Best nas hard drive for plex For Plex storage, I’d use shucked drives, NAS/Enterprice. or you can go with more durable versions with four drive bays. Benny Hansen says: 17th January 2023 at 8:41 am. Either will work fine with Plex. The best part of UnRaid is the ease and versatility of adding more drives. The Synology is known for making the best NAS for Plex server that is affordable and usable for small businesses. Use a hard drive rated for NAS usage and not just an off the shelf computer hard drive. If you want to use a dedicated SSD for Plex only then you have to configure Plex to use a different location for the Plex Media Server folder. 4-5 drives with 14-16TB drives which seem currently to be on the economical side would be 40-60TB of storage or 2-3000 of your high end movies. PROBLEMS WITH HOME NAS EXPANDABILITY. That said, they are expensive when not on sale. although most of the specifications of Synology NAS drives are unrelated to Plex, below I have picked up the hardware specifications of the RS422+ that are relevant to Plex: CPU: AMD Ryzen R1600, Dual Core, 2. Attached to that NAS is an expansion DX513 with an additional 2 WD Red 4TB drives in SHR (essentially RAID1). That's a Direct Area Server vs a Network Area Server. The Asustor AS5202T NAS for Plex comes The AS5402T has the best hardware in this segment, and the Intel-powered NAS is a stellar choice if you need a Plex NAS with transcodes, dual 2. Hard disks designed for NAS use include more Network-attached storage (NAS) 3. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the top hard drives that are tailored to meet the specific requirements of Plex users, ensuring optimal streaming quality and These terms are key to understanding how to select the best NAS hard drive in 2024. As a NAS for Plex, it’s everything you could ever ask for. Best NAS Hard Drive in 2025 (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) 4. Here are instructions for Windows. However, the most important point in your The pros of this NAS include the fact that the hard drive space is fully optimized for the NAS purposes, meaning increased efficiency and better utilization of available disk space on the NAS. The technology behind network-attached storage has evolved dramatically in recent years and has far surpassed the simple ‘file and folder hard drive over the internet’ image that many associate it with. NAS is basically a server, DAS is basically an external Hard Drive enclosure I really like having a seperate seed box so cheers to A Guide to the Best 10GbE NAS Drives to Buy Right Now. 0-88TB, 4-Bays, 2x PCIe Gen 3 M. Top NAS. 5-inch hard drives are designed for enclosures and servers. It houses an Intel Core i3-8100T processor, which is ideal for the transcoding of 4K movies, and there are eight drive Best Hard Drives for a Small Rackmount NAS – WD Red Pro. The WD Diskless My Cloud Pro Series PR4100 is a very interesting choice if you’re looking for the best NAS for Plex and transcoding, as it offers an The number of drive bays is the first decision you need to make. Best (non-Transcoding) Plex Solution. I'm kind of deciding between a small 2-bay station with a couple of 10TB (or so) drives vs. ) and they've been pretty reliable. The 16TB Seagate external USB drives usually contain Seagate Exos drives. With your 48 TB, you'd get 36 TB usable with a 12 TB parity drive. [VIDEO] How to Install Plex on a UGREEN NAS [COMMENT] I’m pretty happy with my DXP4800 plus as far as I use a Synology NAS (DS214Play) with 2 WD Red 4TB drives in RAID1. Best NAS Hard Drive. 5-2. Is there any way to do this without having to format the drives and lose the data? Only some NAS will be capable of good performance when transcoding 720p type content. That’s why it’s important to choose hard drives specifically designed for NAS devices as they are built to withstand heavy usage and last longer than regular hard drives. If you’re hunting for hard drives to park in your Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, you’ve come to the right place. 2 SSD slots for storage pools, caching, and even an intelligent proprietary tiering system, QTier. Drives are mechanical so failures can happen, it’s always good to have backups if you have data you don’t want to loose in the event of a failure. I’ve spent years poring over detailed lines in data sheets to bring you the best NAS hard drives and For the storage, you can go with either external, USB attached drives or with a NAS. I opted for the Toshiba NAS drives (specifically the N300, which is a bit dated now) instead of the Enterprise a few things on this because I think that "the best" depends a lot on the context you are in. just a single 16-20tb external drive (like a WD Easystore or something). Some of the best options include the Synology DS720 Use a hard drive rated for NAS usage and not just an off the shelf computer hard drive. This hardware The Best NAS Hard Drive Buyers Guide; The Best 6-Bay or RAID 6 NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 8-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; Best NAS for Photography – 2023/2024; I would like to buy a NAS for 4k plex streaming (only require 1 single stream at the same time) but the main issue is that it needs to be a SILENT one. 6-3. Seeing this thread makes me extremely jealous. Benny Hansen says: Direct Attached Storage (DAS) or a NAS for PLEX? Help It's time for me to upgrade the hardware on the HTPC and home network after a hard drive failure on the HTPC and loosing 5 TB of data. The SHR-1 usable space formula is the sum of all the drives WD Blue 8TB is a CMR drive and just as good as any NAS drive. To speed things up, we make use of Memory (RAM). You can run Plex in either a VM or a docker. But I'd avoid any consumer grade hard drives 8TB and under: Its hard to say if NAS drives are worth it without knowing the price difference and the exact drives your looking at. This mainly means network attached storage servers. I have external hard drives hooked up to my Plex server. The entry-level for hardware transcoding in its most budget Best Transcoding Plex NAS. I’ve compiled a list of the best Whether you build your Plex server from a NAS unit or one of the many alternatives, you need to buy some storage devices to hold all your video files. Unless you want some NAS specific drives (like IronWolf, WD Reds and alike) for longevity and reliability, you can simply grab these and they should work just fine. Due to the 5 hard drive bays and built-in M. Jump to Latest 1-WD Red 8TB NAS Internal Hard Drive - 5400 RPM Class, SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MBSeagate 2-IronWolf 8TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD – 3. 04. My budget is in the range of $250-$300, and I'm looking for a drive with a capacity of 12-20TB. Some people need the cheapest possible hard drives whereas others prefer the most reliable hard drives. It’s software that is designed for a PC. So today, while I was compressing some mkv’s to my external hard drive where all of my media is stored, we had a power outage. Best Plex NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 2-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best 4-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best NAS Hard Drive Buyers Guide; The Best 6-Bay or RAID 6 NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 8-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; Best NAS for Photography – 2023/2024; Best 10GbE NAS – 2023/2024; Best NAS for Surveillane – 2023/2024; NAS (Best 8K Plex NAS) QNAP TVS-h874 $2000-2500-3000 – Buy Here on Amazon – Buy HERE on B&H (Best Hardware) this petite little four-bay device supports up to the latest 24TB hard drives and even has a couple of PCIe Gen 3×1 M. Best Features: Has storage space up to 5 TB; Data Transfer rates up to 160 MB/s Use a hard drive rated for NAS usage and not just an off the shelf computer hard drive. With this system now well over 2. 2 Synology DS918++, Intel J3455 1. Western Digital My Passport - Best NAS with Plex Server for portable WiFi. With a 7200 RPM spindle speed and 256MB cache, read and write speeds on the IronWolf Pro drives are super-fast. QNAP TS-464. 2 2280 NVMe SSD slots, it enables you to fill up a substantial amount of storage while also Also: The best M. Together with the drives you will be over your budget though. Using these drives is crucial to ensuring data stored on the NAS server is protected against loss. I was thinking the purple might be a good option, but then wondered if the ~20 hours of idle time every day might be bad for it since those are designed for constant use. Ryzen R1600 CPU, 4-32GB DDR4 ECC Memory, 2x 1Gbe Port, 10GbE Optional Upgrade Slot, 3-5yr Warranty NAS hard drive is designed for systems running 24/7. The NAS Compatibility List should help you figure out which processor a particular NAS model has. The TS-233 packs some nice features into its stylish white enclosure, including two hot-swappable drive bays, a quad-core CPU, and a pair of USB ports for connecting external drives. They work fine, the warranty may be a pain, but they are on sale for crazy prices pretty often. I'd stay away from greens because the spin-down can affect video playback - I've had issues What is Native Hardware Transcoding and Why is it Different to Plex? Native Hardware transcoding is available when you are using a NAS drive that features a transcoding engine for inverted graphics within its CPU, as well as first-party (NAS supplied) software to handle the media at each end. I mapped as a drive in Windows without any issue and I’m able to access the drive in Linux, but Plex can’t. They're built for it, they have good warranties, and they aren't as loud as the Ironwolfs. 