Looking for a Good NAS

[Arch_Angel]

Looking to get a NAS (network attached storage) for my home to store all my old HDDs and SSDs from previous laptops and use the cumulative storage as backup for my current PC's.

Anyone has a recommendation for one?

[khat17]

If you're looking for a dedicated NAS - maybe Synology. If you want something that you can build and add to and all that - get a box and use NextCloud.

[Chris]

I use XigmaNAS, works great for me.

[khat17]

I use XigmaNAS, works great for me.

Interesting. Haven't used. But on that - maybe TrueNAS?

https://alternativeto.net/software/freenas/

[Arch_Angel]

Well, other IT collegues says that's a bad idea and better to get a NAS with dedicated HDDs suitable for that. Instead of doing BYOD.

Any my wife also convinced me she would prefer a cloud solution in case our home goes up in flames or in the ground.

Soooo, probably gonna go with OneDrive cloud solution as it's the easiest.

[Chris]

Well, other IT collegues says that's a bad idea and better to get a NAS with dedicated HDDs suitable for that. Instead of doing BYOD.

Bad idea? Maybe other colleagues who aren't so confident with what they're doing I've had mine running reliably for years, using a NAS designed HDD - WD Red as the primary drive. I'm only considering switching to a dedicated, ready-made NAS because it'll be more energy efficient than the tower PC I'm currently running.

[Arch_Angel]

Bad idea? Maybe other colleagues who aren't so confident with what they're doing I've had mine running reliably for years, using a NAS designed HDD - WD Red as the primary drive. I'm only considering switching to a dedicated, ready-made NAS because it'll be more energy efficient than the tower PC I'm currently running.

Yeah, bad idea as in I was looking to put my laptop and HDD disks in there. They are just regular HDD disks of varying sizes. So although it could be done, not something they would trust their data on as a reliable backup solution. They suggested getting proper 2 or 3, 2TB or 4TB disks like a WD Red with a proper NAS for more reliability.

[Chris]

Yeah ok, now I get it and agree. Repurposed HDDs can be used as “spare” storage for non-essential data like temp files being shared but not for your important stuff. Having cloud storage as a backup is also a good idea.

[khat17]

Depends on what floats your boat. And what's available. Persons overseas can get drives cheap and have some form of redundancy with the data - so even if they're not using high capacity drives, the builds are mostly secure. Some persons have over 100TB of storage - I guess aggregate. But I believe in having someone else worry about the redundancy - hence cloud storage. I've offloaded most of my things to cloud. Have to pay a fee, but it's less than what JPS would charge.

[Arch_Angel]

Depends on what floats your boat. And what's available. Persons overseas can get drives cheap and have some form of redundancy with the data - so even if they're not using high capacity drives, the builds are mostly secure. Some persons have over 100TB of storage - I guess aggregate. But I believe in having someone else worry about the redundancy - hence cloud storage. I've offloaded most of my things to cloud. Have to pay a fee, but it's less than what JPS would charge.

Which cloud provider do you go with? I've been checking out the prices and bwoy, the 1TB from Microsoft seems a lot more affordable than what others are offering. Because MS also throws in Office suite as well for the price.

I've never really gone over 1TB of data yet and cumulatively, I wouldn't need more than that. Most of the space is taken up by game and OS iso's over the years. My wife's data takes up even less than mine. So really 2TB cloud storage is sufficient for many years to come.