Home Network Storage?
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- mg33
Trying to wrap my head around some changes to how/where I'm storing all my files at home. Figured some of you have gone through this as well and can offer good suggestions. I'm not looking for something to stream media / videos / songs. I use Apple TV for movies and don't own much outside that ecosystem that I even watching. We also have Sonos throughout the house, and either play records or stream via Spotify of iTunes home sharing; no need to stream from network storage.
My current computer and storage setup:
- 2017 iMac with 2TB drive (lives in basement, mostly used for music recording and photo editing in Lightroom and PS) All Lightroom catalogs live on this drive.
- 1TB external drive attached to iMac containing various older stuff that isn't touched much.
- MBP with 256 gig storage (just got this a couple weeks ago, storage is a downgrade from previous MBP with 1TB SSD drive)At the moment I'm accessing stuff on the iMac over my home network when I need to work on it on my MBP, which isn't much to be honest. Just website files, some Photoshop work that I do on both computers. But I really need to come up with a well-organized, meaningful organization for everything so it's easy to find, so I know where it lives, and that it's backed up to a 6TB Time Machine drive.
I came across the Western Digital My Cloud Expert Series. Looks interesting in terms of centralizing things, having access from anywhere with a web connection, and having easy backup to Time Machine.
Any thoughts on that product or similar products, or suggested methods of centralizing storage over a network and a cloud service? Are there any alternatives worth exploring like Dropbox sync?
- robotinc2
look into synology home NAS systems. I loved my 2 bay one so much i upgraded to a 4 bay.
The nice thing about synology over the other nas companies is the web front end to manage the device.
I'd recommend the 4 bay, as you can get bigger drives as you need them. You can run a raid 5 array, and use it as your timemachine target. the nice thing about raid 5 is a drive can die and you wont lose data
- mg330
Bumping this to see if anyone can help answer some new questions.
Considering a 2 bay Synology drive. If I understand NAS drives correctly, a 2 bay drive means that one drive contains the stuff you save to it, and the second drive contains duplicate files from drive 1, in case drive 1 fails. Is that correct?
Next, does it make sense to back the NAS up to an external drive?
Next, regardless of whether I back up the NAS or not, I still have two computers - iMac and MBP - that will have files and other stuff that needs to get backed up to a TimeMachine drive that is connected to the iMac. It always backs the iMac up; I have to plug in the MBP periodically to back it up.
Are there easier ways to do this? To keep the majority of files on a NAS for centralized access, and remote access from the web, but to also easily back up two computers to something efficiently?
- Well, that's what RAID 0 or 1 is. You can have it mirror (2nd backup copy) or not do that and have the extra space.fyoucher1
- If you store data on the NAS that's not anywhere else, might be best to have a backup of that :)fyoucher1
- Easier way: Pay for online backup, worth every penny. I use BackBlaze, which backs up all my connected drives and iMacPro.fyoucher1
- ^ do bothformed
- teh2
I use this WD cloud drive. You can link time machine to it from multiple computers from an icon on each computers, iphone, ipad etc.
- mg330
Teh, can you elaborate? When you say “link time machine to it from multiple computers” what do you mean?
- hellrod0
I've had the WD Cloud EX2 Ultra (RAID 1) for a few years and works perfectly. All your computers on Time Machine will back up to it. I had one drive fail, just pulled it out and put a new one in. I can access it from offsite if needed. You can pull movies from it to your TV. I store a ton of photos and music as well. Easy to use also.
- mg330
Thanks hellrod. But here's the thing. I'm not looking to use it solely as a backup.
After talking to someone at my office, I'm under the impression that I can:
- use a NAS as a place for files
- use it for time machine backups of my other computers.If that's true, the NAS serves a nice purpose, but do I THEN need a backup for it? I'd like to move to a point where I'm backing everything up once a week, and storing that backup drive in our safe just in case something awful ever happens.
- If your NAS is a RAID with redundancy (RAID 1 or 5) then you should be ok. If you want to be safe get some offsite cloud storage and do regular backups there.zarkonite
- imbecile0
I used to use MyCloud, before that, SimpleShare. Now I'm on the Synology DiskStation DS918+. I use one at the office and at home, easy remote link into it. I stream media throughout my house off of it.
- https://www.synology…imbecile
- you have another one at home or do you access the work one from home?Gnash
- i've just got one of these and how have to try and set it up. the idea is to back up to it and then have it back up to awshans_glib
- do you use it as a working drive or just for back-up?Gnash
- framing it as a 'cause' seems a little hyperbolic is all.Gnash
- for me, one has work stuff. one has personal stuff. I can access both from either lo. to me they are storage and the redundancy is not networked.imbecile
- i back up manuallyimbecile
- zarkonite0
This Synology NAS is on special right now: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-…
- mg331
Alright, got a Synology DS218+ and two 6TB drives. Got it all set up last night and tons of stuff to move to it.
Question for any of you Synology NAS users. When I use the DS Video apps to see what’s in Video Station, is this streaming over my LAN from the NAS to the app, or am I accessing this from app > Internet > home connection > NAS? I assume it’s fhe former and the app is simply working over my network.
Secondly, do any of you use the DS Cloud or Drive app, and if so, how do you share folders and their contents from Disk Station to these apps?
Anyone able to share some usage / process / tips for some of this stuff?
- ernexbcn0
I run FreeNAS on a VM on my home server. All the computers time machine to that and it gets backed up on the cloud with Backblaze B2.