What the NAS (and backup solutions)?

[jimmy_uk]

Ahead of getting a new Mac laptop to replace my ageing Windows desktop - I've decided I should get a NAS to store my iTunes, photos and documents.

So far I'm generally reading I should go with Synology and probably RAID 5. I'd want at least 8TB of usable storage. I'm not sure about what drives to pick at the moment as I'm reading bad reviews for all makes (reliability/longevity - 3 year error warnings etc).

I would like also to create a backup of the laptop - should this go to the NAS or should I buy a separate SSD to do this?
If it goes to the NAS, should this be a dedicated drive just for this or could I make a partition? I'm not sure this is a good idea as I will reduce my overall storage by 1TB and I'm not clear on how this affects RAID 5?


Not really sure what I'm letting myself in for - likely a world of hurt and days of my life lost!

 

[mattspace]

So far I'm generally reading I should go with Synology and probably RAID 5. I'd want at least 8TB of usable storage.

The biggest issue with Synology, and this is research I've been doing from a similar position, is that it can't host certain types of files - so your photos library, for example, because it has to live on an APFS or HFS+ volume. So for that it either lives on your machine, or you have to get an external HFS+ drive pluggen to the Synology for it.

There's a lot of these gotchyas - Synology has great snapshotting for versioned backups, but it can't see inside package files so any big package files will be snapshotted in their entirety, if even one file within them changes.

Theoretically, its a better way to store your files than external hard drives, but a lot of the fine details are pain points.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Synology is likely the most Mac-friendly and easiest for folks who don't have an IT background.

As far as backups go, no need to make partitions or volumes. Simply make a shared folder specific to backups. You can set a quota if you need to limit how much space a user (or a function). Much more flexible if/when things change.

You could use RAID 5, or Synology's Hybrid RAID, which is more flexible and available with the BTRFS. Either way, quotas are your friend.

 

[splifingate]

My 920+ (w/four 14TB rust-spinners (26+TB usable w/SHRaid)) is just a storage 'space' . . . entirely agnostic to file-types.

I sync my TM/backups/data to internal (20TB), then to the Syno (then *maybe* copy to external drives (while the penultimate culls get send to B2 for cold-storage)).

Your Administrative (read: "I have to regularly think&act upon it") overhead will definitely increase, but you can rest-assured that you now grasp some degree of data redundancy that will (hopefully?) someday relieve the stress when you *do* lose part of your data

Data-loss is not a matter of 'if!', but a matter of "when?" *smile*