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.
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.
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