New NAS drive required
 

I have 2 NAS drives (WD MyBookLive 2TB & WD My Cloud 3TB)

Well WD have said don't connect the MyBookLive to the net as people can delete data on it, and the My Cloud is having all support and remote access removed in April 2022.

Well I do access my drives remotely and need to look at getting a new NAS drive.

Can you please recommend on that will allow me to access remotely via a phone or tablet.

Re: New NAS drive required
 

If I needed a NAS I would buy a Synology DS216 or maybe better and a couple of decent NAS drives but this is not a cheap solution

Re: New NAS drive required
 

Synology is the only way to go dude. I have been using Buffalo NAS's for donkeys years as they were inexpensive and got the job done but they pretty much disappeared off the market a couple of years ago which forced me to look elsewhere when I needed a new one last year. A friend of mine has been nagging me to get a Synology NAS for ages so I took a good look at what they offer and I was blown away. They have their own OS with apps which isn't just a simple interface with minimal features. It is as if somebody sat down and said "we are going to make the perfect OS for our NAS's with every feature you could possibly want".

I am sure you will google and youtube different websites and videos with different recommendations but I have found a video for you which will point you in the right direction.




For reference, I have got the Synology DS418 and I think it is absolutely flipping fantastic. Depending on what your requirements are you may not need that storage capacity or want the fault tolerance but there are other options available. Any NAS which uses the DSM OS (disk station manager) will allow you remote access via any device.

If you want to take a leap and invest in something more costly and substantial like I did then you should take a look at this guy's youtube channel. I was very reluctant to spend so much on a NAS and then the drives as well (ironwolfs) without knowing what I was getting. Luckily I found this guy's channel on youtube and he has made a series of comprehensive and professional videos detailing every aspect of the DSM and explaining all the features. I watched pretty much every single one before I bought my NAS. It should answer every question you could possibly have and give you some peace of mind as to what you get for your money. You wont want to watch every single video but they have titles and I would suggest you watch the first couple to get a flavour of the basics of what DSM has to offer as well as the tutorial for setting up remote access.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...aNMmFpmZJ1wYwo

Re: New NAS drive required
 

Looking at this one ATM. intrigued by the 2 Ethernet ports



https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Synology-...R_STORAGE&th=1

Re: New NAS drive required
 

Cheaper to buy the NAS and the drives and slot them in yourself

Re: New NAS drive required
 

another nod for Synology here

Re: New NAS drive required
 

Synology are more flexible in their apps and their own implementation of RAID5(it can cope with differing HDD capacities). The downside is they don't seem to yet have any with 2.5GbE ports.
I have a DS420j fully loaded with 8Tb HDDs in RAID5 configuration.

Re: New NAS drive required
 

good choice and as it is a 2 bay system you have got the option for raid 0 for redundancy. I went with a 4 bay solution because I needed more space plus redundancy. If you go for anything with 3 drives or more you can use raid 5 or the Synology equivalent (which is fantastic).

The 220+ you have chosen looks perfect with the ironwolfs but I would think twice as to whether you would really notice and benefit from the increased performance. Have you had a look at the 218? It is £234 and you can get the Ironwolfs for £96 each for a total cost if £426 saving yourself a lot of dosh.

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Synology-...rs&sr=1-1&th=1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Iro...34&sr=8-3&th=1


Below are the links for the Synology datasheets so you can compare them:

218
https://global.download.synology.com..._Sheet_enu.pdf

220+
https://global.download.synology.com..._Sheet_enu.pdf




Looking at all the specs I think my 418 is literally the 4 bay version of the 218 so I can highly recommend it. It serves 3 media players in the house as well as the pcs and laptops and backups etc and it doesn't break a sweat. There is a widget on the desktop which displays cpu usage, ram and bandwidth utilisation and it handles everything no problemo.


I am going to throw you a massive curveball now. You were prepared to spend around £500 so why don't you consider the 4 bay solution (which is what I have got) and you can still only put 2 drives in it for now but leave yourself plenty of scope for expansion in the future:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203177581...MAAOSwq85frKm-

If you get that plus the two 4 TB Ironwolfs you are looking at the price you was originally willing to pay. You can use the drives as standalone drives if you want to for now or use raid 1 and as you add more drives in the future you can choose whether to add them to an existing array, create a new one or use them as a single drive. The Synology NAS' are fully customisable and flexible. The 418 can go up to something like 48TB storage and I have got 4 x 4TB in there atm in the Synology raid system. If I want more capacity and for example wanted to replace the drives with 8TB drives I wouldn't have break the system and start from scratch. I can add (replace) new drives one by one and they would be integrated into the array and the available storage space would scale up.

It really is a fantastic system and if I were you with the benefit of having experience with it, that is what I would go for. It is great future proofing no matter which way you look at it.





A few of us have mentioned Synology's raid system (Synology Hybrid RAID) and you might be asking yourself what it is and why would you use it when RAID has been around for donkeys and everyone knows what it is. SHR like everything else Synology does is amazing and if you want to be a nerd and get excited about using it prior to your purchase you can read about it here. My NAS is using SHR opposed to RAID 5 and I couldn't be happier about it. It is a very easy to read article and clearly explains and builds on what nomad said above and you come away appreciating why it is so awesome.

https://kb.synology.com/en-my/DSM/tu...ybrid_RAID_SHR

Re: New NAS drive required
 

For those that use NAS, do you back that data up to somewhere else as well ?

RAID on a NAS is all well and good, but if your house is destroyed, then presumably your NAS goes with it, and that RAID isnt going to help.

Re: New NAS drive required
 

Nowadays for me all I would hate to lose is photos so they are backed up to google drive and onedrive. I back up a list of my software keys game saves and a few account docs.

I used to back up music but now tend to just stream so no need anymore.

Would be interested to know how much critical data people have

Re: New NAS drive required
 

Synology NAS drives are great, I’ve had mine for several years; At one stage I updated the size of the disk drives, that was easy and seamless.
There is also a facility available to back up the NAS drive to Synology Cloud which is very reasonably priced; it backs up the drive every night at a time you set.

Re: New NAS drive required
 

Does that work with 20Tb of data?

Re: New NAS drive required
 

I think so but you would need a business account for that and I’m unsure of the cost

Re: New NAS drive required
 

There's also the length of time it would take to upload that volume of data. The most common data loss issue will be from a HDD failure.

Re: New NAS drive required
 

two and a half months at a respectable 3MB/sec 24/7 :p: