@@danielkaranja7978 depends on your use case and how you want to back your data up. It's possible to meet all the criteria for good backup practices and avoid online storage services altogether. The video also puts this forward as something private that you don't have to pay a service fee for.
Nah, with good hardware raid you're pretty secure. I've worked at Cisco, yahoo, Google, others managing servers for many decades. We *rarely* need to restore something. Only if you are wishing to keep more than one revision.
Jimmy you bought a DS1821+, the 18 means you can have up to 18 drives. the unit holds 8 drives and you can get 2 more 5 bay addons that plug into your NAS by the eSata plugs in the back.
@@silentblackhole Caring strongly about minor pronounciation differences is more than a little bit ridiculous, ngl, especially when it's an acronym with no official pronunciation.
I hope you have your security set up correctly if you’re planning to use your NAS anywhere. It’s another rabbit hole that takes time to understand for newbies, but it’s essential. Thankfully, Synology’s recommendations are actually pretty OK as long as you follow the practices, port forward responsibly and minimize port openings on your network, but it’s even better if you can complement it with a Wireguard-based VPN.
Great intro into the NAS world, Jimmy. Like your style of delivery too. Subscribed! 🙂 I have two Synology NAS drives: A DS412+ that I bought in 2015 and a DS920+ that I bought a couple of weeks ago. My main reasource hog is my photography. Storing the digital images, initially scanned negatives and more recently the digital RAW files fresh from the camera was becoming problematic, hence the initial purchase. I've had a NAS box longer then that, but where the Synology DS412+ has proven to be incredibly reliable over the past seven years, my previous no-name brick failed catastrophicaly after only a couple of years and cost me a fortune to have a professional data-recovery firm rebuild the RAID and recover the data. I bought the second NAS (DS920+) a couple of weeks ago beause I thought my DS420+ was failing, but the actual problem was becasue I inadvertantly 'hot-swapped' a failing drive. DOH! I didn't loose any data but the NAS was two, three times a day giving me error messages that where similar to the broken drive I swapped out, hence my believing that the NAS itself was broken. Having bought a second device, however, swapping all the data from the old to the new without issue, I subsequently undertook a factory-reset on the the old unit, which fixed the percieved problem. It's now working perfectly again. The DS412+ is now one of two local backups for the DS920+, where the other is a seperate USB external HDD 'brick'. I use IDrive, an online cloud service dedicated to backup regimes, for my offsite backup. Ove the last seven years, I've had three drive failures Total losses of info - zero! Lessons learned: A) Don't cheap-out and buy no-name kit for your pressios data. It's not worth it. If you have precious data then buy decent kit with a reputation. There's two or three key players in this space, so there's alternatives. B) Do invest (time/effort/money) in instigating a proper backup routine. Use the 3-2-1 backup: 3: Create one primary backup and two copies of your data. 2: Save your backups to two different types of media. 1: Keep at least one backup file offsite. C) Don't hot-swap drives in a NAS that's not designed to offer that facility! Mine don't but some NAS units will allow hot-swapping of drives, so check that out if it's an important feature for you.
great choice. I'm using this since 10+ years 2 Bay & 5 Bay Synology also I've sold 200+ Synology NAS. Some tips 01. Please don't forget spare hard disk 02. UPS in the event blackout 03. Buy plus series model & extend 2 years Warranty (Total 5 Years Warranty) 04. Don't forget 2FA for security reason (Two Factor Authentication)
UPS is a must for a NAS, Just need one big enough to enable an auto shutdown if there is a power blackout, Don't need a really expensive one. Get one that gives you at least a few minutes worth so the HDD's can spin down and turn off the NAS, Otherwise you could lose all your data.
