New NAS from Western Digital

[Boy Howdy]

Folks:

I got an email from Western Digital (WD) that talks about their upcoming 2- and 4-bay NAS hardware (and some info about their software as well). Their 4-bay (My Cloud EX4100

4-bay NAS) looks interesting. They are selling it with two 4 TB WD NAS drives for $749.

 

Although I am in the process of researching for my own NAS, I do not know enough to be able to compare this with the Synology enclosures. I would appreciate any insight you folks could provide for thinking about this NAS versus the Synology.

Thanks,

Mike

[jtwrace]

It's all in the GUI. If the UI isn't very good, the rest useless. IMO of course.

[Boy Howdy]

Anybody seen the GUI?

Mike

[Audio_ELF]

One thing to consider (and this is just an observation rather than anything o would consider fact) is that QNAP and Synology tend to be better supported for additional "server" applications such as MinimServer and LMS, etc.

 

Not sure if that's of any importance to you.

[dr.sah]

And later if you want bigger NAS, just put discs in new NAS, and you work further, that is possiblle in Synology.

[realhifi]

Folks:

I got an email from Western Digital (WD) that talks about their upcoming 2- and 4-bay NAS hardware (and some info about their software as well). Their 4-bay (My Cloud EX4100

4-bay NAS) looks interesting. They are selling it with two 4 TB WD NAS drives for $749.

 

Although I am in the process of researching for my own NAS, I do not know enough to be able to compare this with the Synology enclosures. I would appreciate any insight you folks could provide for thinking about this NAS versus the Synology.

Thanks,

Mike

 

As Eloise astutely points out, if WD doesn't include a high quality media server such as Minimserver (which is included in Synology NAS drives) it is not a great option for music streaming. The WD MyBook Live has a basic Twonky server which while quite adequate for basic 16/44 streaming it does not send 24/96 or higher files which makes it a no go for most audiophiles now. The one included in the Synology (Minimserver) streams all the way out to DSD 128 at least. One other note, the WD (Twonky only supports low res album art also which makes it a rudimentary player and feels a bit crude compare to today's offerings.

[Boy Howdy]

So we really need to have someone get a WD NAS and find out what GUI, software, etc. WD is providing for a NAS. Since I don't have any experience with a NAS, I am not a good candidate...

Mike

[dr.sah]

I would buy Synology.

[kumakuma]

I would buy Synology.

 

So would I. As others have said already, hardware is only part of the puzzle. Synology has both mature management tools and a community of folks out there developing solutions that run on the Synology platform.

[Bryan]

Using Synology since 2010. Synology has very good UI and features. The DS 214play is excellent for home NAS with simple 2-bay RAID configuration. The DS 112 was a keeper too. Recently looked on Amazon for the old DS 112. Holy cow! That much? Guessing the white case has a following. (v:

[Jck]

Synology.... Good product, intuitive GUI, but completely useless support. I won't buy one again.

[tdacquisto]

I recently bought a Synology DS 1515+ and must say that it's been flawless so far... This replaced a NetGear ReadyNAS NV+ and it's been light night and day. highly recommended... I've not had a reason to use their support, so I can't comment on that.

[Mike Pinkerton]

I have A+ play (streaming) off my WD NAS. I never see the WD UI at all. I don't see how its UI matters one bit for its usefulness in music streaming.

[Timothy Wright]

I was an very early adopter for the WD EX4 NAS. I have (4) 4TB hard drive for a total of 16 TB in RAID0 config. Next to a Synology NAS the WD is much slower, simpler and very basic. File transfers are slow, then again I can't aggregate ethernet ports on my home network. On the plus side the WD is reliable and very inexpensive and the support is good.

 

I ordered a 8TB NAS and expected (2) 4TB hard drives. Instead I got (4) 2TB drives. So I called WD support and with in days I had (4) 4TB wd red drives with an RMA for smaller drives, ALL AT NO CHARGE. I'd call that very good support.

 

The WD does do all I need it to do, serve movie and FLAC files. But as my collection grows I can see out growing 16TB and I am looking hard at a Synology DS1815+ because swapping out the drives in my EX4 to (4) TB and then putting all the music and movies back on could leave me with no NAS for more than 2 weeks.

