NAS storage planner
Turn a storage idea into a plan you can verify.
Model capacity growth, compare redundancy choices, check workload and placement, protect the data that matters, and price the complete storage boundary.
Start from a real use case
Choose the storage pressure you recognize.
Family photos
Protect a growing family photo library
Plan capacity, a redundant primary copy, and a separate recovery destination before photos outgrow scattered drives.
Open baseline →Media library
Plan a Plex and media-library NAS
Model media growth, usable capacity, bay pressure, and recovery boundaries without treating the array as the only copy.
Open baseline →Self-hosted homelab
Plan storage for self-hosted services
Separate application data, databases, snapshots, and backups before choosing a pool layout for a growing homelab.
Open baseline →NAS expansion
Plan an existing NAS expansion
Check whether replacing drives, adding bays, or starting a second storage target is the cleanest next move.
Open baseline →After the capacity number
Make the next storage decision clearer.
A useful plan makes capacity, redundancy, and recovery boundaries visible before a shopping list exists.
Capacity
Estimate storage growth before choosing drive size
Use current data, recurring growth, retention, and free-space reserve to plan usable capacity instead of shopping by raw TB.
Recovery
Use RAID for availability, not as the only backup
A redundant array can survive some drive failures, but it does not create an independent copy for deletion, ransomware, theft, or enclosure loss.
Hardware shape
Choose NAS drive bays from the next expansion
Bay count determines more than current capacity: it changes redundancy choices, upgrade friction, and how soon the enclosure becomes the bottleneck.
Drive checks
Verify CMR or SMR by exact drive model
Recording technology is a specification check, not a marketplace keyword. Match the model number to manufacturer documentation before using a drive in a parity or ZFS plan.
Architecture choices
Compare storage paths before products.
Enclosure choice
2-bay or 4-bay NAS?
Choose between simplicity now and room for different redundancy and expansion paths later.
Redundancy choice
RAID 5 or RAID 6?
Compare single and dual parity by usable capacity, fault tolerance, drive count, and what a degraded array means for your data.
Platform choice
Synology SHR or RAID 5?
Compare flexible mixed-drive planning with a conventional equal-drive RAID layout through the actual expansion path you expect to use.
ZFS choice
RAID-Z1 or RAID-Z2?
Choose a ZFS vdev layout by capacity, fault tolerance, future pool design, and the backup plan outside the pool.