3 6TB ST6000NM0044? It looks like it could be a really good deal at ~$85 each new. The difficulty of the process of expanding can be as simple as adding another drive, or as difficult as buying a whole new NAS filling that with new drives and Why We Picked It. With NAS hard Top 3 NAS Drives for Plex Media Server for £1000. I have a few questions regarding this: Currently, I have the 8TB drive mapped as a network drive on my Windows 10 (main) PC. 11%), the 16TB WDC WUH721816ALE6L0 (AFR 0. in short, yes, exFAT is just fine for your 8TB Plex volume assuming that movies and television shows and the like are the primary thing you will store on that volume. Buy on Amazon. Media is stored on a Synology DS918+ NAS. From the phone in your pocket taking photos at 10MB+ a go, movies arriving at 4K Ultra HD HDR as an excepted scale and internet connectivity easily breaking into greater than gigabit speeds, we are fast approaching a point where most devices (not just NAS drives) that For questions and comments about the Plex Media Server. I actually have a DAS and not a NAS. Best NAS Servers for Plex. NAS drives usually cost slightly more than normal PC hard drives, but it’s worth spending the extra because they’re designed to run constantly and tend to have a better warranty. Back to the top ⤴; Exactly, I mount it as a network drive for accessing on external machines although I just run Plex server directly on the NAS as I don’t need any server side transcoding. The storage devices you buy may depend on your server setup, but in Synology DS920+ is the best overall NAS for Plex out there. Regardless of what path you take, the most expensive component will probably be hard drives. I'm also not comfortable using a NAS. Ryzen R1600 CPU, 4-32GB DDR4 ECC Memory, 2x 1Gbe Port, 10GbE Optional Best Plex NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 2-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best 4-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best NAS Hard Drive Buyers Guide; I literally had to Jerry rig using always-sync to back up the entire Our favorite NAS for Plex is the impressive QNAP TS-464 and its sheet of specifications. Excellent 4K transcoding, 8GB of RAM, SSD slots for cache acceleration, and you can expand its performance via its PCIe expansion slot. Best Plex NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 2-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best 4-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best NAS Hard Drive Buyers Guide; The Best 6-Bay or RAID 6 NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 8-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; Best NAS for Photography – 2023/2024; Best 10GbE NAS – 2023/2024; Best NAS for Surveillane – 2023/2024; NAS . Top picks Honestly no difference in performance. As a NAS server is designed to run 24/7, you can't use a standard hard drive. 8-Bays have typically been the jumping-off point The best part about this hard drive is that it works with both Windows and Mac devices, and delivers a data transfer speed of up to 160MBps which is great. Most external hard drives, and most cheap, low-end desktop grade drives are SMR. Best Synology NAS for Plex Sever. And even then it would be on I've had good luck with WD RED PLUS for my PLEX SERVER. Being able to easily add drives is dependent on how you have the drives on the NAS setup. Western Digital is the leader in NAS HDD and SSD internal and external wireless drives and the best NAS for Plex Server Many WD and Seagate external USB enclosures contain drives similar or equivalent to their NAS and enterprise drives. A Guide to the Best 4-Bay NAS Drives to Buy Right Now For professionals moving from cloud storage to private servers, 4-Bay NAS devices have become the go-to choice in 2024. 2-22TB, 7200RPM, 128-512MB Cache, 300TBW, 5yr Warranty $85-429 Now we move onto the Rackmount NAS compatible hard drives, we have to start looking squarely at two main factors – The QNAP TS-264 may be small, but it truly is a force to reckon with. The DiskStation DS920+ made its debut back in June If you want a reliable, high-performance NAS hard drive, the Seagate IronWolf Pro 8TB is a fantastic choice. I'm about to buy an 1-bay NAS for my small home network and I would like to know what kind of HDD should I choose if I want to play 4k content through Plex server / player on my 65" Android TV. That redundancy means your library will be intact even if one of the drives in your array Top NAS. NAS and Plex aren't exactly 100% overlap. How would I be able to run the Plex server from a different computer if all my files are stored on the hard drives inside the NAS? Wouldn't I have to run the server using the OS in the NAS itself? Considering supply of the 920+ is starting to dwindle then I think the 423+ is the best way to go for a synology plex server, I know you have you can format with a smaller cluster size to alleviate that issue to some extent, but ideally exFAT will be for large files. Thankfully, there are drives designed just for NAS use, and I've rounded up the best hard drives for NAS in a The Best NAS Hard Drive Buyers Guide; The Best 6-Bay or RAID 6 NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 8-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; Best NAS for Photography – 2023/2024; A Guide to the Best Plex NAS Drives to Buy Right Now In 2024, if you’re considering a Synology or QNAP NAS drive for setting up a Plex Media Server, it’s probably because you’re Hey guys, Looking for some guidance on this as over the years I have just kept adding another Nas drive to my gaming computer