[zackthedog]

I'm experimenting with WD My Cloud 4TB right now and so far it's pretty frustrating. I have it directly connected to my Mini via ethernet cable. Slow to transfer files and slow to reveal files in the finder. And if your music software doesn't have a play-from-memory feature it can't access the files smoothly. I think it'll have to go back.

[Timothy Wright]

I'm experimenting with WD My Cloud 4TB right now and so far it's pretty frustrating. I have it directly connected to my Mini via Ethernet cable. Slow to transfer files and slow to reveal files in the finder. And if your music software doesn't have a play-from-memory feature it can't access the files smoothly. I think it'll have to go back.

 

When I store my FLAC files on my WD EX4 I can see them and play them but the directory is always in alphabetical order as opposed to original sequence. Imagine playing something like Handel's Messiah with all the files out of sequence.

 

Some DAC's like my Oppo 105D want to store information like album art at the music file's location, which may or may not work. While I can play music files from my WD EX4 I prefer to play them locally from a WD Passport portable external USB 3.0 hard drive. I think I have large music collection worthy of a public library with 28,000+ songs and 2,100+ CDs and all that requires less than a 500 GB of disk space in mildly compressed lossless FLAC format.

 

There is at least one catch with that this method other than inconvenience of keep a few file locations in sync, Some devices, notably TVs have USB 3.0 ports but are not fully USB 3.0 compliant. They may not recognize the WD Passport either because it is too large in capacity or because it pulls too many amps.

 

And yes these are all reasons why for my next NAS I expect to try Synology.

 

One other major issue, and I think this is not WD fault. Movies files in MKV format still retail full subtitle functionality. The only way I can retain subtitles in mp4 format is to "burn them in" so they will be part of the visual movie and I lose the ability to turn them on and off. Without mp4 compression my 8 TB of movies would be more than 24 TB and my Oppo 105D up scales very nicely but some say I can see looking back and wishing I had retained more information and used less compression.

[Paul R]

When I store my FLAC files on my WD EX4 I can see them and play them but the directory is always in alphabetical order as opposed to original sequence. Imagine playing something like Handel's Messiah with all the files out of sequence.

 

Some DAC's like my Oppo 105D want to store information like album art at the music file's location, which may or may not work. While I can play music files from my WD EX4 I prefer to play them locally from a WD Passport portable external USB 3.0 hard drive. I think I have large music collection worthy of a public library with 28,000+ songs and 2,100+ CDs and all that requires less than a 500 GB of disk space in mildly compressed lossless FLAC format.

 

There is at least one catch with that this method other than inconvenience of keep a few file locations in sync, Some devices, notably TVs have USB 3.0 ports but are not fully USB 3.0 compliant. They may not recognize the WD Passport either because it is too large in capacity or because it pulls too many amps.

 

And yes these are all reasons why for my next NAS I expect to try Synology.

 

One other major issue, and I think this is not WD fault. Movies files in MKV format still retail full subtitle functionality. The only way I can retain subtitles in mp4 format is to "burn them in" so they will be part of the visual movie and I lose the ability to turn them on and off. Without mp4 compression my 8 TB of movies would be more than 24 TB and my Oppo 105D up scales very nicely but some say I can see looking back and wishing I had retained more information and used less compression.

 

My experiences mirror yours, though I surely *wanted* it to work. In my case, I know darn well it isn't my network or processors on my hosts. It seems to be the problem is just that the WD doesn't have enough CPU power.

 

I am working on one of the new Windows based CAPS servers. I think that might be a better choice, always supposing I can get it to deal with long file names on the disk. (*sigh*) That seems to be my bane in life with Windows. Why oh why won't they fix that?

 

-Paul

[Jabs1542]

My experiences mirror yours, though I surely *wanted* it to work. In my case, I know darn well it isn't my network or processors on my hosts. It seems to be the problem is just that the WD doesn't have enough CPU power.

 

I am working on one of the new Windows based CAPS servers. I think that might be a better choice, always supposing I can get it to deal with long file names on the disk. (*sigh*) That seems to be my bane in life with Windows. Why oh why won't they fix that?

