Hi there,
First time posting, so I'm hopeful this is the right sub-forum for this. I have asked this question in a few different places and no one seems to know anything about NAS!
I've been looking into Synology NAS units for a while now and wondered if I could pick some brains. I can manage with most technology, but really I want these things to be simple and easy to maintain, hence Synology. I would maybe consider something else, but this seems like a gentle way into the NAS world. I keep going back and forth between the DS215j, DS214play and DS216play. I'll just list off some stuff and hope someone can help.
- Buying in the UK, could maybe buy in the US if it's just a case of changing the power cable, but it would be a pain to transport.
- 2-3 users maximum, but mainly just me.
- Trying to get it as cheap as possible.
- Want to mirror 2x3TB drives for the usual data of music, movies and photos.
- It should have a life of the average computer (something like 5-7 years).
- Home use, I don't run a studio or my own business or anything.
- However, I travel trans-Atlantic a lot and want to use it as a personal cloud when I'm away so I don't have to constantly move files around.
- Music streaming (to iTunes, most likely).
- Movie streaming (this is where it gets a bit complicated): I currently have a NowTV box I was given which is loaded with Plex through the dev interface, but I'll probably upgrade to a proper Roku unit (maybe a Stick?) in the next month or so. I only stream to TV or on laptops, so I don't really know if I need transcoding. All my movies are 720p to match my current TV's resolution. I may get a next-gen console in future, but that is a way off yet.
So, I'm confusing myself a bit - I'm not really knowledgeable enough about the technology to know what I actually need. The DS215j is a comfortable price for me and would seem to do the streaming I want, but I am a bit worried it will be noticeably slow and not last me as long as I think it will. The DS214play seems great, but I think is discontinued and seems to get more expensive every time I check Amazon. The DS216play is still a decent price and more recent, however most reviews still suggest getting the DS214play (I think this is partly because of lack of support for Plex).
Any help is really appreciated. Thanks in advance.