I’m looking for some recommendations to improve my homelab. But first a bit of history to explain where I’m at and where I’m going. I currently have a super old Odroid C2 and a Raspberry Pi 4B. Everything is working great, but I’m missing two things in this setup: -The ability to transcode -A NAS Now a little bit about me, I’ve been using Linux for more than a decade, so I know how to do stuff, but when it comes to hardware, I have close to zero knowledge… So I was a bit surprised when I plugged 2 external HDDs on my rpi and it shutdown them after a few minutes. I found out that it was a power supply issue, so I did the first thing that came to my mind at this time: I bought another HDD with external power supply, to then find out that having a self powered and an external powered HDD would still fail (although it took longer).
So now I know my mistakes, I should have gone with a NAS instead. I checked the Synology NAS and found out NAS are actually quite expensive. I’m looking for at least 4 bays. I’ve been looking at some DIY NAS, but I’m a bit lost. I found some builds using a Jonsbo N2 that seems cool but at the same time I’m reading the fans are always running at full speed and I’m afraid that the power consumption will skyrocket.
So to sum up, I would like to have a NAS, ideally that can transcode and is low power. In the beginning, I wanted to have a NAS and a mini-PC that can transcode to replace my Odroid C2. But it seems the NAS are far more expensive than the mini PC. What are the recommendations here?
-Synology (Can it transcode?)
-A DIY (Jonsbo with an ITX board that can transcode)
-A DIY (Jonsbo with an ITX board just powerful enough for a NAS) + a mini PC
-Something else?
My budget was 500€, but it seems I won’t be able to do much below 700€
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System NAS Network-Attached Storage NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PSU Power Supply Unit Plex Brand of media server package RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SBC Single-Board Computer SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
11 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.
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How often do you need to transcode? If you’re streaming on your local network, you shouldn’t need to transcode. It’s only needed if you’re streaming while away from home.
Oh? This is weird, I have disabled transcoding on my rpi and I have some files that won’t play or the subtitles won’t load. I’m playing from my local network on an AndroidTV. I thought this was a file format issue and that transcoding would solve the issue
It’s possible it’s a file format issue. A video using a common format like H264 or H265 should work fine though. What format is the file and what codecs does it use?
Why don’t you get a server? You can pickup a old desktop for a fairly reasonable price and then install proxmox. From there you will need a pcie sata card and some drives. Create a new TrueNAS VM and pass though the sata card with virtio. You will have a virtual NAS and then you can install whatever you want in other VMs
Alternatively you could do just TrueNAS but if you are to the point you are worrying about transcoding you should go ahead and get going with virtualization.
I would have, but this is all about the power consumption. Getting an old PC, I’m afraid to be at least around 100W…
I use an Intel NUC with a recent(ish) Intel CPU that’s good for transcoding and not bad on power. Then a 4 bay DAS. You can either get something with hardware RAID or without and do it in software. I run Debian but another OS might be better for you.
Got any recommendations for a good DAS with a fair price, either new or used?
I’m looking for something to place three 22 TB drives in, eventually to be expanded in the future, so I’m looking for a DAS with at least three 3.5" bays.
I bought a used QNAP TR-004. Seems to do the job but I didn’t realise it doesn’t support migration or expansion which is a bummer. Expansion in particular, I bought 3 8tb drives so got an empty bay that will be awkward to fill when needed.