 

-Paul

 

Paul,

 

Look into ReFS, it is available in Windows 8.1 (though NTFS is still the default). I'm not using it yet but I will in the future. It replaces NTFS and supports very long filenames, among a long list of other cool capabilities, I think it's supposed to be the default with the final release of Windows 10.

 

Jay

[Paul R]

Paul,

 

Look into ReFS, it is available in Windows 8.1 (though NTFS is still the default). I'm not using it yet but I will in the future. It replaces NTFS and supports very long filenames, among a long list of other cool capabilities, I think it's supposed to be the default with the final release of Windows 10.

 

Jay

 

Oh, NTFS supports very long filename and path combinations, it is just Windows that does not. It is trivially easy to write a file on an NTFS disk from Linux or MacOS that Windows won't be able to read.

 

I'll look at ReFS though.

 

-Paul

[Cebolla]

Typical of Microsoft to allow their own file system to used out of spec (presumably) by other systems.

[Paul R]

Typical of Microsoft to allow their own file system to used out of spec (presumably) by other systems.

 

LOL! Very long (thousands of chars) file path/name is one of the specification of NTFS, but Windows has a much more restrictive length - 260 chars i think.

 

To be fair, I think you can get around it in Windows buy using the \\?\ notation scheme, but it is clunky and many apps don't understand it. For example -

 

\\?\C:\some-very-very-long-file-path-up-to-32K-characters

 

Of course, Linux and MacOS machines that have a shared NTFS system mounted have no trouble at all with standard paths that are quite long. There is nothing more frustrating that ripping a nice classical album only to find Windows JRMC or the like cannot read it. Mac JRMC, Linux JRMC? No problem.

 

-Paul

[Cebolla]

LOL! Very long (thousands of chars) file path/name is one of the specification of NTFS, but Windows has a much more restrictive length - 260 chars i think.

 

To be fair, I think you can get around it in Windows buy using the \\?\ notation scheme, but it is clunky and many apps don't understand it. For example -

 

\\?\C:\some-very-very-long-file-path-up-to-32K-characters

Can't really complain. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's grateful to Microsoft and others for providing me with a living sorting out that sort of nonsense

[Paul R]

Can't really complain. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's grateful to Microsoft and others for providing me with a living sorting out that sort of nonsense

 

(grin) I really like the way Microsoft does some things, but historically they have landed me in the soup more than once.

 

Right now I am (perhaps over ambitiously) writing a new application, including iOS and Windows Phone applications, and the difference is often less than the similarities. Some of the Windows stuff is really really good - I love C#. It is a mature model of what Swift is quickly becoming. The right way to go language wise, in my opinion.

 

Another good part is Windows shares, which when mounted on other Windows machines, are lightening fast. Fully as fast as NFS shares under Unix. But... Samba based SMB shares from Linux? Not so much... though it looks to be something with single threading. (Single threading under Unix like OS's for services with multiple clients? Boy Howdy is that dumb. Hello Windows 95!)

 

Which brings me back to NAS devices like the WD. I bought and tested one here (12T, 4 "Red" Drives) and it was an unbelievably poor performer when asked to do anything intensive. Admittedly, I am used to much better performance, but even putting it on the business LAN instead of the entertainment LAN, poor performance. That's with file sharing to Windows (JRMC had trouble with with, slow sometimes even *gapped* performance), Time Capsule had nothing but grief with it, Windows shares on Macs were less than stellar performers, and even SMB shares to Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows 10 were sadly underperforming. I think I ask too much of a device that costs only a few hundred dollars.

 

While costing about twice as much for less capacity (8TB), a Promise Pegasus2 R4 attached to a Mac Mini used as file server absolutely blows away the low end NAS drives, and as a side benefit, is almost as quiet. Not an apples to apple comparison of course, but why in heaven's name are they not building NAS units with comparable performance? I mean, RAID-5 is generally *faster* than RAID-1. Except on the WD EXT4 NAS. What should be slower is the network, and even then, it should allow some really decent speed by ganging up cheap Ethernet connections. Go figure...