Recommended NAS

Dear all,

I’m about to purchase a TR-0004 QNAP NAS, as a second NAS alongside my trusty, but ageing, LaCie Networkspace2. The choice was made on the basis of a necessary price awareness and a shocking ignorance of everything that has to do with NASses or their protocols. The LaCy just works with every computer in our home, the RISC OS ones included. Will this modern beast do the same? Or do you perhaps have some better advice?

Paul, I personally use Synology NAS’s, mine work with RISCOS, Windows, Linux and Macs.

But I know R-Comp, sell QNAP NAS’s as he likes them, again they should work with RISCOS, Windows, Linux and Mac. Both Synology and QNAP have good support, they should both work with SMB and NFS, but be aware RISCOS only supports SMB v1 (which is nowadays somewhat insecure), and NFS is also using an older version of the protocol.

I am sure R-Comp would be happy to help you with a QNAP purchase and be able to advise on your options.

The Synology NAS range have an interesting range of additional software items, AV is standard through the range and if you go up the range a little you get into the Virtual machine hosting capabilities so anyone wanting to experiment with something like Docker, just check the low-mid-range.¹

Both Synology and QNAP have good support, they should both work with SMB and NFS, but be aware RISCOS only supports SMB v1

As per Andrews talk for the Wakefield show, new stack on its way and amendments to the utils to bring more modern SMB

¹ Mid-high and high range are absolute beasts

It was actually Andrew from R-Comp who pointed me into the direction of QNAP, although I’ve no idea what it means, or what the difference with Synology is. I just want a NAS that I can make backups to automatically. On my RISC OS machines I use LanMan98 to access the NAS, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. But I’ll return to Andrew for further advice. Thanks for replying.

I’ve recently invested in a Synology, and it’s now working with RISC OS and Windows scheduled backups. In both cases the process starts with sending a WOL packet to the NAS to power it up if it has powered down. It’s set to power down after 15 minurted idle and it’s going into a fairly inaccesible but secure location.

Getting all that to work was a bit of a fiddle, so ask if you want suggestions.

Make sure that a NAS of either make is not allowed to be accessed from the Internet. The security isn’t good enough to allow that, e.g. using SMB1 (which you’ll have to do from RISC OS at the moment), and some significant recent hacking of QNAP products.

Every solution has its good and bad points. I’m going to tell you what I use, which is very different from what you’re looking at.

I’ve got a Raspberry Pi 3B+ running Raspberry Pi OS and OpenMediaVault. It has two 2 TB 2.5" portable drives with USB interfaces. rsync is set to run at 02:00 every day to sync the second drive with the first, so all I have to do is put stuff on the first drive, and it will automatically be copied to the second drive within 24 hours.

It supports SMB1 to 3, NFS and some others. I bought a substantial power supply so that there was enough power to start and run the drives, although it must be noted that I had to wire across the Pi’s internal current limiting because that otherwise causes low voltage alarms. I feel happy to do that because I know the power supply is appropriately current limited. It would alternatively be possible to use an external powered hub.

Administration is via a web interface, but it’s beyond what NetSurf can do – I use Firefox on Linux.

My solution cost in total abut £150 for 2 TB with automatic backup to a second drive.

I’m now using Raspberry Pi 4B with a single USB3 portable hard drive (which was previously attached to my router). It serves NFS to Linux and RISC OS clients and SMB to Windows. It does a maximum of 90MB/s (about as fast as the disc goes) over gigabit Ethernet or 5G WiFi, where as the router was SMB only and topped out at 30MB/s. But more importantly Sunfish is much faster than LanmanFS/98 when transferring lots of small RISC OS files. Backup is to a similar Pi 4B system, off-site and with an encrypted disc which is kept off line until the backup is underway.

That’s something I’m doing, but I can’t get Sunfish to work without crashing. I was, after seeing the recent forum activity around sunfish, hopeful that we might see a stable release.

How are you managing to run sunfish without it falling over?

Big warning on Synology is that that there’s talk of them only supporting their own branded hard drives in future. This gives me the heebie-jeebies!
http://theregister.com/2021/02/02/synology_enterprise_nas_drives/

FWIW, for every Synology feature, there’s an equiv QNAP feature (usually). People say the Synology UI/OS is a little slicker, but honestly, I’d tend to say that whichever is cheapest from your supplier for a similar spec is the one to go for (with the future caveat on the hard drive issue).

As a rule of thumb, the Intel based units are generally the most reliable/predictable performance-wise (and tend to have the most add-on apps/services), whilst the ARM-based units tend to be a little more variable performance-wise, but are much cheaper. I’d suggest making sure that whatever you pick has a minimum of 2GB RAM (1GB at a pinch) and 64bit, as in the past both vendors have cut support for older models based on RAM/architecture.

I’d also consider turning on automatic firmware updates, as NAS devices are full computers (CPU, RAM, storage, OS, and even graphics etc) and may need security and other updates. Also, change the default password when you set it up!

Edit – also, many (most) NAS products are actually home servers, rather than backup devices. Sure you can use them as back devices, but they have so many features, it is well worth considering them as a server. This can mean media sharing/streaming (allowing you to watch photos/video/music on your TV, for example), sharing printers, running a web server or similar, or hosting a VM. I believe I saw one unit running a windows-VM, which made me think of running UniPrint on my NAS! Plenty of food for thought, and I would say consider this when choosing your NAS. Obviously budget will factor in heavily, but explore the options it brings and it could be quite fascinating.

Big warning on Synology is that that there?s talk of them only supporting their own branded hard drives in future. This gives me the heebie-jeebies!
http://theregister.com/2021/02/02/synology_enterprise_nas_drives/

I am surprised at you Andrew. This only applies to Enterprise models, not consumer models, as confirmed on the Synology website. Please don’t spread FUD!

Firmware updates should by on by default especially for QNAP at the moment, since they have been attacked by ‘bad actors’ per QNAP support.

Chris – that’s what I meant about giving me the heebie-jeebies. It felt like a slippery slope, but thanks for confirming otherwise. The article talked about them introducing updates for existing (presumably enterprise models, although I didn’t read it that way initially) in due course, which would been blocking those units from non-qualified drives. I understand there may be reasons for this, but it is a practice that left me unsettled. I’m glad they have publicly stated that it won’t drip down into consumer devices. That’s a relief for sure. :)

@Andrew McCarthy

I can’t get Sunfish to work without crashing.

It can be persuaded to work by saving one setting at a time and quitting, alternatively just create the mount then go in to Boot:Choices.Sunfish.mountsave and then drag the file with the name of you mount to an editor. Its a text file so all the settings can be changed.

I’ve had Sunfish running here for years on RISC OS 5 versions, connecting to Synology and QNAP NAS boxes. One Synology runs as my email server and I connect to it using Messenger in IMAP mode and also runs as the server to my Logitech/Slim Devices network music players. Both NAS brands are recommended here. I’ve had Netgear and Seagate NAS boxes here in the past too, but only the Synology and QNAP have been kept up to date with security patches and new features and have extensive ‘App stores’.

Just be careful that only certain models support some apps/features, so if you have a non-storage requirement, like an email server, make sure the model you select supports the feature you want.

I was, after seeing the recent forum activity around sunfish, hopeful that we might see a stable release.

Has anyone actually built Sunfish recently? If so, using what toolchain? Libraries, etc?

I’ve just tried with GCCSDK 4.7.4 R5 on Linux, and am so far getting a lot of errors out that aren’t just missing libraries. I can fix them, but so far it’s not looking like minor surgery.

Before I start major hacking of the source file structure and Makefile, it would be good to know if it should work correctly with the ELF toolchain, or if it was last built on AOF or even native GCC. Reading between the lines of the documentation, it might all predate the current setup.

ETA: I’d shift it all over to Norcroft, but but it seems to be very keen on having some non-RISC OS tools around to play with, too.

Paul,

I’m a happy QNAP user myself so I can recommend them, but I have no experience with any other brands so they may well be better.

However the proposed model seems to me to be an expansion of extra disc bays to an existing QNAP. So I suggest you take a good look at what you are ordering… Although the expansion I’m talking about is called TR-004 and not TR-0004 you mention. But the latter doesn’t follow their usual naming standard so I don’t think that it exists…

For what it’s worth, I have a Synology (DS418j) and it works with Omni/LanManFS. No Sunfish required. I may have had to turn on a compatibility mode; I don’t remember.

may have had to turn on a compatibility mode; I don’t remember.

