I need a good and roomy external hard drive set up on my home network that has cloud backup. I've never messed with anything like this before, so would really welcome some help! Any product recommendations? Considerations I should be aware of? - ThreadSky

bradfrost.com • 111 days ago

I need a good and roomy external hard drive set up on my home network that has cloud backup.

I've never messed with anything like this before, so would really welcome some help! Any product recommendations? Considerations I should be aware of?

Comments

k6ko.bsky.social•111 days ago

#TrueNAS if you want to fiddle is pretty good, in my experience. #Synology is easier to setup and get going. There are a few other options but I haven’t used them, myself.

k6ko.bsky.social•111 days ago

One thing to think about is power consumption. And if that’s important to you. Used server gear is cheaper upfront. But draws a lot more power—typically.

Then how simple you want to rate drive swaps to be under maintenance. If you need hotswap bays or if downtime is OK. For the chassis.

joshuaiz.com•111 days ago

Another vote for a Synology NAS. If you can afford it get a 4-bay with two RAIDs. They are easy to set up with the Synology software. One for your cloud backup and the other as a media server for movies/music/photos. Check the capacity before you buy the drives.

jeremyfuksa.com•111 days ago

Seconded on Synology. I got mine a couple of years ago and have it hooked up to BackBlaze, but any cloud storage is supported.

tforster.com•111 days ago

I just ordered a RaspberryPi and an M.2 hat for the same challenge. I plan on adding a couple of SSDs to the Pi and share them in a Raid 1 configuration. I will probably use rsync and a CRON on each device I need to backup.

256bit.bsky.social•111 days ago

Look onto Synology NAS solutions. This is the best thing you can buy for yourself.

I have one since 2020 and it's perfect.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/nas_selector

jackhpeterson.com•111 days ago

big question! what does roomy mean? 1tb or 100tb? What kind of backup? Email archives, CCTV video, family photos, etc?

cloud backup as in you can eventually access like backblaze or something like dropbox which provides an entire backup UX in case your storage system fails?

bradfrost.com•111 days ago

I'd probably say 5-50TB, but honestly don't know! I'm doing a lot more video production and also take a lot of photos. Hitting the limit on cloud storage stuff and I'm getting nervous!

k6ko.bsky.social•111 days ago

Tangential note: if you’re doing video production, I suggest using whatever NAS setup you do implement as an archival step in your workflow, post exports. If you want to do edits directly, you’ll benefit greatly from >= 10 Gbps networking. Editing over 1 Gbps, even with proxies, ain’t fun.

jackhpeterson.com•111 days ago

Synology is a pretty safe bet. I think it's the quickest/easiest solution.

They allow different sized disks in their devices and allow disc redundancy. It should suit your needs.

If you are price sensitive, or want to trade convenience for customization: DIY NAS stuff is fun.

bradfrost.com•111 days ago

Brilliant, thanks!

jackhpeterson.com•111 days ago

I've been getting into #homelab stuff lately, and as a FE dev, it has been fun having an excuse to learn more about devops-ish things in a low-stakes hands on way.

Maybe go Synology to calm the nerves, and explore DIY as your Synology NAS fills.

I started with DIY and it took a bit to set up.

wizzyfx.bsky.social•111 days ago

I use a Synology NAS and it works perfectly. You can get a two disk model; if you want redundancy you can have your data duplicated, if you want space you can combine the two disks. You can do cloud backups (ie aws glacier). You can even install docker containers on the thing!

waltercoots.bsky.social•111 days ago

Yet another Synology fan ✋🏻

ceesa.bsky.social•111 days ago

Check out western digital external hard drives.

joeyabanks.me•111 days ago

+100 for the Synology! It’s such an awesome platform and using it in combination with Backblaze is phenomenal. Give me a shout if you have any questions! I know it’s a big investment.

chrisheninger.com•111 days ago

Pretty much everyone else replying already said it… but I’ll say it too… Synology NAS is the best move here. Been using one since 2015ish and it’s fantastic. 👍

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply