Home NAS with small amount of business data

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mags88

37 posts

Geek

#257335 26-Sep-2019 13:10

Hey all,

Just been looking into a home NAS for the first time, and I purchased the WD My Cloud Home 2tb drive yesterday. I have not opened it as I have come to realise that the USB port is read only - meaning backing this thing up might be problematic.

Looking at other NAS options it adds up to around the $500-600 mark, with the WD being $235.

We use apple operating system and the drive will be storing some work stuff, but really its for the ease of sharing data across our laptops. Having a setup with raid1 to mirror the data seems like a smart idea, but if I can get the WD drive backing up on another USB drive then it could mean for the cost it's worth sticking with it.

Anyone have any suggestions? Any experience with the WD drive?

Cheers

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254 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2325247 26-Sep-2019 13:15

Synology DS218+ with 2x4TB or larger drives. This unit is fine for a lot of things, I have deployed it at businesses up to 20 users with migrating some stuff to O365 and files remained on this unit.

It also runs a few other things like Radius, Unifi controller, etc.

MCSE+M/S, MCITP

askelon

875 posts

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#2325252 26-Sep-2019 13:21

The WD ones are pretty crappy from the few Ive had to deal with. Much better off with a qnap or synology.

mags88

37 posts

Geek

#2325295 26-Sep-2019 13:24

askelon:

The WD ones are pretty crappy from the few Ive had to deal with. Much better off with a qnap or synology.

Ok that is my dilemma here. Is it worth the extra $400 to have a QNAP or Synology system.

afe66

3181 posts

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#2325348 26-Sep-2019 14:31

How much do you value your time. Synology units get great reviews for ease of use.

I bought a 412+ for my home NAS and have enjoyed learning about extra features and apps you can install.

xpd

Geek @ Coastguard NZ
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#2325372 26-Sep-2019 14:57

Yes, go with at least a 2 bay NAS. You then have redundancy if a drive fails.

Cost wise, comes down to how much you value your data.

Im just running an ancient DLink 2 Bay NAS, its slow as crap, but does the job for now.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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wratterus

1687 posts

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#2325376 26-Sep-2019 15:01

Agree with the previous comments - don't get a WD NAS. They are pretty average, annoying issues like only working with specific WD branded disks & the software is extremely basic.

Synology is my pick, the DS218j is a great affordable 2 bay NAS.

networkn

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#2325381 26-Sep-2019 15:19

No question in my mind that Synology or QNAP are head and shoulders above the WD, but it depends what you need. For me I'd spend $400 in a heartbeat.

A Consideration when Backing up your NAS is to ensure if you are using external USB drives, to have a couple and rotate them so that you have at least one not connected at all times.

I have seen some sad and scary situations where NAS's were compromised and so were the drives attached to them.

Also, make sure the users you are connecting to the NAS, have no permissions to the web interface of the NAS, no admin rights and no permissions to the recycle bin function.

Equinox IT

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mags88

37 posts

Geek

#2325485 26-Sep-2019 18:24

Ok thank you for all the comments. As I do not need anything too flash, can someone spec me a NAS system with 2 bay on the lower end of the budget?

From what I can see it will cost around $500-600 for a Synology 2 bay NAS with either 2 x 1tb or 2tb drives.

My research has drawn me toward;

Synology DiskStation DS218j 2-Bay NAS Server

WD 2TB Red 3.5" SATA3 Intellipower 256MB Cache Hard Drive x 2

thoughts ?

Cheers

wratterus

1687 posts

Uber Geek

#2325496 26-Sep-2019 18:46

Perfect.

engedib

254 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2325568 26-Sep-2019 20:46

mags88:

Ok thank you for all the comments. As I do not need anything too flash, can someone spec me a NAS system with 2 bay on the lower end of the budget?

From what I can see it will cost around $500-600 for a Synology 2 bay NAS with either 2 x 1tb or 2tb drives.

My research has drawn me toward;

Synology DiskStation DS218j 2-Bay NAS Server

WD 2TB Red 3.5" SATA3 Intellipower 256MB Cache Hard Drive x 2

thoughts ?

Cheers

If you don't want anything fancy (O365 backup, mail server, docker, etc) on the NAS, just file share, it is perfectly fine.

MCSE+M/S, MCITP

mags88

37 posts

Geek

#2325655 27-Sep-2019 02:33

engedib:

mags88:

Ok thank you for all the comments. As I do not need anything too flash, can someone spec me a NAS system with 2 bay on the lower end of the budget?

From what I can see it will cost around $500-600 for a Synology 2 bay NAS with either 2 x 1tb or 2tb drives.

My research has drawn me toward;

Synology DiskStation DS218j 2-Bay NAS Server

WD 2TB Red 3.5" SATA3 Intellipower 256MB Cache Hard Drive x 2

thoughts ?

Cheers

If you don't want anything fancy (O365 backup, mail server, docker, etc) on the NAS, just file share, it is perfectly fine.

The main use of the NAS will be file sharing between the household with the bonus of access out of the home via cloud. Thanks 👍

dt

1152 posts

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#2325718 27-Sep-2019 09:16

is there any chance you might want to use this as a media server in the future i.e a plex server ?

if you bumped up to a model with an intel CPU in it you will be able to do a lot more with it should you wish to in the future..

timmmay

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#2325721 27-Sep-2019 09:22

If the files a small, ie not movies, then you could just use OneDrive / DropBox rather than having to buy and maintain a NAS.

dafman

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#2325725 27-Sep-2019 09:26

+1 for Synology. I bought a DS412+ 7 years ago and it hasn't missed a beat.

Am considering moving to DS218+ and investigating a Plex server, but given it will be over $1k with new drives, and am still mulling over the cost benefit. I was hoping Synology were going to announce an upgrade this year as the 218+ is several years old, but this didn't eventuate.

engedib

254 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2325729 27-Sep-2019 09:27

dafman:

+1 for Synology. I bought a DS412+ 7 years ago and it hasn't missed a beat.

Am considering moving to DS218+ and investigating a Plex server, but given it will be over $1k with new drives, and am still mulling over the cost benefit. I was hoping Synology were going to announce an upgrade this year as the 218+ is several years old, but this didn't eventuate.

Yes, the 220+ was announced in May this year, hopefully it will be available soon :)

MCSE+M/S, MCITP

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