The software running on the NAS is excellent and is almost like using Windows. My Synology NAS is several years old, but can still be updated to the latest version of DSM ( DiskStation Manager).
I personally have a WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra and a Synology DS 411+II and I find the Synology to be an absolutely amazing device. All the major hard drive vendors have NAS devices with some sort of personal cloud option, but only a few work really well and have a suite of apps to manage the cloud data.
So which NAS should you get? Well, when it comes to cloud storage, what you are really looking for is great software. You can do a lot with these devices, which makes the up-front cost more bearable. Ability to share files and folders easily with anyoneĪs you can see, the benefits of having a NAS are much more than just having your own personal cloud storage.Ability to use your NAS a FTP server, web server, mail server, etc.Ability to backup entire NAS to online cloud storage services like Amazon S3, Glacier, etc.Ability to backup local computers (Windows, Mac, Linux) to the NAS.Ability to connect IP cameras to NAS for video surveillance and recordings.Ability to locally and remotely stream videos from NAS to games consoles, set-top boxes, smartphones and tablets.Data protection when using a mutli-bay NAS with RAID.Not every device I mention below supports all of these features, except for Synolgy, so be sure to check the features on the device you are considering. Other Benefits of a NASīeyond the personal cloud benefits and being able to sync your data across all your different devices, NAS devices provide a lot of other benefits. If you use RAID 5, you’ll need at least 3 drives, but will get two-thirds of the total space of all three drives.Ĭonsidering you can get a dual drive 16 TB NAS for around $750, even being left with 8 TB is probably way more than enough for even creative professionals.
Building a nas for mac free#
For example, if you take the 8 TB NAS above and use RAID 1, you’ll only have 4 TB of free space. The only issue is that you lose some available space. If you put your drives into a RAID array, one drive can fail and you won’t lose any data.Īll of the devices mentioned here support RAID on the NAS devices and it’s actually really easy to setup. The reason I suggest a NAS device with two or more hard drives is for data protection. Of course, there is one caveat to consider. If you get the dual drive version, then it can be considered a NAS in my opinion.Īs you can see, though, you can get 8 TB worth of storage for about $400, which is not bad at all. However, if the drive fails, you lose all your data, which may or may not be duplicated somewhere else.įor example, if you consider the WD My Cloud Personal NAS, the single drive is really just a network hard drive. I recommend staying away from single network hard drive solutions because it’s pretty much the same thing as using a regular external hard drive, except you get all the cloud features. A NAS has multiple hard drives that can be configured in a RAID array, thereby providing in-built data protection. In my view, a network hard drive is a single hard drive inside a device that connects to the network and provides a web interface to control and access data. Note that a NAS device is slightly different than a network hard drive. So what do you need to buy in order to get your own cloud storage setup? Well, you’re basically buying a network attached storage device or NAS. If you want more than that, you need to become a business customer with at least 5 users.
Building a nas for mac pro#
To get to 10 TB, you’d have to pay a whopping $360 a month! With Dropbox, you can only get a max of 1 TB with a Pro account. With OneDrive, you can only add more space after 1 TB in 50 GB increments. For example, after the 1 TB plan on Google Drive, it skips to 10 TB and you have to spend $99 a month. Personal cloud storage is also really good for anyone who has terabytes of data they need to store, but don’t want to pay the hefty monthly costs associated with anything over 1 TB. Again, you’ll get all the mobile and desktop apps and everything will be synced, but you’ll have the data stored locally on your own devices.Īgain, you’ll have no monthly fees to worry about, but you’ll have a higher up-front cost.
If you want the advantages of cloud storage, but the security of having everything locally stored, you should consider setting up personal cloud storage.