS field will be helpful for copying media recordsdata to the field from cameras or recorders.
Cloud service connectivity Like backup, having the ability to sync your recordsdata with on-line providers comparable to DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, et al is tremendous helpful and permits entry to your recordsdata if you don’t have an web connection.
DLNA media server Nearly all PCs and most multimedia gadgets can play media streamed out of your NAS field through DLNA, though they could require a consumer app to take action. Nearly each NAS field comes with a DLNA server nowadays, however examine the one you’re shopping for to make certain.
Dual ethernet ports A NAS field that helps port aggregation (i.e., utilizing a number of ethernet ports to ship and obtain knowledge) will ship considerably greater throughput over your community—however provided that they’re linked to a router that helps the identical characteristic, and people are uncommon within the shopper market (Netgear’s Nighthawk X10 is without doubt one of the few). Aggregating ports utilizing a router that’s not able to it would diminish throughput.
QNAPGigabit ethernet You can again up and stream 1080p to a few gadgets over 10/100 ethernet with no downside. Gigabit ethernet will help extra and it’ll guarantee clean streaming of 4K UHD (2160p) video, to not point out sooner backups. But each element in your community should be gigabit succesful—the NAS field, the router, the computer systems, and any switches within the knowledge path—should additionally help gigabit ethernet, too. Be certain to make use of CAT5e or greater ethernet cable, too.
Multiple drive bays Two bays can help you mirror two drives (RAID 1) to guard your knowledge through redundancy (RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Discs). Alternatively, you possibly can connect a USB drive to maintain the field backed up. How necessary this characteristic is is dependent upon how necessary the information you retailer on the drive is. A NAS field with 4 or extra bays will allow you to run extra refined arrays, comparable to RAID 5.
Plex Media Server Because sure corporations comparable to Apple don’t help DLNA, Plex has stepped in with its personal streaming resolution and consumer apps for each cellular machine and working system within the universe ((nicely, it definitely appears that manner). Those shoppers it doesn’t help can nonetheless play media from inside a browser. Plex is slick and practically common, however it’s not as clear as DLNA.
Populated or unpopulated Consumer-oriented NAS bins from Seagate and WD usually embrace drives; manufacturers concentrating on fanatics, small companies, and the enterprise sometimes don’t. Populated bins are largely a comfort for individuals who aren’t comfy mounting and formatting drives (it’s a snap, actually).
Quick-copy button A button on the entrance of the NAS field that shortly copies media recordsdata from USB or a card slot will be helpful when you’re continually off-loading images and video from you digital camera or recorder—supplied you permit your field in an simply accessible location.
Remote entry All NAS bins enable distant entry to your recordsdata, however some make it simpler by permitting you to attach by means of the corporate’s internet portal, and/or robotically configuring your router with the suitable port-forwarding data.
SynologyUSB You’ll be hard-pressed to discover a NAS field with no USB port for loading or saving/backing up recordsdata. But USB 3.0 is quicker, and a number of ports permits including gadgets comparable to printers, webcams, and even the TV tuners that some bins help.
Video transcoding Many NAS bins make use of CPUs that provide hardware-assisted video transcoding; that’s, altering the scale and bit charges of the unique video earlier than streaming it. This can reduce the pressure on vacation spot gadgets comparable to telephones that don’t have the horsepower to do it on their very own. Note that transcoding could not work through DLNA, however solely with the playback apps that some NAS distributors provide.
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