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I am looking for a NAS that would accommodate the following things, some are essential, some are optional, here they are:

  1. It should hold 4 or 5 disks (this depends of the answer to the question I will ask at the end of my topic)
  2. It should be able to reuse my ARECA 1214 card that is in my Desktop. Since I will use the 4 disks that currently are in my desktop computer and want to reproduce the same setup (2 raid 1 grapes of 2 disks each, holding only data)
  3. It should be capable of handling CAT7 local network speeds (10Gbps)
  4. I need to be able to perform a backup of it's data using Acronis backup 11.5 or Acronis True Image 2019/20 (I currently use Acronis Backup 11.5 and I don't wish to change)
  5. I need to be able to install a plex server on it
  6. I need to be able to install retropie on it, and it should offer a better performance than my current Raspberry Pi3
  7. I'd like to connect it to my Samsung Smartthing hub (does this even exists ?)
  8. Bluethooth connection to bluethooth sound speakers ?

For the question I have, I want to make sure my datas are separated from my software, which mean I do not want to install retropie and plex on the disks that will hold my files (medias, games, my tax files etc etc ...). I suppose there's an OS on a NAS which has to be installed somewhere, so would I need a special fifth disk for that ?

I will also want to create symbolic links from the system disk to the data disks in order to save configuration settings (essentially: plex configuration, music player settings and library files, symbolic link for retropie to find roms etc ...)

Does the Holy Graal exists at a reasonable price ?

Thanks

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  • It sounds like you really need a server; A consumer or SOHO "NAS" product is normally an all-in-one solution with a preinstalled proprietary OS and HDD docks in a warranty-sealed enclosure. Those rarely have user-accessible PCIe ports for expansion cards, and you may not be able to install just any software on them (Although Plex Media Sever is a common feature provided by most NAS brands out there). A "NAS" is just a server built for mass storage and sharing those drives over the network which you could do with almost any PC/Server.
    – Romen
    Feb 27, 2020 at 19:32

1 Answer 1

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https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/series/home

  1. choose a 5-bay disk station model, they make up to 12 bays.
  2. don't know why you would want to do this, everything within a new NAS will provide everything needed to do RAID any which way you want.
  3. default is 1gbps, but you can purchase a synology specific add-in card providing 10gbps using SFP+.
  4. I don't know specifically about maintaining Acronis with Synology, but look through all the available Packages that synology offers for free with their DSM operating system. If there's not a specific Acronis package I'm sure you could find a subsitute to accomplish your needs
  5. not familiar with plex, but a quick google search of synology plex results in how to set up plex on synology which is promising.
  6. retropie, don't know what that is sorry, check through the synology packages; the Synology DSM operating system is based on debian and is fundamentally linux so you can possibly do things under the hood and make stuff work.
  7. based on above link, u can research into this. I have a samsung series 9 tv at home, I use Synology NAS at work, I'm pretty sure when i last pondered it I believe a Synology NAS with wifi module should be able to stream movies to my tv: instead of my tv connecting to netflix or amazon, I connect to the synology in my house and browse available stored movies via some synology package.
  8. There's an optional wifi module for these, and the diskstation carcass comes with couple usb ports for various external devices, I'd bet a dollar it can do bluetooth, check the specs on various models.

check out some [youtube] demo'ing synology capabilites, specifcally their "Storage Manager" part of the control panel within DSM which is where you can configure different RAID storage pools 9 ways from sunday.

@ a reasonable price... kinda.

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