for Plex. I have four internal hard drives in the Plex Server and six hard drives each in a powered enclosure attached via USB. In general, selecting a NAS hard drive is the most important thing. It’s our pick for the If you have your PLEX in a NAS, it will have to be a HIGH end NAS (powerful CPU) to make any difference on a 5,400 RPM drive vs a 7,200 RPM. Rather than one large disk though, maybe look into Which WD HDD is best for single drive Plex server storage? Discussion Share Add a Comment. When I start filling out the second volume of 4TB, I can add an NAS rated hard drives from a reputable brand should serve you well. If you're concerned about drive failure, The most modern and regularly updated NAS systems will support the very latest 20TB NAS hard drives (such as the Seagate Ironwofl 20TB and WD Red 20TB) Those are the three best Plex NAS drives available right now at the end of 2022 and going into 2023. Good evening! I have a Plex Server running on a Windows 11 machine with an i3 CPU and a 1070 GPU. the best hard drive for storage is TWO hard drives for storage. e But I'll take this opportunity to introduce you to an important factor: CMR vs SMR hard drives. If using a multi drive NAS and/or downloaders, get CMR drives. RAM plays a valuable role by providing fast storage to cache data, improving performance. The best value drives for a NAS are shucked WD Easystore/Elements. More so paying for drives rated for NAS environment and warranty. Understanding the Plex Media Server Tests of the Synology DS423+ NAS. sendel · 58 minutes ago Discussing storage solutions for plex or best NAS for 4K streaming is a topic unto itself and needs a dedicated article. 2 NVMe SSD slots. REPLY ON YOUTUBE. Might be Interesting: Best Hard Drives for NAS Best NAS for Plex in Different Nominations Synology DiskStation DS218+ — Best Synology NAS for Plex. It's got four drive bays for plenty of storage capacity, a rather reliable Intel Celeron processor, and plenty Hi, I have a RPi 5 and added an external drive which has the files that I want to add to Plex, but when I try to create a library, I can’t navigate to it or force plex to see it. I am working on building a NAS for media backups and a plex server, and have been spending quite a few hours comparing drives for it. 14%), Best Plex NAS. With the right hard drive, Plex users can build a robust media library and access their content effortlessly, enhancing their overall entertainment experience. This 20 TB NAS can juggle up to 550 TB of data per year with I'm currently in the market for a reliable HDD to use with my Plex media server and for general file storage. You set the Transcoder temporary directory in Plex settings. I would go for nas drives because the cost difference is not that much and you can get a minimum (if the drive is not defective/damaged) of 5 years non stop use. Having a bunch of low end drives in the same chasis is not advisable because the vibrations the disks produces will reduce the lifespan of the disks. What is more accessible than a WiFi device you can pick up and plug in anywhere for stronger data transfers than a wireless NAS SSD or HDD drive. 3Ghz CPU, 4GB Memory, NVMe SSD Slots, BTRFS, SHR, 3yr Warranty, Seagate Ironwolf NAS Hard Drive The Top 3 NAS Drives for a Plex Media Server, for under £100 including For questions and comments about the Plex Media Server. Some of the best NAS solutions for Plex are: The Synology DS920+ is the finest NAS server for Plex. Something with 4-6 bays for drives. Important Terms to Understand in Plex/NAS/Multimedia that will make the DS423+ NAS Plex Tests Easier to Understand. I figure that a lightly loaded CPU with help to ease fan load. I have three drives: a 512GB m. A Networked attached storage (NAS) is, as the name suggests, a hardware that can be accessed through the network which requires something Basically assuming you hook up 3-4 hard drives to your 920+ and turn on SHR, you get some redundancy and all 4 devices appear as a single slab of hard drive space to your Plex AND what you can do is have mixed drive sizes AND the moment you want to replace one unit with a larger unit, you simply remove the old unit, shove the new unit into the Best Hard Drive for Plex Server. simple storage—enough to house all those movies for Plex or files for backup—but there’s a symphony of specs that sing in harmony: from RPMs that dictate speed to an When managing a Plex Media server the ultimate goal is provide a consistent, buffer-free streaming experience to your users. Each drive is a different size (2tb, 6tb and 8tb). If multiple users are trying to stream content from this drive will the 5400RPM speed of the drive bottleneck the system? The 12 tb Toshiba enterprise ones from go hard drive seem good as well (though cost a bit more). My Emby server has been on UnRaid for almost a year with zero problems. These will be 5400 RPM NAS style hard drives. I use 4 bay drive enclosures like this Wow. 5 Gigabit Ethernet ports, an HDMI port that lets you Best Hard Drives for a Small Rackmount NAS – WD Red Pro. Reply. These terms are essential for choosing the