Help me add NAS and backup to my home network?

[Nettle]

Hello,

Long time lurker, first time poster here.

It's time to add NAS and a backup system to my basic home network, and would greatly appreciate advice.

At the moment, it's just the usual - combo cable modem/router provided by the cable company that has 4 ethernet outs and wireless, and a gaggle of devices like laptops and tablets and even a couple of PCs. There is a mixture of Windows and iOS devices.

All I want out of the NAS is to act as a central drive for files that can be accessed by the other devices on the network. A central place to store pictures, documents, etc. so the devices' hard drives don't get full. When I'm sure I won't need or want a file locally on a device for a long time, it'll go to the NAS and be deleted from the laptop/PC. I'm not looking for media streaming or transcoding, or syncing to a cloud, or even remote access. Just a central network drive. So it doesn't have to have blazing transfer speed, but at the same time some home video files are 1Gb or more, so it shouldn't be too slow either.

Then I need data security. I figure two levels: redundancy in the NAS to protect against basic drive failure, and another device that backs up that data in case of full NAS failure or loss. (Again, not Cloud - I'm looking for a device that can live in my home in a separate location form the NAS. That way, the only catastrophic events left would be the entire house burning to the ground or a surge so powerful it takes out everything in the house. I can live with the likelihood of either of these.) Backups should happen automatically, with the ability to set the scedule and how many backups are kept for how long so I can't forget to do it. And the backup utility should be able to browse the backed up files to be able to locate a certain file at a certain time.

I need minimum 2Tb storage on the NAS. 4Tb would be better - but remembering that the larger the NAS becomes, the larger my backup solution has to be.

So I imagine a 2-bay entry level NAS, and I like either QNAP or Synology, set to Raid 1 as a starting point. Maybe hardware encryption is a good idea - it's just personal pictures and files, but privacy is important. But then what for backup? Another NAS? Do QNAP and/or Synology entry level NAS's include the ability to backup from one to another? OR one of those "my cloud" or "backup plus" drives? Except as far as I can tell they're all USB and I want the NAS and backup drives at opposite ends of the house.

And I'm totally open to specific unit model recommendations.

Thank you.

 

[dosborne]

I have a couple QNap NASs and an old DLink.

I use various levels of raid on the units themselves for redundancy and use rsync to mirror between units for backup.

These units have the capability built in. I would guess the Synology does to. Worst case, you can use a raspberry Pi (or similar) or a Linux box or even windows with something like beyond compare to copy files/folders. For better resiliency, you may want to opt for more bays in the NAS. Also, get NAS rated drives.

I use a combination of all this along with Google drive (cloud) although I know you say you don't want that last bit.

I'm personally very happy with the QNap units.

Never really understood why anyone would want to add file storage to a router and use as a NAS. Seems a poor solution for a scalability, performance, resiliency, etc. I suppose on a small scale it may be ok, like backing up configuration or firmware.

 

[Nettle]

Thanks for the reply. It got me thinking - for my very simple application, maybe a couple of USB drives connected to routers would do.

 

[L&LD]

Thanks for the reply. It got me thinking - for my very simple application, maybe a couple of USB drives connected to routers would do.

Your application is simple in design. Implementation via USB connections to the router would be a nightmare in the long run.

Focus on buying a NAS plus a backup for the NAS (a USB connected drive that is not permanently attached to it).

Consider buying a 4 bay NAS today, even if you just populate only two of the drive bays initially. The 4TB to 8TB drives are the sweet spot right now, plan for the largest capacity your budget will allow.

Don't go rushing into this aspect of data management. Move forward purposely and always have at least two copies of your data available at all times before, during and after you make any changes.

The QNAP models are my recommendations. They may be a little more pricey, depending on when you buy them, but they have long support and I've found them highly dependable.