As a lifetime geek and lover of all tech toys, I've wanted a NAS for years. Now at 71, with a few extra bucks from the sale of a family property, I took the leap and got a Synology DS1821+ this week. Still waiting on my 6 10Tb disks, but I set it up in test fashion with a pile of old castoff drives from my hoarding closet. Working as a field service engineer for 40 years, I had some networking experience, but retiring 10 years ago has faded a lot of that knowledge. Currently working my way thru some old Network+ manuals from 15 years back, and plowing thru stone age concepts like NetBEUI, IPX/SPX, etc. But the basics are coming back to me. Planning to use this NAS to store lifetimes of scanned and digital photos, family documents, my CNC and 3D printer files,and my wife's massive hoard of digital sewing, embroidery, and quilting files. Also reserving the two remaining NAS drive bays for Synology's Surveillance Station. Sad commentary on modern life that I plan to outfit my front yard like a video studio. Thanks for a great video. I may just show it to family members who keep asking, "whats that black box on the desk for?"
Only 10TB disks? There is one mistake I made when I started using NAS: buying too small disks. The 2 last disks I bought are 22TB disks. I always underestimated my ‘needs’.
You made the same blunder I did with first NAS, NEVER go cheap on HDD capacity, harder to upgrade later on. I went with 3x8TB and added another 2x8TB a year later to fill 5 bay NAS, Still filled them had the NAS 3 years now. I should have bit the bullet and gone with 3x 16TB to start with and added the rest later, I would still have a few years of storage rather than now being full.
This is why I generally prefer UnRAID. Way it works is just: -Have a parity disk as large as the biggest disk in your array (or two) -Have something quick to use as a big storage cache for the entire thing (an SSD). Otherwise, you can grab whatever hard drive you want and it'll just work. One parity disk, you can survive one drive failure. Two parity disks, you can survive two. Always back up everything important and keep a spare drive lying around in case one fails. End result is easily expandable storage and a server you can also use for other stuff through Docker images and VMs, potentially. Plus, the lack of proprietary Synology stuff means it's easy to replace other parts.
@@mikec2845 Some people store tons of movies n' shit, keep all their games on there so they can grab them more quickly than downloading them from Steam again, etc. But yeah, I still don't get how you'd manage to use up more than *16 TB* of space unless you're storing tons of raw video footage.
So this video was a wake up call. I'm starting up my own RU-vid channel fairly soon (3D modeling tutorials). I thought about what I might teach and my target audience. Not once did I think about storage! I already use up a lot of storage space as is. Not sure if I'd need a NAS quite yet, but it's definitely on my radar now. Thanks, Jim!
You can get a smaller Synology like a DS920+ (soon to be the Ds922+) I use one as a home user and a tinkerer. I filled mine with four 2TB drives for enough space vs cost.
The one thing not mentioned ... a NAS is NOT a backup. Its a primary file storage and use system, parity is not an actual backup. If something ... anything goes wrong with the unit or the area the unit is sitting in ... you have no other version of your files, which is a complete fail as a definition of a backup. Many approach this in different ways; - The front USB (or rear) of most NAS devices are for plugging in an external storage device to back up mission critical files occasionally. It depends on the size of the backup for someone like Jimmys usage. Either a truly massive backup drive (20+Tb) in an external enclosure, so he can backup RAW files, or a smaller drive (4 or 8Tb) in that enclosure to just backup finished video projects. Synology's system has settings just for all this. Or instead of an auto backup function, you can set it up so all you do is plug in this external (once a week or whatever) into the front USB, and it auto copies over any changes to desired folders you want backed up. - As a further step, truly ultimate critical mission files (agreements, taxes, paperwork ... or even a full copy of that external drive) can further be backed up automatically to Google drive, dropbox or any cloud service from the NAS directly. NOW you have a true backup system: a NAS for file system parity protection, an external drive on site to protect the NAS in case of complete NAS system loss, and an offsite backup of that, in case of a Satellite crashing into your house or a fire. Just make sure you memorise your cloud server user and password. People really need to understand that a NAS is NOT a backup. No real backup can be in the same box all together, the inherent risk is too large. One small glitch and everything is gone, thats not a backup.
Completely agree Although I'm not sure I'd be too happy relying on just a USB drive plugged into the NAS - if the NAS can write to that drive, then it has the ability to trash it - it's part of the NAS (I'm thinking of malicious stuff like QLocker).