best NAS hard drive for your system in the context of 2023/2024. Unlike a regular hard disk drive, NAS capacity translates into the amount of data your NAS can hold, which is determined by the number of bays and also the drive-size(s) you can afford. Best Software 4-Bay NAS Drive – Synology DS923+ NAS. The only good way is to shuck them and put the drives into your NAS connected to In the end building your own will be cheaper, but you're exchanging price for effort. I'm a fan of UnRaid. For internal drives, Google the model number (SKU) + CMR, there are a couple of sites that maintain a database of drives. Mounted the drives and plex is happy. Top 1% Rank by The most modern and regularly updated NAS systems will support the very latest 20TB NAS hard drives (such as the Seagate Ironwofl 20TB and WD Red 20TB) Those are the three best Plex NAS drives available right now at the end of 2021 and going into 2022. 0GHz 4MB processor that I am looking at getting some 8TB hard drives to put my Plex content on. Discover top hard drives for Plex servers, including WD Red Pro, Seagate IronWolf, and Toshiba MG07ACA, for reliable, high-performance media storage. The 10TB external drives (that can be shucked) just simply come cheaper than buying internal drives. Fast and reliable, the Seagate IronWolf Pro series of NAS hard drives easily take the top spot on our ranking. 7. Next, we’ll explore different NAS environments and recommend the best drives for each. As you may well know NAS servers will turn the drives into a combined storage volume with a 1 or more drive failure protection. It has an Intel CPU for transcoding, a HDMI port for direct streaming, and expansion support. 8 drive (hard drive or SSD) NAS systems are where you start to see the NAS brands flex their muscles a bit. Fortunately, Plex server is already running on my Shield TV (yay!), but I want to shuck the enclosure off of the 8TB WD easyStore that's plugged in via USB and put it inside the hosting box to run via SATA. I started with a small 4-bay synology server for data and hosted my Plex server in a small NUC pc. Buying a NAS for a Plex media server can be a very intimidating purchase. How Well Does the Synology DS920+ NAS Perform as a Plex Media Server? Is the Synology DS920+ worth it as a Plex Media server NAS in 2023? It's a valid question. First, lets look at some stats. Each drive bay can usually handle a 20TB hard drive, though newer NAS will be able to utilize the Bottom line: The best value NAS enclosure for Plex goes to the DS920 from Synology. Best Plex NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 2-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best 4-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best NAS Hard Drive Buyers Guide; The Best 6-Bay or RAID 6 NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 8 The Best NAS Hard Drive Buyers Guide; The Best 6-Bay or RAID 6 NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 8-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; Best NAS for Photography – 2023/2024; Best NAS Options for Plex Several NAS devices are suitable for running Plex, depending on the user’s specific needs and budget. They are similar to the Red Series to some extent. I feel like installing plex for responsiveness to libraries What is the best NAS for a 1080p Plex Media Server? Choosing the right Network Attached Storage device for your perfect Plex Media Server can be a rather intimidating and daunting process. My Seagate is SMR. Very few NAS will be able to do so for 1080p type content. 2 NVMe 2280, Dual Core AMD Emb. Look for NAS drives compatible with NAS-designed hard drives for better performance and lifespan. After you’ve selected your NAS, make sure you buy the best Hard Drive you can! Synology DS423+: Best Overall Synology NAS For Plex. Had to switch to a NAS with I think CMR specific drives because SMR (may have gotten those switched) kept failing within 6 months. i always use exFAT because all modern OS can read and write to the volume with no problems. Unraid has amazing docker/VM support (I run Plex, sonnar, tautulli, Jellyfin and game server docker containers), support for up to 30 drives, you can use mixed drive sizes, 2 parity drives, ssd cache drives, unlike unraid the files aren't striped so you can detach a drive and still read the data on it. Its processor is Intel Celeron J4125 and you get 4GB DDR4 RAM which you can easily upgrade to 8GB. Choosing the best hard drives for your network-attached storage (NAS) is incredibly important. Whether you're picking up one of the best NAS units from Synology, QNAP, ASUSTOR, or TerraMaster Bottom line: The QNAP TVS-672XT is the best NAS for Plex in our collection. 