NAS not working

One can use an Optiplex or whatever of course, but a decent NAS does much of the setup work for you. Given that many members are not short on money but are not exactly computer experts, a NAS will be a good choice for them. Others may prefer differently

I’d be interested to hear how you get on with a more recent Qnap - for example, can it do anything the older models can’t. My trusty TS 212 is beginning to creak a bit now after 9 years so I may have to change it soon.

Well, I’ve spent most of today trying to get this new QNAP drive installed. Supplied quickstart manual crap - the NAS didn’t behave the way it described.

QFinderPro couldn’t find it for quite a while. When it eventually did I upgraded the firmware and apps, and then set about checking whether my files were still there on the discs transferred from the old one. Apparently they were.

With my old drive I had to give up using QFinderPro, because it could never seem to find my QNAP NAS. When I had to do things like upgrade Asset, I did it via my browser with the NAS IP address.
The program doesn’t seem to have got any more friendly since then.

Changed the admin password.

Packed up, and went to make Pizza (from scratch) for me and SWMBO. When I came back the drive couldn’t be found by my Mac! After a bit of fiddling I got it back. However, it still thought it was looking at the old NAS! So deleted the alias and got the correct one.

Drive kept ‘hanging’, and I had to switch it off a few times. Various other problems occurred, and I eventually gave up and did a factory reset (ON A NEW NAS!) and reinitialised my hard discs, which means I’ll have to reinstall my music files (good job I’ve got 3 backups!)

Now trying to persuade it to work, but it’s still totally flaky. I’m giving up for the day now, and will try again tomorrow.

If it misbehaves again, it’s going back to Amazon for refund, that’s if I don’t put it on the floor and jump up and down on it.

Any recommendations for an alternative 2 bay drive? Which Synology would suit me best, as I only use the NAS for music files? I’m willing to pay for new hard drives and Asset upnp for the Synology to get my functionality back.

:confounded:

You can pick any Synology with confidence & you don’t need one of the high performance ones if it’s just for music.
And if it’s just for music & you have 3 back ups, why 2 bay?, a one bay is worth considering.
The DS118 is much higher spec with more CPU & RAM than needed for just music. If budget is a limit, DS120j.
But if you’re set on a 2 bay, a DS220+ is top end & the one I would go for. If budget is a consideration, DS220j is the one.

Is it not reasonable to assume the drives were knackered?

I would go optimised and effective from a well known consumer manufacturer. I have used several Netgear NAS over the years, and unlike some other brands, have never let me down. I use a RN202 two bay with two WD disks that have been rock solid over the last 6 years and is almost completely quiet. As a NAS it performs well, and i have it present SMB and AFS network mounts to my home network with user / role authenticated access rights - important to help prevent accidents. All accessed via its host name, not an IP address in sight. I subscribe to the view that best not run other processes on a NAS, and although the RN202 can run some apps, it is not a general purpose compute server … so I don’t have complexity of needing general purpose computing infrastructure on it ( general good practice in the industry) I might as well use a cheap computer for that instead of a NAS, and the cheap computer would be far more effective.
For key storage really you want to be looking at remote (cloud) storage now. It’s very different from 10 years ago where one was usually mostly reliant on local access. Clearly if you have low performance or metered internet access this might not be viable. An alternative is use a local NAS as local storage cache and have it backup to the cloud… and it some ways that is more consumer plug and play friendly.

That does it, this piece of cr*p is going back for a refund. If my memory’s not failing me, IIRC I had great difficulty getting my original QNAP to work properly, and various “upgrades” if anything always seemed to make things a little worse - including the move to QFinderPro (which never worked for me with the old NAS). I think this is the most unfriendly device I have ever owned.

This morning I managed to get it sort of up and running, by removing the hard drives, booting up and then reinserting the drives, which it successfully mounted and reported as good. Used the “storage space” bit and set up the drives as RAID 1.

Then it all went pear-shaped again. No default folders shown - including Multimedia, which is where I usually keep my music files. So, I set up a new shared folder called “Music Files”, and tried to drag some of my music into it. Apparently you can only do that by using Google Chrome. I don’t see why I should have to change my browser.