What if you have your NAS setup as SHR-2, for example, in cases of Synology? You have 4 drives but can only utilise 2 of them and the other 2 are a backup of the first 2. In that case would you consider a NAS a backup solution? In addition, if you have like 40TB of data, there's no feasible way to "backup" your data on your NAS, instead of buying like 20x 2TB T5 SSDs, or paying upwards of $500USD a month for Google Drive, which completely negates the need for a NAS in the first place (Most people get a NAS to save money on cloud storage), and the time required to backup 40TB to the cloud is just insane (it'll probably take weeks if not months with internet connections in some places). With RAID and SHR, I would consider a NAS a backup. Curious to hear what your thoughts on this are.
@@techforever1970 OK then, you set up as SHR-2. Then someone breaks in and steals your NAS, or you have a lightning strike that fries it, or a water leak that drowns it. Or a fire, or a fault that destroys the drives. Ideally you need more than one backup, including one that's off-site, in a secure location. So if your main building burns down, you still have the off-site backup. Of course you need to be sure that the off-site backup is up-to-date and intact, and that takes a lot of work. Backup isn't easy, especially with 40TB of wanted data!
Best explained among all the other channels I've watched. Its like you specifially answered all my questions I had in mind. Earned a new subscriber here!
I have the DS918+. After using it for the past few years I can honestly say it is one of the best purchases that I have made. I use it mainly for streaming movies with plex throughout the house and of course backup for other media. I have it connected directly to the router. With the combination on Nvidia Shield boxes in each room and great gigabit speed there are few things that I can't do. At this time, I am ready for the available expansion bay as I am running out of room. Here is a tip. The NAS will use the smallest capacity hard drive as the largest available. So, if you start off with a 4 terabyte and add a 6 terabyte next the NAS will use the 4 as the maximum space available if you are using Synology default backup option. Now almost 5 years later I am finally replacing the smallest drive to a bigger one to get the space that has been there all these years. In short, I have all 4 bays filled three have the same size drive and one has a smaller one. After replacing the smallest, drive I will finally have the full capacity of the drives I have put in. One last tip. If you are streaming movies over your network, make sure your HDMI cables going from the media box such as Shield are current meaning they are able to stream at least 4K video. Doing this will help fix any problems with streaming and audio/ video voice synchronizations. I thought this was the internet speed for a long time even the TV being super old (plasma), but it was not. Check your cables. Don't go to cheap and you will enjoy your NAS a lot more. Synology has a great website check it out before making any purchases decisions.
Wonderful video explaining it all. I'm new to NAS, just bought a used 2-bay unit and experimenting from there. Pretty excited to see how it'll work out.
Even though i have unlimited storage on Google Drive (grandfather plan), I still use a NAS for daily storage access like video editing because it’s much faster than Google Drive when I’m local. For backup and access outside of my home, I use Google Drive that sync up with my NAS.
Great video on the benefits of using a NAS. I have been using a NAS since the first consumer level devices were released in the early 2000s by Ximeta called the Net Disk. I currently use the Synology DS218 Play+, WD PR210 Pro, D-Link DNS 320L and D-Link DNS-340L. Furthermore, I use my NAS servers to store my engineering designs, music collection, movie collection along with photos from my drones and cameras.
I highly recommend using an old laptop or an unused/cheap one and install debian (or any other distro tbh) if you're starting out. It will teach you a lot, and it will make it obvious that servers are not "basically" computers, they are computers. You can do literally anything you want with it. NAS are great, don't get me wrong, but owning and managing your own little server is extremely rewarding and simpler that it looks like (you have to be open to learning new things though). It's a fun rabbit holw to fall into, as you can always make it more stable, more efficient, more deployable (if you care about that). Also, I highly recommend not installing any graphical environment and managing the server via ssh. But like any computer, you can do exactly what you want, and I find it a very enjoyable exerience
i myself have old celeron laptop that useless for years, i installed fedora on it and then install docker, smb, ftp, ssh, and many more stuff. hell, it so useful that i can host my own content, do downloads, makes it as bluetooth speakers and many more! and i use Nextcloud, Jellyfin for the frontend, and deploys it via docker
One of the biggest advantages is safety. If it's possible, it's best to avoid having sensitive data (or any non backed up data) on your main PC. If something happens and your data is lost, or you get ransomware and all your data is encrypted (or otherwise stolen), then you're pretty much out of luck. If your data is elsewhere, there's far less risk.
These are going to be essential for those travelling internationally. Border agents can take an image of any device you’re travelling with so it’s best to keep your data elsewhere and secure.
I love Synology been using it for some years now, had a WD NAS and wasnt the best for my Plex needs. I only use Plex with my NAS and mostly all the movies/shows are ones I own but I do still setup a backup for them in case of failure. I do love Sylology's SHR and found it better then the other options.
I'm a tinkerer so I built my own and went with Truenas but I have installed Synology/Qnap stuff for clients who don't mind paying extra for the ease of use. I'm a ZFS guy so that was important for me but for the 'average' user these are solid, just don't buy used unless you are willing to forgo warranty.
I am A Synology geek. Set up an 8 bay for a relatives photography studio about 6 years ago. Knew nothing about them and did it as a hobby. The system came out great with photographers logging in via FTP and wedding video serving on large screens in studio to show prospective clients.
Hey, a NAS is very valuable for more than just Dollar value. I manage a facility that has 2 NAS's and 54 cameras connected to it. Just amazing how capable the NAS is for storing 30 and 90 day backup of all those cameras. Not difficult to use but does require some Tech knowledge. There are many features that can be added that this facility isn't using. Crazy stuff. Now I'm thinking about getting a 6 bay unit for my house. Just need to cough up a couple grand for all the equipment, drives and UPS. .
I got a Terramaster F4-210 with 2g. Of RAM it was around 189 last year and decided to splurge the money on 4 20tb hdds and just use it as a NAS and the "home server" functionalities are on a cheap n100 chinese mini PC with CasaOS for docker that basically handles my media server, personal cloud, torrenting, dns and much more. Been really happy with my decision. I would like to get a second mini PC and move the media server there for better performance
There is a thing called digital hoarders and they have a subreddit. People who go down this path and start backing up Wikipedia or movies that they will never watch again or are not even interested in need to step back and see if there is an underlying issue.
I wish they do but I doubt it. Even Google Photos-like products from big cloud & AI companies like Microsoft and Amazon are not even remotely comparable. I really want a viable Google Photos competitor; one that's as simple to set up & use and has an AI that's as good. Been looking for a long while, nothing even remotely comes close.
I have an 80TB Unraid NAS mainly for Plex and local computer backup storage. Currently 67.2TB used with a 14TB parity drive and 1x 14TB, 3x 10TB, 3x 8TB, and 2x 6TB drives for the data array.
Third video I've seen of yours and all today. I'm loving the content! Thanks for this. I've been on the fence about getting a NAS, you sold me. Thanks again Jimmy.
I just got a buffalo 4 bay NAS off a sale site. Put in the 4 - 4tb iron wolf drives. Love it. One cool feature it has , not sure how others go about it, but buffalo's phone app allows my phone to back up to it, so all photos, videos, downloaded documents backup nightly to it. That's kinda big since they have been removing micro SD cards from phones.
I am in the process of getting a Synology DS418 set up for at home use. This was a great video! I would love to see a video on the apps you have installed to allow for remote access.
I have a bunch of drives in some QNAP boxes all connected directly to my computer through a USB hub. Good for storage and can even handle playback. The best part is Backblaze will back it up for $7/month or $70/year. I currently have 50 TB backed up. You can’t do that with NAS because its not directly attached storage (DAS). Backblaze would charge over $3k/year for the same amount of storage when using a NAS.
I had an older NAS and a ds918+. The old NAS died so I added a Synology expansion box. Now I have 2 volumes that are mirrors. Even if one unit dies I will still have all my data. I did have an issue with the power supply for the ds918+. Synology support replaced the whole device. They earned my trust.
NAS is a valid as single version/revision backup if it's using hardware RAID underneath. With good hardware raid you're pretty secure. I've worked at Cisco, yahoo, others managing servers for many decades. We *rarely* need to restore something from *backup*. Only if you are wishing to keep more than one revision, and even file level snapshots (classic NetApp style) can easily hold many short term revisions.
It should be noted that most consumer-grade RAID controllers SUCK. Not as much as the "hardware RAID" on some motherboards, but still. Your best options on a home PC are actually Linux's kernel RAID, ZFS or UnRAID.
I had two DNS323's and out grew them. I now have a RaspberryPi 4 with a drive bay of 4 drives and a drive bay with two drives. The four bay has two 18 TB drives and two 4 TB drives and the two bay has two 2 TB drives. You noticed I have two of each size? One is data, other is backup. I have scripts on the Pi to run backups every night. The Pi is gibibit ethernet and my modem/router is gigibit, so they are very fast even moving movies from desktop to the drives. No, can not share on WiFi, or when away from home, but I'm secure in that nothing that is not replaceable is on my different computers. If it is important, it goes the the Network drives.
Google Drive or other Cloud Storage Services are more for share files with other and fast up and download speeds. Your Nas is limited to your internet provider speeds for online connection over nextcloud, owncloud etc.
For beginners I have to say... this video is kinda bad. First you bought (or got sponsored) one of the most overpowered synology consumer nas that are out there. Quick explanation for Synology "mouthful" naming scheme: DS means Disk Station which is their consumer line-up. The last two numbers is the release year of the unit the other numbers (the first or the first two) stands for the maximum supported drives of the unit. Everything (if anything) after those numbers means how powerful the machine is (eg. J, +, play, xs, etc.) where + is the second most powerful rating. So your DS1821+ is a consumer (Desktop) DiskStation that supports up to 18 Disks (8 in this unit + 5 per expansion unit (DX, DiskStation Expansion)) released in 2021 with the "power rating" +. More explanation of Synologys naming scheme can be found online if anyone is interested. I think it is pretty easy to understand if you read into it. I think this is pretty overkill for the normal user. SHR, while only useabel with synology, sound pretty good for non-tech people. Second some explanation is wrong. The biggest IMO is this: At 8:20 you say that "CMR drives do better in a NAS than regular hard drives do" and while it is somewhat right it's wrong. CMR stands for Conventional Magnetic recording and IS (or at least should be, otherwise you should go out and buy something else) your "regular" hard drive. The other type is "shingled magnetic recording" and does pretty much what is says: it has shingled disks where your data is stored and because of that it is pretty slow. Also third: as others already commented a NAS is not a real backup. It sounds like you suggest people switch from Dropbox, Google drive etc. to a NAS but now you have to look after your files. If (in your case) two drives fail - which is possible with multiple drives from the same manufacturer at the same age - you lose all your stuff. So it would be better to use your NAS for this quick and easy access to your files (even without internet) but still have it uploaded every night or so to one of the cloud providers. This way if multiple drives fail or even worse a fire or a flood in your home you still have everything somewhere else. A (more or less) 3-2-1 backup strategy.
Where, who, or why, did you decide to go with NOZ, and NAZ?! 😂 Weird pronunciation I just haven't heard lol. Dig getting this info out to normal folks, keep it up! Cheers!
Okay we have too many coincidences. I was setting up my new home office last time when I found your video of you doing yours. And I literally just bought a Synology setup last week too! 😂
I bought the Synology DS1522+ a few months ago as a private user. And I love it. I first had two 12 TB drives in SHR. Then three. And today I bought my numbers four and five12 TB drives. I experimented with it. Editing not yet, however VM Linux and Windos. (and removed it again). I have backuped my Macs via Timemachine to it and my Game PC via Active backup for business, and made my photo and film library. In a few months the daugther of my sister is getting maried. We are going to make a folder with a QR code, so guests can upload photo's and video's to it until a certain time after the wedding, so I can give them to the happy couple. I wanted to share a large file with a friend. I just made a downloadlink for a day. Etc, etc, etc. It is such a powerfull tool. Did I need it? Probably not realy. Was it worth it? Absolutely. But I must say, I like to experiment. Thanks for your nice video. And I dod not want to start over to count the times you said NAS. But based on 6 times in a minute, it would be around 84 times.
I've had a Synology DS920+ for about a year now with 4 16tb drives. Am hosting 5 PCs and 14 cellphones as backup. I also have a 16tb usb backup plus C2 storage that runs every day. Synology is one of the best companies for tech support also!! Only drawback is that this is my 3rd DS920 as the first two had hardware is!ues
@@rafraf23534 the first took about a month when i added a 3rd drive. the second was roughly 4 months.. it's just my luck not a flaw in synology. both turned out to be backplane issues.
The cost effective nature of a home NAS depends on some additional factors you didn't cover. When you connect a power meter, how much power does it consume? Do you live in a cooler climate where the extra heat generated is a positive result or do you live in an area where the heat pushes your air conditioner? I decided against a home NAS precisely because the always on convenience meant constant power consumption as well as more heat to deal with in the warmer months.
NAS uses little power, They aren't gaming rigs! Heat is a non issue, Once again they aren't like gaming pc's, It's why they use very low power processors for efficiency.
Please make sure you bought the CMR WD RED drivers the SMR Drives are incompatible with Synology because it will fail the Raid rebuild check Synology compatible drive list please if you using the SMR replace them with the CMR Drives in Red WD sold red drives that where SMR not knowing that it would fail even though the WD Manger said in Keynote don't use SMR Drives or shingled magnetic Recording drives use CMR Convectional magnetic Recording
Just beware of the multiple Ransomware we are getting on NAS... I got attacked with deadbolt ransomware in January and lost everything that wasn't backed up... They sent an email yesterday that another deadbolt version attack happened again....
Hi Jimmy, I don't know if this is your area of expertise, I kind of wish I had found our video before making my purchase, anyway I just purchased the WD 12TB My Cloud EX2 Ultra Network Attached Storage - NAS through Amazon, only it's just a two disk housing at the price of $449. which I just looked is now $529 (I got lucky). The type of data is just normal home use, pst, file that all pc's can access via outlook, stuff like that. I can only hope I made the right choice. Speaking of data access speed, I always thought a usb 3.0 connection was faster than an ethernet connection but viewing your video and your test, that's not the case.
I have an old DS213j. with 2x 2TB WD BLACK. A month or so ago I had my first drive give me a SMART failure. Since then I have been looking to replace the unit. I am waiting for the 2022/2023 models to come out. When they do I'll likely grab a DS222+ or a DS422. When I do this however I think I'd like to add a Switch to my network. I currently have just my ISP (Bell HH 3000) wireless router and Mesh network with TP Deco units feeding my home. 10Gbe would be Overkill in my home but if 2.5Gbe and 5Gbe prices don't come down closer to the 1Gbe prices soon, It just seems like getting the 10Gbe might be the way to go to future proof everything. only problem is Synology will not have 10GBe... if we're lucky they MIGHT have the 2.5Gbe or multiple 1Gbe ports so that I can double speed. That all being said knowing best practices for a switch, ISP router, NAS with more than one port and a MESH network is going to be a project and a half for me. What Switch do you use?
I have 2 QNAP. one is for mainly "work" nas and another is for daily backups from it with version history. Raid is not backup. I think I need to do offsite backup for important data
Looks like a nice toy. I've got a 4 bay here which I've had for years. I actually also own 14 - 16 (lost count) external hard drives but most of the data on there isn't needed anymore. I keep the useful stuff on the NAS for easy access. Of course you change the default username and put a strong password to keep it safe. Even my PC doesn't know the password. I have to type it in every time (makes it hard for a compromised machine to then access the NAS) It's good to also back it up on an external HDD incase the NAS goes down (even in raid things can go wrong)
BTW, you NEED to still have a CLOUD backup of your data, at least the important things.... 3-Point Backup is the Rule. Local Drives, External Drives, and Cloud. BTW, cloud can just be someone you know who has a computer (or NAS or Server) in another part of the country that you also backup to. It doesn't have to be a "paid" service like Google or otherwise. What I do is have my most important files on the Cloud with whatever Free service, Google, Onedrive, MEGA, etc. and then have everything on Internal Drives and Externals Drives (aka NAS). Of course, eventually I should put everything on the Cloud also, but too lazy and poor atm, future project lol.
