My wife is doing a lot of content creation for a social media platform. She records and edits on her phone and has filled up her 256GB storage. She complains that transferring files was easier when she had an iPhone. I remind her that it would not have helped with the amount of data she is working with. She wants a solution that simplifies, not complicated data back-up. I'm currently looking into cloud storage options that work in China, as she sometimes needs to share content. Is it possible to set something up with a NAS that will automatically, or at least very easily back-up content from her phone, and be easily accessible from a Windows PC and Macbook? Would I be better off with cloud storage and downloading content to a NAS? My issue with cloud storage on my phone is that it backs up everything, some content is private and I don't want it online. My other issue is if I take a lot of content or record a lot of clips to get 1 or 2 good takes, I need to delete bad takes from my phone AND cloud storage.
NAS units from both Synology and QNAP are easy to setup for most uses - Synology are better on the software side IMO. Wouldn't it make more sense to sync data from a given folder that holds your finished content, and store working copies locally on a non-synced folder? BTW, Synology have a live demo of their DSM software available online to play with. https://demo.synology.com/en-uk/dsm
Yes, if this is possible. My only experience with cloud storage on mobile is turning it on, and it syncs all photos and videos. I thought this would be great in case of loss of data or theft, but managing media on cloud storage can be a pain so I deleted everything and disabled sync. Would something like a Synology be as flexible as OMV? I have an HPE server but I failed to get it to run OMV. I may ask someone to help with that in a few weeks after social distancing measures are reduced. I would want to have some folders shared, possible sync phones/clone phones in case of loss/theft (2x 256GB) sync my wife MacBook (256GB) back-up my OS drive (500GB) run transmission or rtorrent, run plex or something similar to stream to tv and tablets
Synology Drive is just this - operates just as if it were one of the cloud storage services, but the storage is on your NAS. Quite flexible in how it's configured, you can sync media from mobile devices seamlessly (and deleting them on the phone won't delete them on the NAS), or manually move files across... or both.
My family have less demanding use cases, just loads of kid photos. We use Synology Moments app to sync photos/videos into Synology Drive on my NAS. Then can run Synology Drive on computers to access photos (less ideal because it syncs files for offline) or directly access the shared folder via SMB. Then photos we want to share to wider family are uploaded into Synology DS Photos monthly. Moments sync automatically in the background, but does sync everything and once synced, you need to delete twice from cloud and phone. I'm unsure how to do Windows OS drive backup on Synology....... it would be useful. My Macbook is auto backed up to Timemachine drive on the NAS. Synology DSM is their OS and you can run transmission and plex on it easily. I have ran transmission on it before (now on a Pi4). I'm running Plex media server with Plex pass, my DS218+ can transcode on the fly.
After trying to get OMV to run on an HPE server, and realising they are large, heavy and can be loud, I'm starting to think about the simplicity of a Synology NAS. Other than transcoding power (CPU and Memory), would I lose out on anything by going with Synology or similar over an HPE or homebrew NAS? Also, how is reliability and ease of recovery for Synology vs homebrew?
You can install XPEnology on a microserver or home brew, which is basically the Synology DSM software. Although, it's a bit more fiddly to set up than it used to be. You could just chuck it on a usb stick and be up in five minutes. Now you have to specify numbers and Mac addresses of the NICs, as well as vid & PID of the usb stick and manually edit the config. Its a lot more hit and miss.
Being a NAS noob I went wtih an off the shelf option with Western Digital My Cloud EX2 Ultra. About the size of 2 large external hard drives taped together, comes with a reasonable app for desktop and mobile for access, supports plex (but not transcoding because its too low power) and a bunch of other apps I'm not interested in. The Mycloud portal seems to work reliably enough through browser or app so can be accessed from outside the home. Its got a fairly idiot proof admin control panel as well (think wifi router level of complexity). Not up to the feature set of a full blown NAS but took only a few hours to get up and running on mine and wifes phones/pcs. However, I've not used other NAS systems so more experienced POVs might disagree with me!
As you've realised: Price, and in turn, performance are the main things you loose by going with off-the-shelf NAS. Go for 7, 9 or plus series and you can transcode no problem. I've been using Synology for over 10 years, Ds410j, Ds213j, Ds218+. Never had a single problem with any of the 3, the two retired boxes both sold for a healthy price. Recovery is very easy. When upgrading the 2 bay NAS, I simply unplug one and plug in the new one. I *think* (please someone correct me) DSM OS data is mirrored across all disks even if you are not running RAID. So if one drive fails or gets unplugged, your DSM its settings is still operational. I run two 4TB disks for 8TB total storage. The data itself is mirrored into HP N40 Microserver daily (relic from when I toyed with moving away from Synology). The HP is power hungry, slow and noisy. So it is just a Rsync target. The Ds218+ is powered on 24/7 and only uses ~10w when idling.
How power hungry are we talking? I ask 'cos although I've got an N54L, I only know it idles below 30W - because anything below 30W shows as 0W on my UPS!
Judging by the amount of heat at back of the machine, it's certainly more power hungry than Ds218+. The NAS's are in the understair cupboard. Whenever daily backup is happening, I can feel the increase in temperature when opening the door. When no one is home, I also notice my whole house consumption increases by ~50w when this backup task is happening. Of course it's an unfair comparison because Rsync is far from idle and there's 5 active HDD in the HP. But I don't have measured values from the wall.
Synology says 5.4W with the hard drives in idle; this forum thread suggests a tweaked N54L can hit 25W at idle (or 19.2W with a more efficient PSU fitted.) Let's say there's a 20W difference, 'cos I ain't unplugging my N54L to stick the power monitor on there and my UPS considers anything below 30W to be 0W. UK average electricity price is 14.4p/kWH. DS218+ is £320 on Amazon. That gives us... about £2.07 a month differential in running cost, meaning it'd take 13 years to cover the cost of the DS218+. That's assuming 5W for the DS218+ and 25W for the N54L; if the N54L is lower, or if your own 10W measurement for the DS218+ is accurate, you can increase the time accordingly. Noise, yeah, that's a different kettle of fish. Can't say my N54L is particularly loud, though - but admittedly I do have some noise-damping foam (actually some packing foam that was handily eggbox-shape and already the right size to go behind the shelf) on the wall behind it.
This is exactly what I use my DS918+ for, 4x12Tb drives inside. I have it running plex and regularly have it transcoding to 4 people over the internet at the same time. I use Tatulli to monitor what people are watching as well. Brilliant machine, I'd avoid the SSD cache option if you are interested, as if the SSD dies it kills the array, plus 4 drives in SHR is plenty fast. Funnily a very similar setup, except I use a gen8 for backing up to, I have it managing downloads as I do them over a VPN and I found downloading on the NAS over the VPN whilst also streaming using Plex on my own IP address was causing a lot of issues. So shifted downloads over to the gen8, might as well as it sits there running 24x7 anyway for backups.
I came here to also say Synology. The software support is amazing. You can do most things you can imagine someone wanting to do with a NAS.