5-inch SATA drive engineered for 24/7 operation. The Seagate IronWolf Series is a family of hard drives designed for NAS (network-attached storage) devices. From the phone in your pocket taking photos at 10MB+ a go, movies arriving at 4K Ultra HD HDR as an excepted scale and internet connectivity easily breaking into greater than gigabit speeds, we are fast approaching a point where most devices (not just NAS drives) that Server Version#:Working on new build Player Version#: Im rebuilding my Plex environment (been up and running for a long time, just a fresh start). Related Page: NAS Devices and Limitations Related Page: NAS Compatibility List. Best Plex NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 2-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best 4-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best NAS Hard Drive Buyers Guide; I literally had to Jerry rig using always-sync to back up the entire NAS drive on a 9 hard drive pool on the Windows side REPLY ON YOUTUBE. Check Amazon Below for Current Prices/Stock. Synology's DiskStation DS923+ is the best 4-bay NAS in the market today. Don't get small drives! I don't have a lot of desk space for a big ol docking station with multiple bays, so I still need something that's space-efficient. You don’t want to get stuck with desktop-grade hard drives when you really need NAS drives, so Budget NAS for plex server use? NAS hardware 8-10 years, and define your use case for ‘acceptable quality), and that’ll map you to what is the ‘oldest’ and best NAS device to use If you use 4 identical hard drives, then the usable storage is 3 times the size of one. As excellent as the previous TerraMaster F5-422 – Best NAS for Plex; Asustor AS4002T – Best NAS budget storage expandability; Traditionally, most NAS devices relied on mechanical hard drives. 0- 216TB, 12-Bays, Ryzen 4-8 Core 3/5/7 CPU, 32-128GB DDR4 Dual Channel Memory, 2x Copper 10Gbe Ports, 2x 10Gbe SFP+, USB 3. Its NAS drives are famous for the DiskStation Manager software (DSM) that make devices incredibly accessible and versatile. The advantage of a NAS is that it can easily be configured to use RAID to protect against drive failure. I had a Synology and moved to a PC based NAS running Unraid and I love Unraid. as it strikes the perfect balance—offering redundancy and storage capacity in the 20-40TB range while minimizing hard drive noise, which is a significant factor for The 1520+ if you want more space. On top of that, Seagate also offers a 3-year warranty for this hard drive as well. The Synology DS423+ is the best Synology NAS for Plex because it has a processor that can handle 4K hardware transcoding, four drive bays that can store up to 64 TB of media, and two M. How many of us have decades of media in our homes? Somewhere between hard drives and USB that are full of cinematic enjoyment, collections of boxsets, music cluttering up CDs and hundreds of DVDs all over the place has led to most users sitting on hundreds or thousands of their favourite bits of media. Best Hard Drives for an Affordable RAID 6 Desktop 6/8-Bay NAS – Seagate Ironwolf (non-Pro) If you're serious about setting up a capable media server, the Synology DiskStation D920+ is an outstanding model. Synology DiskStation DS200+ NAS Why it made the cut: Streamlined data and media management. Data is getting big, like REALLY BIG. Best Semi-Pro Photography NAS Drive – Synology DS923+ NAS. Any If you can't afford any downtime, the Seagate IronWolf Pro is a hard-wearing 3. If you're talking about drives for replaceable media files, you don't need the highest end drives. NAS drives are better protected. You really don’t need NAS drives for PLEX. I'm at 4 hard drives now (6 TB, 2X 8 TB, a 14 TB and I just bought a 16 TB on sale a month ago but haven't A Guide to the Best 8-Bay NAS Drives to Buy Right Now If you have been looking at getting a NAS for your business, then I think it is safe to say that 8-Bay is where things get SERIOUS. It offers excellent performance and plenty of storage at a reasonable price. Seagate IronWolf Pro 20TB HDD. If it’s a plain-Jane standalone server with How to choose the best NAS external hard drive for Plex? Several factors affect the ability of a network attached storage (NAS) to comfortably run a Plex server like RAM, for example. 5" I bought on sale), and a 14TB external hard drive for media storage. However, with just one bay, all data is lost should the drive fail. Best Hard Drives for an Affordable RAID I'm currently in the market for a reliable HDD to use with my Plex media server and for general file storage. Backblaze (a prominent cloud storage provider) publishes their drive stats periodically as you can see here and here Best Performance Rackmount NAS for Plex – The QNAP TS-h1277XU NAS. e So I guess my question is what's a good nas for plex storage and the ideal hhd's for it? Would rather not break the bank as well and if anyone has better ideas for a storage solution, I'm all ears. I am wondering if anyone has any experience with the Seagate Constellation ES. Now I've bought this Seagate I mentioned way before I really got into the whole media server & data hoarding hobby, so I didn't know better. Best Plex NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 2-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best 4-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best NAS Hard Drive Buyers Guide; The Best 6-Bay or RAID 6 NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 8-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; Best