Weigh your options. NAS equipment can be expensive and as others have said is not a backup option, it's storage (Depending on the settings - Enabling backup will cost more and lessen your storage). Will the cost of this NAS exceed the cost of a monthly subscription to one of the various cloud storage services? Assume each hard drive may need replacing every 5 years or so (7 years for SSD). It *Might* be cheaper for you to rely on a cloud service if you don't need to pull massive amounts of data from the storage quickly.
Great video I shoot 3-5T a year Started back in the day with 512G a year then 1 T I am half way through my work year and my 5T drives are both almost full I need a solution badly
I have a Synology four bay.. and I use a Synology two bay as backup. Synology has really good software that I have running at night to replicate from my main NAS to my backup NAS.
And that is my point of general simplicity of professional youtubers. I am running NAS for past 20 years. My mum lives with me, and she needs some ethnical TV Shows and movies. It was way before streaming. So, I would download it, and present. NAS was OK 10 years ago, now you can stream all my mother can watch. In my country, I get a gigabit internet, so no need for local storage.
Please be aware, I had to get my Synology NAS repaired three times, one time the ATOM CPU problem, second time PSU problem, third time motherboard broke.
I really fucked up when I opted for the Synology DS215J instead of, at least, a 220+. I use it mostly to store and watch movies and TV off of, but if I opted for the 220+ I would have at least been able to mount Docker images. That being said, running Download Station, Filebot, and Plex give me a cute little white box that downloads, sorts, and plays everything for me.
Being a linux user with a single machine I just did a ZFS array on the same box, but for a dedicated machine on the DIY route I'd recommend TrueNAS as the operating system. Anything less than ZFS as the filesystem is silly nowadays, given how reliable it is.
Having NAS is great for storage when a large amount of content renders video and recording and many more. The best part is it is one -time payment and all you have to pay is the electric bill for it. But... once you slowly need more storage eventually your going to need a bigger server.
Which is why it's important to bite the _boolet_ and buy the biggest reliable hdd's that you can find / afford, because it will get *soooo* much harder to upgrade and offload existing data later
Which is why I like to use UnRAID. So long as your parity disk is at least as big as your biggest HDD you can just chuck whatever in there and it'll be happy.
Right now I find myself in the same situation of you at the beginning of the video. A small army of external drives driving me crazy. Now planning to transition to NAS. The video is very informative and didactic on that issue. Thanks for the advice, liked and subscribed, and btw, your girlfriend is very pretty.
I recently bought one nas from qnap with 2 bays, I bought it because I have 2 cases that make me to do it. First the google drive they asking money for something that it was free before and I think that is not fare, and second because one colage recently his ssd faild at his work computer and it was dissaster. So I set it and the process it was very easy for someone that has some knolage. My use is to autobakcup my work pc and personal pc's plus my photos from my mobile and also my systers and recently I found out that I can use it for camera recording for close security system for you house.
Yes if you using Google or one drive as production it quite crazy and NAS is your answer. but in term of reliability, I will prefer Cloud storage, hopefully you wont experience 2 spare disk break in same time and the 3rd disk break when recovering the array so yep, your data gone(I'm using RAID 6 with 8 HDD). For Me NAS is good for ongoing production only, for achieving or long term storage, maybe you have to backup somewhere else(remote location or at least different NAS with RSYNC or If your data is very important, you can backup to cloud object storage like AWS S3/Glacier).
I have unraid currently unRAID running on an asus Extreme 4, Xeon E5-2687v3, 32G DDR4-EEC 4-ch, currently at 6TB NAS and 2 virtual machines. NAS is great!