I’ll get a 1 Bay Synology drive as MikeB suggests, and just to be safe I’ll also get a new 4tb 7200 Red drive for it. If that fails to work, then I suppose I could just revert to using Asset on my Mac and pointing it at the backup Multimedia file on my 6TB Thunderbolt external hard drive (permanently attached and also used for Time Machine)

Why can’t people learn how to write manuals in layman’s English? Reminds me of before I retired when I used to write “idiot sheets” for new bits of medical monitoring equipment etc purchased by our Anaesthetic Department. I could usually reduce the instructions to one sheet of A4!

You mount the nas on your pc or Mac, rather than relying on browsers

Thanks. I just hadn’t looked it up yet. Mounting the drive was next on my list of things to. However, I had done that for my old NAS, but every time the Mac got switched off (usually due to one of our power cuts), I always finished up using the Mac Finder >Go connect to server. Annoying.

Addendum :

I’ve packed up the NAS and taken it to Londis down the road for transport back to Amazon via Hermes.
Ordered the Synology and a new 4TB Red Drive. Might be a week before they arrive.

When I was doing the packing, I switched the NAS off and unplugged it. Then went for a cuppa. Came back, and as I was removing the hard drives I was surprised by how hot they were, even though the NAS had been unplugged for 20 minutes. Makes me think that perhaps the fan wasn’t doing it’s job.

If it helps, I use I bay Synolgy, WD Red, Asset and a iMac. Never had a NAS before and it was easier than I thought setting up, so you should be good when your new one arrives!

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Thanks. I’ll post again when I get the new bits.

Well, had an email from Amazon yesterday. No idea when DS118 would be delivered. Cancelled the order, but all other dealers don’t seem to have any in stock

Do you think the DS 120j would be good enough high res FLAC files, or should I grit my teeth and wait out what seems to be about a 1 month wait?

The 4TB WD Red Drive arrived already, BTW.

The DS120j has a lower spec. but more than enough for high res FLAC including Asset, transcoding & whatever.
That said DS118 has been around for 3 years now, so I expect a DS121 might be along sometime.

Thanks, I’ll order one when this evening when I return from “Grandad Taxi” duties (taking my eldest daughter to Elite Training Squad (Tumbling) practice at GMac (Birmingham)

Sorry for the delay in update, but “life” got in the way.

Got the Synology working, although I had to do it twice, because my Mac wouldn’t let me mount the drive - kept saying “wrong password”. Cured it by resetting the NAS and doing it all over again (sigh)

Asset up and running nicely. Didn’t even have to buy a new copy for the Synology - Illustrate just updated my QNAP one for free!

So, all is well with the music world again.

Just have to learn my guitar pieces for my lesson on Friday. Although I may have to cancel that as my eldest granddaughter is taking part in a “feeder” contest for the British National Tumbling Championship, and and my daughter is concerned that she won’t have enough Petrol for her car to take her there, so "grandad’s taxi will be doing the run.

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Nice. You’ll find the Synology a good choice. I’m running a DS918 at the moment, and with a 3rd party memory upgrade it capably runs Roon Core natively.

You mentioned that you’ve got backups (which are always a good idea). I’ve recently starting using Synology C2 with Hyperbackup as a “backup of last resort” in case all my home-stored media disappears for any reason. It’s easy to set up, and if your home broadband is fast enough can be a good option for multiple terabyte music libraries.

Working well. Just one little niggle …

We had the ADT people here yesterday updating our Home Alarm. They switched our power off a few times during this, and after they left my Mac couldn’t find the Synology. Turns out that the Synology had switched off (presumably with the power cuts), and I had to press the “on” switch on the front of it. Then my Mac automatically found the NAS.

My old QNAP just restarted automatically after a power cut. Don’t know why the Synology didn’t. Could be annoying in the future, when we start having our seasonal power cuts (seems to happen a couple of times a year, usually with multiple outages over a short period. ?problems at the local Power Station?)

So in conclusion the NAS worked better when it was turned on?

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Switching off a NAS can do damage if it’s reading/writing at the time.
Always power the NAS down first before switching off the power.
Synology’s way of requiring a manual restart is safer than allowing unsupervised restarts & risking it being in another process cycle during the next power loss.
I have my Synology powered via a UPS