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For people archiving years’ worth of home video or personal photographs, or film buffs with large collections, the performance shouldn’t be a problem. But anyone who has professional demands or who expects to be working on NAS-based files would be sacrificing useful speed just for the interface. The QNAP TS-251D-4G-US is a good choice if the DS220+ is out of stock or if you want to display media on a TV.
First we set up each NAS following its included install guide, if it had one. We tested ease of use by configuring user and group accounts, as well as file and folder access permissions. We checked to see if the NAS offered a secure cloud service for remote access, which would help us avoid having to mess with port forwarding and static IP addresses. We also looked at Android and iOS mobile apps for accessing and administering the NAS. If you prefer the Synology administrator interface and need four drive bays, opt for the Synology DiskStation DS420+ over the four-bay model from QNAP we recommend as our upgrade pick. Although this model was just as fast at reading files, it was a bit slower at writing them.
Home Server Set-Up
Plex transforms your library into a visual menu, adding metadata like cover art and IMDB results to enhance your viewing experience. All the apps are available one-click installers through Amahi's interface, but most of them cost a few bucks—but it's worth it for the convenience. All five of these NAS devices have similar Intel Celeron dual- or quad-core processors, so it’s no surprise that they performed similarly in our tests.
Besides the regular release called Leap, OpenSUSE also produces a rolling release version named Tumbleweed. Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. We've also featured a range of other useful Linux guides, such as What's the best Linux distro for beginners?
FreeNAS: Enterprise-Grade RAID Support
A NAS device is great if you need to store a lot of information and extra security for your data. A simple and cheap external hard drive might be a more economical choice if you don’t need to back up many photos, store sensitive data, or have little interest in building your library of media content for streaming. While this basic feature set may be enough for beginners, advanced users will certainly want to invest in Emby Premiere, which adds a laundry list of extra features. The most important feature of Emby Premiere is the ability to remotely access your media library, and from a larger selection of devices as well. The paid version of Emby also includes access to Emby apps for Linux, MacOS, iOS, Android, Fire TV, Xbox One, and PS4.
You can access Ubuntu Server using various ways, such as virtual machine installation, manual server installation, or automated server provisioning. One of the advantages of Amahi is it comes with one of the largest app stores, through which you can extend your server to do anything you so wish with one click. We compiled a list of some of the best home servers in the market to help you choose one, so keep reading.
Microsoft Windows 10
Learn the ropes of two of the most popular Linux distributions in the world, Red Hat Linux & CentOS, and use the in-demand skills to start a career as a Linux Server Admin or Linux Administrator. The course is presented by Jason Cannon, the author of Linux for beginners, and includes around 500 minutes of in-demand video and four downloadable resources. In most situations the choice will mostly be an issue of personal preference. Lifewire EV EVs have been around a long time but are quickly gaining speed in the automotive industry. They'll likely be smaller than anything you build yourself, and probably a little easier to set up too.
This would include most server systems sitting in a data center and not directly connected to the internet. These are typically installed by using the DISM command from either a command prompt or PowerShell. OpenSSH is an example of a self-contained FOD, which is distributed in a single .CAB file.
Best for Speed
If you think a NAS drive will let you stream any type of media you have to any device or TV, keep in mind certain devices will only play certain types of files, and you'll need to get software and hardware to work together to make this happen. Home users may not need to worry about large numbers of users; these days it's the number of simultaneous devices that makes the difference. If you're using the NAS to back up your laptops overnight, that's pretty straightforward. But if you're serving HD videos over your home network to twotablets, alaptop, and your smart TV, all at the same time, you'll want a NAS with higher specifications for memory, processor, and network capabilities. You'll also need a more powerful NAS if you want to store big media libraries, like a collection of 100,000 stock photos for your graphic arts studio, for example.
Because of its detailed configuration options, almost anything is possible with this software, but it won’t be easy. You will find add-ons to support streaming services like YouTube, Spotify, Disney Plus, Netflix, and more. Kodi can even be used to side-load any of the other media streaming services we recommended. Plex’s channel count pales in comparison so when it comes to variety of sources, Kodi really takes the cake.
After testing six new two- and four-bay network-attached storage devices and comparing them against our previous picks, we found that the Synology DiskStation DS220+ is the best home NAS for most people. The fastest NAS we tested, it offers powerful hardware for the price, includes AES-NI hardware encryption acceleration for added security, has upgradable RAM, and comes with software that’s easy to use. You don’t get many I/O ports with the DiskStation DS220j, but you do get speedy file transfer performance, multiple RAID options, and quad-core processing power for just under $170.
Like other options, Plex also transcodes on the fly and automatically adjusts its performance and quality for available bandwidth. During my testing, I had no trouble with streaming wirelessly over my gigabit router and mid-tier Internet service, nor did I encounter any codec errors from playing an incompatible file. We looked at the QNAP TS-230 as a budget-priced two-bay NAS, but its ARM-based processor is not recommended for Plex media service beyond H.264-encoded videos. So although it may be fine for a single stream of highly compressed videos, a NAS array with an Intel or AMD x86 processor is better for home use. If you’re curious, nearly every NAS maker, including Asustor and Zyxel, offers a live web-based demo of its operating system that’s worth checking out. The DS220+ eked out a slim victory in three of our four speed tests, with transfer speeds between 62 and 110 megabytes per second.
If you have a network of computers in your home, with files, and folders that are shared amongst all users, then you know how sharing these individually from one computer to another can be tedious and time-consuming. ClearOS offers features such as a fully functional Linux Kernel, which is compatible with many of the most common servers. This is achieved through the use of various software tools and technologies, which help to build a fully functioning operating system that will run on many different types of servers. You should get a reliable PC with a good motherboard for an energy-efficient home server build. To make the selection process simpler, I have hand-picked the top 7 home server software that ensure smooth and flawless operation of your computer.
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