But Sky has limited the number of apps you can install – clearly they want you to use their Sky Now service. This is a device that Sky were selling for £10. The first one I actually got working properly was on my Sky Now box. The reason I chose Plex is because there are plenty of apps for it on devices I own. Simply manually creating a new folder – “Plex” without quotes – did it. For whatever reason, the Plex installer was not creating a “Plex” Shared Folder. In the end I finally stumbled across the problem. I used SSH to connect directly to the NAS and look to see if there was a problem there. I deleted other apps (that I wasn’t using) that might have been a problem. I went through dozens of both Plex and Synology forums searching for a solution. But in spite of installing, it just repeatedly gave the error message: “Failed to run the package service.” I repeatedly tried the official version via Synology. However, it actually suited me to use the older drive anyway. But it actually seems more powerful than my older DS210j. Seemingly it’s because the specs of the processor on-board aren’t high enough. My first disappointment was to learn that it’s not supported on the “cheap” DS214se. And I knew that there was a Synology app for Plex.
I did once play with Microsoft Home Media Center on a cheap PC, but it was all a mess, and I went no further.īut I liked the idea of installing some software on a NAS drive – removing the need to leave a PC on. For various reasons, I’ve always shied away of using some kind of media centre software. The other thing I wanted to do was install Plex. In Lightroom – my photo software of choice – I just re-pointed the top level directory to the new drive location and all was fine. But it did the job first time with no errors.
So I used the Synology Filestation app and set up a copy direct.Īll you need to know is that it took about 48 hours – so not fast. I’ve just rarely had a good experience of a large file move in Windows. The first thing to realise is that it’s not wise to do a move of this size via a PC. But the photos alone that I wanted to move came to 1.1TB. But the important stuff is on the NAS drives). That means moving photos to the new drive and leaving everything else on the old one (I say “everything” but clearly I have a whole pile of other hard drives in cases and loose. The first thing I wanted to do was spread the load. I installed a couple of WD Red 3TB drives, again in a RAID array, and I was away. It’s the cheapest drive they make, but I don’t need it to do a great deal. I also instigated a regular “offsite backup” another simple Seagate external drive which I kept at work in my desk draw, regularly bringing home to ensure that the NAS was backed up in another location (sadly a former colleague once had his hard drive stolen in a house break-in even though the value of the hard drive was probably quite low).īut even being fairly ruthless over what photos I keep, my NAS was getting dangerously close, so earlier this week I decided to invest in an additional Synology DS214se. There are 2 x 2TB drives in a RAID array to give me redundancy. Since getting my first NAS, I was pretty happy. In particular I was worried about music, video and mostly photos. I first bought a DS210j about two or three years ago when I started to get a bit more concerned about how well backed up my data is. I now have a couple of Synology NAS drives. This is going to be a bit dry, but it may or may not help others. Note: Just to be clear – I’ve installed Plex on a DS210j and not a DS214se.