NAS for Photography – 2023/2024; Best 10GbE NAS – 2023/2024; Best NAS for Surveillane – 2023/2024; NAS The Best NAS Hard Drive Buyers Guide; The Best 6-Bay or RAID 6 NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 8-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; Best NAS for Photography – 2023/2024; A Guide to the Best Plex NAS Drives to Buy Right Now In 2024, if you’re considering a Synology or QNAP NAS drive for setting up a Plex Media Server, it’s probably because you’re If you are using an SSD as your main system drive you don't have to do anything special with Plex. Best Plex NAS – 2023/2024; Recommended 2-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best 4-Bay NAS – 2023/2024; The Best Hello, I am speccing a NAS based on a 8x drives in a U-NAS 810* series chassis with ASRock Rack E3C236D2I and E3-1200 v6 CPU (probably 1240). There are variables that go into providing such an experience: CPU, RAM, GPU (transcoding), network A NAS is the ultimate upgrade to an external hard drive, storing multiple hard drive disks for tens or even hundreds of terabytes of data. My Mac From Cheapest to Best and Most Reliable Hard Drives for a NAS There is two kind of requests when choosing hard drives for the NAS. Open comment sort options In the end when it comes to hard drives, its very much a gut-feeling product for most people. Best NAS for Plex and Media Streaming: Asustor [Recommendations] Best NAS for Plex Server 1. 1Ghz; Embedded Top 3 NAS Drives for Plex Media Server for £2000. 2 SSDs of 2025: Expert tested and reviewed What is the best NAS device right now? Based on extensive testing, thorough research, comprehensive product review analysis, and expert Next, let’s quickly touch on how we measure how good/bad the Synology DS423+ NAS is for Plex Media Server. . Any thoughts? Thx in advance, A Guide to the Best 10GbE NAS Drives to Buy Right Now. The most modern and regularly updated NAS systems will support the very latest 20TB NAS hard drives (such as the Seagate Ironwofl 20TB and WD Red 20TB) Those are the three best Plex NAS drives available right now at the end of 2021 and going into 2022. Over the years the NAS Server market has exploded with numerous devices becoming available to home, small business and enterprise users and with such a large Top NAS. Specifications. Because it has four hard drive bays and two built-in M. I am looking to shuck the drives out and put them into something that would combine them into one large 16TB drive. e A Guide to the Best 4-Bay NAS Drives to Buy Right Now For professionals transitioning from cloud services to private servers, the 4-Bay NAS market is often the preferred starting point in 2023-2024. I don’t think it will let you just plug existing drives in and retain their data, you’d be better off starting afresh and copying across what you already have. Considering you don't believe you'll ever want/need more than 4tb of media, you don't need the metadata drive. This is an ideal NAS for Plex if you want to stream 4K content. Finally, choose features like media streaming or app support based on what you'll use the NAS drive for. My setup: Plex Media Server running on a Lenovo PC / Ubuntu 22. Capacities The most modern and regularly updated NAS systems will support the very latest 20TB NAS hard drives (such as the Seagate Ironwofl 20TB and WD Red 20TB) Those are the three best Plex NAS drives available right now at the end of 2021 and going into 2022. I got a Nas and was wondering where my m. For better and stable performance, please use dedicated NAS hard drives. You can shuck some WD external drives to go a bit cheaper. With sizes from 3TB up to as large as 20TB, any business should be well-serviced with this versatile HDD. 2 NVMe slots for SSD, you can have plenty of storage space and cache acceleration. With 8TB of space, it can handle a huge collection of photos, videos, documents, and more. In essence, investing in the best Hard Drives For Plex ensures a seamless and enjoyable media streaming experience without worrying about storage limitations or slow loading times. I used it for six months as my Plex server, and if you're interested in a new NAS, here's why you should upgrade. Lets say I have a variety of high bitrate content on one of theses drives. This will be a pure NAS, not a NAS loaded up with lots of services and Plex, etc, etc Top NAS. Best Hard Drives for a Small Rackmount NAS – WD Red Pro. For example, the WD Easystore and WD Elements used to contain very good WD Red drives, and now they have white label drives that are very similar to the Reds. I've got a drive flaking out, but UnRaid told me about it. My Plex server is running from a NAS, which is made from ONLY WD Red Pro drives. It boasts a Plex-friendly Intel Celeron J4125 Quad-Core 2. To me, Plex is simply not a good choice for a NAS. 2-22TB, 7200RPM, 128-512MB Cache, 300TBW, 5yr Warranty $85-429 Now we move onto the Rackmount NAS compatible hard drives, we have to start The TS-233 packs some nice features into its stylish white enclosure, including two hot-swappable drive bays, a quad-core CPU, and a pair of USB ports for connecting external drives. 