Hmm.. this or ts-253a for £100 more...
2no WD REDS 4TB are waiting in the drawer...

tempting

Great bit of kit (I have the 253) just make sure that when you pick up HDs you do so with open eyes (3tb drives will give you around 2.2tb of useable space for example).
Also recommend you buy some cheap memory and install it yourself (the Qnap memory is a rip-off and you don't invalidate your warranty by doing it yourself)

If I remember correctly you can install 2x8GB RAM on this one. Even though officialy max memory supported is 8GB.

does this support apps i.e sickbeard, sabnzb?

I have this exact same NAS. Its a bargain at this price too.

IMO it does need extra ram. I purchased 2x 2GB and it runs sweet now, I think even an extra 1x 1GB will be perfect, but I did find it struggling with only 1GB (I guess that'll depend on what you intend to run on it, 1GB will be fine with basic NAS functions)

It can also double as a media centre with Kodi one click away as well as other features that can output via HDMI like native linux desktop (and also VM Ware for Windows etc)

I'm sure the 'buy a HP Micro server' lot will be around soon, but the QNAP has so many easy to use (and also powerful) functions. I was tempted by a HP myself, but the power consumption & the fact I already had a QNAP changed my mind.

Where did you get this from??

3TB drives give you approximately 3000000000000 bytes of free space

3000000000000 bytes = 2929687500 kilobytes = 2861023 Megabytes = 2794 Gigabytes = 2.728 Terabytes

For example WD RED 3TB drive has 5860533168 available sectors, 512 bytes each = 3000592982016 byes on drive in total

plain and simple

Think ntfs had a 2.2tb limit, maybe that confused them.

I just got the 253 and it's a good piece of kit. got two 6tb hard drives which gave just over 5tb

Errrrrr I got this from the fact I have a QNAP server with 3tb drives in it.... Hurhur

At the default sector size, ntfs has a size limit of 16TB. On top of that, the Qnap devices use Linux so the drives are formatted ext4.

When a drive is in metric, 1000 bytes is a kilobyte where a kibibyte is 1024 bytes.

So when you said 3000000000000 bytes = 2929687500 kilobytes is actually wrong. it's 3,000,000,000 kbytes - you are getting computer hardware and hard disks mixed up.

When you convert to computer storage you are getting 2.34375% less.

Haha :stuck_out_tongue:
Yes, or a Dell T20 or Lenovo TS140 are better price/performance than a NAS as well if you like messing about.
A purpose-built NAS suits ppl who just want a plug-in and go solution with mature ecosystem.

I have both, so not choosing sides - Horses for courses. :smirk:

I have a question for those that already own one of these.....does this allow you to stream videos and photos from an ios device without the need for a apple tv box?

Can someone answer me, I want to buy 253A, and start with 2 X 3TB hard drives. If price drops in future, I want to buy one of 6/8TB. Will I be able to swap one of the 3TB with 6/8TB and still keep using another 3TB to mirror?

I dont think so...

byte is a byte... always made up from 8 bits...
1024 bytes is always 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes is always 1 Megabyte

It doesn't matter whether you're talking about computer hardware or harddrives.. it's always the same

The only confusion is caused by harddrive manufacturers... where they sell you a drive with label saying 3TB and it actually has only 3000000000000 bytes of space, which is 2.72TB.

Are you sure that a megabyte is always going to be 1024 kilobytes?

While it is technically correct that a megabyte shoulkd be 1024KB, based on the KB being 1024 bytes, culturally a megabyte is often taken to be either 1000KB or 1 million bytes.

Language changes and evolves. As people become more interested in the Gigabyte and Terabyte capacities that they have in their devices rather than Megabytes, I would expect people's understanding of those terms to be in powers of 1000 rather than needing to think of everything as a multiple of 1024.

If you look at popular culture, you will see that there are multiple definitions used by different people today:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/megabyte

When you've got 16 billion bytes on your smartphone and a trillion bytes on your hard drive who cares if it is an exact multiple of 1024 bytes? Only software developers and geeks really care about what exactly a kilobyte means these days.

Yeah, I thought the same way a few years ago, even have a NAS or two somewhere and recommended to friends, but the arguments for that are 1) ease, 2) size and 3) price

The Microserver's so teeny (everyone can fit a silent cubic foot somewhere) and so cheap it rules out 2 and 3, and the latest generations of Freenas, OMV etc are sooooo easy to set up and use nowadays.

After you bung on a USB stick (there's an full socket internally inside the case!) or even a Micro SD card, there's a bootable slot for one next to the USB, and it's the same device! Only cheaper, faster, and with more options you can ignore if you want to!

Maybe I should go into business selling pre-installed USB drives with Freenas and an A4 sheet of instructions with pictures. Not necessary but that's about all you're missing!

I have the 253 and upgraded the RAM. Brilliant for Plex, media and torrent storage. They really need to sort the Download Station client which is **** with VPN and/or Private Trackers. Could use Transmission but it just isn't user friendly enough.

You don't think so (Don't know)....No it does not - forget about coding with your 1024 bytes. That is how disk drive manufacturers do it.

Yes, 1024 means nothing.

You just fail to understand that computers work in binary... something is either set or not set... 0 or 1
1024 is actually round number as is 65536

I do understand binary.
Where is 65536 (0x1,0000) coming from?

Round no? No such thing. A number can be rounded, it is not round by definition, it is the result.
You mean integer if you are talking about programming.

As already mentioned... problem only exists because HDD manufacturers found the way to sell you a smaller drive while advertising it as a bigger one...
If you look at older harddrives (late 80s - early 90s), they did actually contain correct amount of free space.

If you were right in what you're claiming... 4TB drive would be reported in any operating system as 4TB.. and it isn't.

The older ones did, but now they are a magnatude greater.

I calculate that is what you would get.
3.906 TB where 4,000,000,000,000,000 / 1024
or 3,906,250,000,000 KB
or 976,562,500,000 4k sectors.

Factor in the drive mapping and that is around 3.7TB

Any chance of getting some feedback on the NAS itself rather than bits and bytes?

price is up to £187 now :disappointed: