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Best NAS for Home Use…
A NAS at home can do more than just store files. Find out how it can backup your photos and play your movies.
NAS?
Network Attached Storage. Simply put, somewhere to put your files. If you don’t know what a NAS is, or why you need one, check out our article on what is a NAS.
Backstory
A home NAS is traditionally 1-2 disks in a small enclosure that can be hidden in a cupboard. As computers have become faster, smaller boxes can do more and more. This has meant an explosion in the number of NAS devices on the market today.
They come in all shapes and sizes, with a confusing number of options. Let us guide you in the right direction.
What Brand?
Our regular readers know we don’t like to beat around the bush when it comes to recommendations.
Go with a Synology.
Synology-Who?
You may never have heard of them, but they are one of the top NAS manufacturers in the world. Their units are easy to use and well supported. Avoid generic offerings from the larger manufacturers (Western Digital etc) as they tend not to support them after a couple years. I have a 10 year old Synology which is still receiving updates.
What Else?
Home Movies
If you have a lot of photos or movies you can install Plex so you can view them on your Smart TV or ChromeCast / Apple TV.
Cloud Backups
If you aren’t backing up offsite (i.e. another copy away from your home), you’ll have a big problem if your house gets flooded etc. A synology NAS will send your files to DropBox, Google, OneDrive etc.
Security Cameras
You can install software to run your security cameras. Using cloudbackups above means you also have a backup in case your NAS is ever stolen.
Which One?
It depends how much you want to spend, and how much data you have. I would recommend 1-2 drives for people without a lot of data, and 3-4 drives for a medium level users. If you have a lot of data, you can get 8+ drive models which are excellent, but not cheap.
2 Bay
DiskStation DS718+
A great 2 bay version. This can put two disks in here, it’s compact and will backup files for an entire family. If you’re not really sure what you need, this is a great place to start.
4 Bay
DiskStation DS918+
An even better 4 bay version of the one above. It has plenty of capacity for people with hobbies like photography. It offers an upgrade path in the future and will support a growing family as more data needs to be stored.
8 Bay
DiskStation DS1819+
8 Bays and all the storage you should ever need. You can fit a whopping 8 drives in here, which could give you 96 terabytes of space (12Tb x 8). That is a ludicrous amount of space, but very comforting.
I personally have an 8 bay Synology (the previous model to this one) and use it to run a file server for the house, and then backup onto a second set of disks in the machine. This in turn is synced to a cloud service, all automatically.
More?
You need more than an 8 Bay? Seriously?!! You may have a hoarding problem, but here you go.
Buy a DS1819+ and then add an expansion unit (DX517) which could give you a grand total of 176Tb!!!
However, if you need that kind of space you probably have a very specific use case (i.e. you’re a video editor / business). Give us a shout and we can point you in the right direction for something a bit more appropriate.