Yo.
I’m new to the game. Like 2h fresh. I’m fairly technical, being a millennial and a programmer.
What I want to do, is to have a NAS server I can host movies from and watch them on my phone in my bed - or on my projector.
Extra points if I could host my ebooks and music there and run a torrent client. Extra extra points if I could connect to it from outside my home network (and stream)
I’ve read about about Plex and Jellyfin.
I’m here to ask you about hardware advice.
Will QNAP or Synology be enough for my needs and can I install custom software there? I don’t really want to create hardware from scratch.
Google says yes, but I trust reddit and random articles like I trust a fox not to eat chickens.
Edit: preferably something with WOL that goes silent and fanless when not in use, or something I can shut down with a button
There are some passively cooled (i.e. no spinning fan) SFF Desktops (HP, DELL, etc.) or you could get a Raspberry Pi 5 and stick it into a Geekworm case. Power consumption with these devices should hover around 5W, maybe slightly higher under load. The Desktops most probably support WoL. The Raspberry Pi doesn’t.
Also in my experience the raspberry pi isn’t all that great for a NAS considering you are reliant on using USB hard drives and also need a separate powered USB hub for them
Which Pi did you try? Since the Pi4/CM4 (can even work with SAS drives) and especially with the Pi5 you can build some nicely performing NASes.