If your Synology NAS is in suspend then it won’t show as a Server on the NDX2.
However there are many free Wake on LAN apps. We have apps installed on all phones and iPads. One click to wake NAS. Device is up and Asset available within a minute.
NAS also comes on late each evening to do incremental cloud backup so any music we’ve added that day is secure in Google cloud.
Once woken the NAS is set to go off after 1 hour if unused.
My bad, terminology issues. I was using suspended instead of powered down.
We have our NAS setup as follows:
Hibernate HDD 30 mins
Auto power off 1 hour
So yes of course you are correct during HDD hibernation the NAS is still “live” on the network and available in the naim app. Selecting it fires up the disks.
When the NAS is powered down it does not appear as a server on the app and must be restarted via WOL (one click, 60 second wait)
Since the original poster wishes to save on electricity costs auto power off seems to fit the bill and is little, if any, inconvenience once you’ve installed a WOL app on same device as naim app.
You’re right - at current UK electricity unit costs the 4.4w hibernation consumption is under £14 a year.
Maybe this is one area where we’ve taken power saving too far in our household Especially considering what the stereo sucks up when idle, the NAS consumption is irrelevant.
You can’t go wrong with a Synology NAS. Small and quiet. Really easy to setup disks/redundancy, Asset install is a doddle and it has cloud backup built in if you’ve a cloud provider account.
Should I be concerned about the relatively weedy processor power and small amount of non-expandable memory that seems to be on offer in most/all 1-bay NAS boxes?
I’ve read the threads on here about the (slightly) pointless use of RAIDx so I don’t think there’s much point in a multi-bay enclosure (the drives I already have are large enough for now and the foreseeable future and I backup to a separate external drive).
I have configured Asset to transcode the music files to WAV before sending them on. Will a weedy processor with a small amount of RAM cope?
Other than serving up music, the NAS will be used for storing the rest of our files (photos, documents etc) but we’re far from heavy users.
Streaming music from NAS uses very little power, the same for Asset transcoding.
My Synology NAS with DSM7.1 & Asset has a small processor, 512MB, it runs 192/24 transcoding to WAV easily, typically 5-7% CPU & 35-40% RAM.
With a 1-bay it’s most important you have a good backup, a multi bay with the various RAID setups do offer more security, although none are fail safe, a 1-bay has no such security.
I use a WD ‘My Notebook’ USB drive for backups, low cost & simple to use, I run it once a month or when I upload new albums. Also look at one or other of the Cloud store systems.
I agree with Mike, an entry level single bay Synology or QNAP is what I would go for. Of course you want a second drive for backup, but it makes no sense to put it in the same enclosure!
Ideally an automatic backup to another NAS is good in that you can have a UPnP server running on that too, so if one NAS dies, you just switch to the other and you can still play music while you fix the damage. However, as you have a 2nd gen streamer you could just stick your backup USB drive in it to tide you over.
Not an expert by any means, more of an ‘enlightened user’…it may be helpful to share some of the things I’ve picked up over the years…and apologies if some of this is not relevant and/or well known knowledge, or indeed said while I’ve been typing this out.
If the disk(s) inside the NAS are spinning (i.e. not solid state), they do not like being stopped/started from spinning. I have a NAS and leave it on all the time and only shut it down when I need to - if I know the mains power is going to be shut and/or a software update on the NAS.
Another consideration is protecting your data and reducing the risk of loss of data. My NAS has 2 drives and I’m using mirroring (RAID1) - very simply this means the data is stored on both drives. This provides some level of redundancy in the event of a disk failing. If a disk fails a new one is inserted in place of the failed one and the NAS will ‘rebuild’ the new disk on the fly.
My working assumption is that all spinning disks will fail at some point and having one or more backstops for when it does happen can make the event so much less painful.
As others have said a low cost USB drive connected to the NAS for a backup is a good idea. Cloud services are available aswell.
My NAS is a Synology (218 Play) and cant fault it - it just works.
Hope this helps.
In the end I’ve decided on a manual RAID approach as I currently have two identical HDDs so am going to keep one in the NAS and the duplicate elsewhere.
I know that drives don’t like the spin up/down cycle too much, but generally speaking the NAS will spend some days being used pretty much all day, and other days having a nice sleep.
It was this latter scenario (the most common atm) that was leading me to change what I currently have to a setup that will hopefully be a little more green and maybe cheaper in the long run.
Especially considering what the stereo sucks up when idle, the NAS consumption is irrelevant.