File Services, Advanced Settings, Maximum SMB Protocol and Minimum SMB protocol (where the settings can be SMB1, SMB2, SMB2 with large MTU, SMB3, so you can switch off the low security SMB any time you want and hopefully soon RO won’t need SMB1.

There is of course the FTP/FTPS option for file transfer, SFTP if you want secure without having to have a multitude of ports open, TFTP¹ for certain local transfers, rsync, and “Advanced” which contains the likes of SSDP (so, not really advanced, probably “other”)

Compare and contrast – the Synology website has downloadable User Guide(brief 65 page) etc and some info on the various add-in packages plus how to write your own

¹ Grossly insecure, makes SMB1 look like the most secure thing on earth. Used a lot for file transfers into data switches [facepalm]

I personally have 4 Synology NAS devices now. I started with the DS110j (single drive unit) – still in use now as a backup for videos. But it no longer since its 10 years old gets Firmware updates (supported for 8 years). I then got a DS212j (2 disc model) which was initially used to backup the contents of the older DS110j via Shared folder Sync.
Last year I decided to upgrade and got the latest DS220j (2 discs) and to back that up a second one. The latest DS220j are pretty fast. I use !SafeStore to backup my ARMX6 to the DS220j – it does it about 5+ times faster then when I was backing up to the older DS110j

So I think you can tell I like the kit. They have a facility for instance to startup and shutdown at times you decide (overnight in my case), and lots of other facilities for example it appears to have a WOL option.

No doubt the QNAP devices have similar options

Hi Paul,

I have a QNAP TS-451 here (about 5 years old at a guess).
I only use it as a file store but may make use of its webcam recording in future.
I have 2 × 6TB drives (mirrored) and 2 × 3TB drives (mirrored) – WD NAS Pro (the higher end ones) – like to keep things simple with regards to failures etc
The NAS is only turned on once a week to do full backups (daily and monthly backups are to USB drives).
Used to stream music from it to Windows machines but now have the music on the machines and on the phone (350Gb on a 512GB card).

The NAS is mainly used with Windows 10 (was used with Windows 7 previously) and Linux (mainly mint) but is also used with RISC OS.

Have recently set up an 8GB RPi4 with RISC OS 5.28 and the latest LanMan98 (v2.08 – Feb 2021) as open sourced by RISC OS Developments.
It works well and connects to the NAS without problems so far.

I updated the QNAP NAS firmware tonight to 4.5.3.1652 (dated 28.04.2021) and everything still works including the RISC OS connections.

One of the reasons for going with the QNAP NAS was power usage – real world testing for 24 hours gave a power use of 0.6kWh which at our fairly high power prices here equates to approx $0.30 AUD a day (rate per kW + supply fee per day) or $110.46 AUD a year (if running continuously)

Hope this helps showing that the QNAP works well with multiple OS use.

Regards
Jock

ps this model is still available although locally – close to $900 AUD which makes it fairly pricey.

Thank you everyone for these valuable advices. I’ve bitten the bullet and ordered a TS-328 (as suggested by Andrew Rawnsley) with 2 4TB drives, and the option for a 3rd drive in the future to establish a RAID5 eh… thing. Thank you DownUnderROUser for letting me know that even the latest firmware still works with the RPi4 and LanMan98, which is exactly my setup. I love this community.

@David Ruck

It can be persuaded to work by saving one setting at a time and quitting, alternatively just create the mount then go in to Boot:Choices.Sunfish.mountsave and then drag the file with the name of you mount to an editor. Its a text file so all the settings can be changed.

Thank you for the steer; I’m on a Pi4.

@Steve Fryatt

Has anyone actually built Sunfish recently? If so, using what toolchain? Libraries, etc?

There’s been some activity over here

Guys, how did you fix this error after all? I’m relatively new to this and I’m getting the same error. Nothing helped so far. I also ordered a Thecus N2810 for my Plex because it was very well-reviewed on https://prizedreviews.com/best-nas-for-plex/ , but I have to fix this error until it comes. I’m very excited about all this because I read a lot of information on different forums and all of the comments were positive and everyone said that a NAS is a great addition to Plex and it takes the experience to another level. Looking forward to any advice. Thanks in advance.