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I have been a technology journalist for almost 30 years and have covered just about every kind of computer gear—from the 386SX to 64-core processors—in my long tenure as an editor, a writer, and an advice columnist. For almost a quarter-century, I worked on the seminal, gigantic Computer Shopper magazine , aka the phone book for PC buyers, and the nemesis of every postal delivery person. I was Computer Shopper's editor in chief for its final nine years, after which much of its digital content was folded into PCMag.com. I also served, briefly, as the editor in chief of the well-known hardcore tech site Tom's Hardware.
Most NAS devices can also act as email, database, and virtual private network servers. You can use them for BitTorrent, to host CMS, CRM, and e-commerce software, or as DVRs for networked security cameras. Although that flexibility is great, it can also make some NAS devices confusing to use. Each NAS has its own manufacturer-specific version of Linux, and some are more approachable than others. Usually, the user has the option to reconfigure the drives to gain the capacity of the second drive, if desired.
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Cloud services are still far from being ideal and will lag even with a really fast Internet. So far, a fast and reliable way out that also allows saving some money if compared to cloud storage subscription, is to build your own server at your home. Is a distro of specifically built for virtualized cloud operations to power shared hosting services, by allocating and limiting server resources to each tenant. Additionally, each tenant is partition from each other, in other to create a more secure environment.
Once set up, there's not much administration, and with it you get DNS and DHCP, both of which you need for your network anyway. Setting up a home server is fun and it is something you can do without prior experience. You can also find detailed instructions on various online forums such as Reddit and Quora.com.
FreeNAS: Enterprise-Grade RAID Support
We've also featured best Linux laptops as well as How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops. It’s easy to use and includes 8TB of storage, but the EX4100 is available in models that run up to 24TB if you need that extra capacity. Our journalists combine independent research with over-the-top testing to save people time, energy and money when making buying decisions.
As an avid photographer, he is acutely aware of the importance of backing data to a secure and easily accessible location. He selected only NAS drives he would personally consider buying and chose models based on the integrity of the brand, as well as the features and price point of the specific NAS. The Western Digital My Cloud EX2 is the NAS device we recommend to most people. It’s easy to use and includes most of the major features you want in a NAS at a reasonable price point. However, if you need more advanced capabilities and the support for a whopping 48TB of storage, the DS918+ is worth the considerable extra cost.
QNAP TS-451D2-4G
Perhaps, the greatest advantage of this server software is its ease of installation and use. What makes ClearOS home server software special, is this element of integration, but it also provides a user-friendly, easy-to-use, and intuitive web-based graphical user interfaces for fast, easy setup and installation. This home server software is an operating system that creates a centralized portal for easy access to your files and data. NAS devices that include hardware-level encryption are much faster than devices that rely on software. Encryption, which puts password protection on your data, is primarily important if you use your NAS to back up sensitive data that you don’t want anyone to access.
Synology has a demo version of the operating system available online; it’s worth checking out before you make your purchase. This guide also doesn’t cover NAS devices that can support 1080p on-the-fly video transcoding via Plex Media Server. Every NAS we recommend supports Plex, which works great if your box is connected directly to your display via HDMI or if your videos don’t need transcoding to stream to your devices. Many NAS devices can also manage decent on-the-fly transcoding with their own apps, but Plex transcoding currently requires a lot of CPU power, and none of the NAS models we tested were able to handle transcoding in Plex reliably. NAS boxes that can manage 1080p on-the-fly transcoding through Plex are too expensive for most people—you’re better off running Plex Media Server on a computer or on an Nvidia Shield TV and using the NAS for media storage.
It is rather difficult to choose a good home server software, because ideally, it should be easy to configure and secure enough to protect your personal data stored on it. We’ve installed various Linux server distros to assess their performance and the overall handling experience. We considered the hardware requirements, duration and ease of installation, documentation, and complexity of the learning curve. To select the best Linux server distro for yourself, you’ll first have to consider its complexity, the documentation and support it offers, and whether it has a steep or easy learning curve. If there’s an active community for discussion, there’s scope to learn more and get help easily. You’ll also want to look at how secure and stable the distro is, and find out whether it offers an easy out-of-box experience.
The Western Digital My Cloud EX2 is far from the most advanced NAS, the fastest, or the most versatile, but it wins its place as the best overall for most people because it’s affordable and hassle-free. The My Cloud Ex2 is pretty much plug-and-play and comes with 8TB of storage capacity, which is plenty for home use. It also comes with Plex Media Server built-in, a digital media player that makes it easy to stream your favorite media to all of your devices. If you make a one-time payment of $25 for Serviio Pro, you get access to the convenient MediaBrowser feature, which offers an intuitive browser-based UI that makes mobile, tablet, and PC viewing look equally good. MediaBrowser also offers easier access to subtitles and stream quality controls.
While this NAS only holds an included 8TB of total capacity, it'll set you back a pretty penny. However, keep in mind that for that price, you're getting a highly sophisticated NAS system with features just as robust as its physical durability. Aside from this folder-specific issue, the menus are beautiful, fast, and easy to navigate from every platform I have tested.
If you fear the unthinkable event of a fire and losing precious photos or replaceable or sensitive data stored on computers or external drives, the IoSafe Bay NAS eases those fears. Despite being a secondary feature, video streaming works fairly well on Subsonic, and thanks to the huge quantity of transcoding plugins available, you can play just about every codec. Subsonic Premium also allows you to watch videos from devices like a Chromecast, Sonos system, or an Android/iOS/Windows smartphone like the Pixel 4 . One of the first things you’ll notice about Plex is that its menus are beautiful on every platform. The menus are fast and easy to navigate, though I do run into some hiccups trying to browse my stupidly large music collection.
On the other hand, if set it up correctly, UMS will work with just about any streaming device. The keyboard and mouse interface for Kodi isn’t terrible but its menu layout is definitely designed to be controller-friendly. Regardless of how you navigate Kodi, it will automatically organize your content to give it a more polished look. You can set it to scrape metadata from your choice of sources to deliver synopses, reviews, movie posters, titles, and genre classification for your downloaded media. You can also install custom skins to give your media library its own unique feel. A USB Copy button sits on the front of the DS220+, but before you can use it you need to tell the NAS what the button should do when you press it.
Furthermore, you can also easily setup your OpenSUSE server with a read-only root partition and transactional updates by choosing the Transactional Server option. You can use most NAS devices to stream media, but some are better at it than others. Some NAS devices even include an HDMI port and a remote, so you can plug right into a television without using a media center PC or streaming device as a middleman. With that said, for 40TB of storage capacity, the IoSafe 1517 requires an investment.
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