5 years old, as well as the newer DS923+ NAS being released at the end of last year, is the DS920+ still The RS422+ is made up of a popular mid-range server CPU, DDR4 memory and supports Hard Drive and SSDs in SATA. 2-22TB, 7200RPM, 128-512MB Cache, 300TBW, 5yr Warranty $85-429 Now we move onto the Rackmount NAS compatible hard drives, we have to start looking squarely at two main factors – Best Hard Drive for Media Server: WD 1TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive: See On Amazon: Best Overall Hard Drive: Seagate Iron Wolf 3TB NAS Internal Hard Drive: See On Amazon: Best Nas Hard Drive for Plex: Seagate 16TB: See On Amazon: Best External hard drive for media center: Seagate Expansion 12TB: See On Amazon: Best External Hard The NAS supports media playback through its own apps or Plex Media Server, has dual hard drives that help save your data (RAID 1 drive mirroring), has four USB ports (including one on the front We spent the last few months testing out several of the best NAS drives for the home / home office user, to sort out the best across categories like Best Overall, Best Budget NAS, Best Media Best NAS For Plex : Reviews 1. Spend a little extra now and your plex will last longer. I have multiple libraries across two hard drives on a nas but I would like to combine two of the libraries pointing to separate hard drives into one library pointing to the separate drives while keeping all other libraries untouched. (Source: QNAP) The QNAP TS-464 is one powerful compact four-bay server. This wasn’t the most powerful or costly Synology NAS on our list, but the reviews cited that it was the most reliable, and that’s why the DS218+ made the spot. The Plex Media Server is smart software that makes playing Movies, TV Shows and other media on SMR might be okay in a single drive system that doesn't have constant writes from something like sonarr/radarr downloads. I've had so much bad luck and lost so much money trying to use Plex with external hard drives. Above is the name of the folder in each drive that Plex TV Show library is pointed at. Synology makes the best NAS for Plex media streaming, with its servers delivering reliable hardware backed by the best software in this category. thought it is always worth remembering that these systems typically have a refresh (i. The top spot goes to the Synology DiskStation DS220+, which is a 2-bay NAS solution An external hard drive is just that, it just stores data but still needs something that runs stuff. The Plex Media Server is smart software that makes playing Movies, TV Shows and other media on your computer simple. e I see green energy saving drives, red NAS drives, purple security/camera DVR drives, blue General purpose drives, and Black gaming drives. But I wanted to see other peoples recommendations. Any old 5400rpm HDD will do for streaming. Most of the data can be "re-acquired" but it will be difficult gathering the 1 TB of HiDef music video collection and 1 TB of HiDef DTS and Dolby demo videos This article looked at the best hard drives for Synology NAS devices. Sort by: Best. I'm using 4TB NAS drives (WD red, etc. A single-bay NAS (or even a simple external hard drive) is fine for users who only want to stream media, create basic backups, or have fast local shared storage. 5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 256MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage . 2 drive would give me the most benefit. 2 boot drive, a 2tb drive for metadata/backup of the boot drive (cheap Silicon Power 2. and I had people in different parts of the world accessing my Plex server at all times of day. Best budget NAS for Plex. Next, we’ll examine different NAS hardware environments and recommend the best NAS hard drive for each. I only ever direct play and only to my Apple TV4K in my living room. My budget is in the range of $250-$300, and I'm looking for a drive Investing in the best NAS hard drives for Plex ensures seamless streaming and reliable data management, ultimately enhancing your entertainment system’s overall The three most reliable hard drives in 2021, according to Backblaze's data, are the 6TB Seagate ST6000DX000 (AFR 0. This somehow corrupted my drive. A NAS like the ones made by Synology and QNAP are designed to build RAID arrays from multiple hard drives. I'd like to play 2160p movies but I'm not sure if I should need special HDD for the optimal data-rate. should I, set it up as a cache drive or primary drive and install plex on it. It supports 4K at 30FPS with the usual host of codecs Seagate IronWolf 6TB NAS - $150 - Seems like a good price and has great ratings Seagate BarraCuda 8TB Internal Hard Drive - $170 - This is for "compute" but offers more storage for a little more money. $424 at Amazon. The most modern and regularly updated NAS systems will support the very latest 20TB NAS hard drives (such as the Seagate Ironwofl 20TB and WD Red 20TB) Those are the three best Plex NAS drives available right IMO the best NAS hard drive are WD Red Pros. wihai sujc nqnmc tiynt olttsat qhkgms jajc zhxte qer pwr