Hmmm. This is a case of anything-is-a-massive-step-forward vs more-is-more-better. I can't see myself needing your storage capacity, definitely not any time soon. I'd try Plex on it to see if it works, my Plex use is less intense too, 99% is to a Roku in the next room and the very few things which need transcoding i generated an optimized versions already... And if it's a disaster I can move it back. I could fit an 8 bay one in the budget, and having the drive bays for double redundancy and a hot swap is real tempting, but I'm also still pretty sure it'd be happy with the 4 bay. The main goal is making automated backups easier than my Frankenstein pi setup, and everything else is bonus.
The smart money runs Plex on an NVidia Shield. Play around here and see if four drives makes sense. I went bigger because in RAID5, you start hitting efficiencies at 5 drives and in RAID6, you start hitting efficiencies at 6 drives. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to back up Macs and Macrium Reflect to back up PCs.
Today 4 is fine. I need to sit on this decision a few days and weigh current size vs future expansion. Just found out that the model I mentioned isn't one that can be expanded though, their model numbering is a pain. Macrium Reflect looks good, thanks.
A couple considerations: - 8 drives is the number where Synology firmly separates "hobbyist" from "SOHO." 12 drives is where they separate "SOHO" from "Enterprise." - The numbers you care about are DS2-, DS4-, DS6-, DS7-, DS9-, DS15-, DS16-, and DS18-. That stands for "Disk Station" where 2, 4, 6 are basic-bitch with that many drives, 7 and 9 are value-add with expansion and 15, 16 and 18 are their SOHO sizes that expand a lot. The numbers after the dash (which is a convention I have added for simplicity) is generation number. Thus a DS214 is a 4th generation 2-drive model. A DS214 plus is a 4th generation 2-drive model with slight revision, like maybe a little more memory. Thus, the 1813 plus I was running is eight generations older than the 1821 plus they're currently selling, but they're both 8-drive, fully-expandable models. Things only get tricky when you buy expansion chassis, because some expansion chassis bridge generations but it's not obvious. - Synology, if they aren't dead, go for a lot used. It's like they're Macs or something. A 1621 is a thousand dollars off Amazon. A 1618, which is three generations old, is $700 rode hard put away wet on eBay with no pedigree. I sold my busted one for $250 (I think?). I sold the expansion, which I bought used, for more than I bought it used for, having used it for four years. DS214s go for around $150 used; I bought ours new for $179? $229? seven goddamn years ago.
I decided a DS15- fits a nice balance of doing everything I want without going wildly overkill, but I can expand it in the future if needed. I'll see if I can get the newer 22+ without too much backorder delay. Thanks for the help