NAS Recommendations for Photo Backup & Rare 4K Streaming

yikes914 on 28/09/2022 - 17:41

Hi

I'm looking at purchasing a NAS to store all of the family photos and videos. There are a couple of movies that I have 'purchased' which might be streamed onto my TV. Looking at a budget of $500-700 with drives, happy to push up a bit if there is noticeable difference. I am looking at around 4TB total storage with hopefully two drives where in the event one drive fails, all the data is backed up on the second and can be re-written.

From my research, I've looked at 2 bay Synology NAS systems due to many people being happy with it. The DS220+ looks to be a good option but it might be overkill for my needs.

I know how to build a PC but no idea on how networking work so would prefer it to be fairly simple to operate.

Let me know of your suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

Computing

Comments

  • CyberMurning on 28/09/2022 - 18:05

    Yeah synology.
    That 4tb is so little soon you will regret…
    And with 2 bays you dont have that much flexibility (as you said you need backup feature).
    I mean example you get 2x 4tb.
    When they full then? You need to replace both.

    If you have 4 bays you can start eith 2x4tb, then if need get another drive (can be different size) and then another one…

    • yikes914 on 28/09/2022 - 18:52

      I understand your concern, I have all of the family photos in a portable HDD of 1TB and only takes up around 800GB, that's why I thought 2x4tb would be plenty

  • oscargamer on 28/09/2022 - 18:11
    +2

    I've just bought a ds220j and a couple of 4tb HDD's and set them up in RAID 1. I use it for exactly what you want. Store photos (also have off-site back up of that) and videos to stream to our TV.

    Can't fault it

    Cost a bit less than $500 for the NAS and drives.

    Easy and great solution

    • yikes914 on 28/09/2022 - 18:55

      great to hear, any reason why you didn't go for the DS220+ model? what do you lose out on if you go for the j model instead of the + model

      • oscargamer on 28/09/2022 - 18:58

        Price

        I use my NAS to store photos and other stuff and stream videos to our TV and kids iPads.

        There was no need to get the 220+

        Either is a good choice IMO

        https://www.windowscentral.com/synology-diskstation-ds220-vs…

        • yikes914 on 28/09/2022 - 19:01

          fair enough, cheers for the clarification, leaning more towards the plus model to 'futureproof' it but at the same time i might be paying more than i have to and get no benefit from it

          • oscargamer on 28/09/2022 - 19:03
            +1

            @yikes914: Either will be fine. The plus is more expensive, but yes, will be more futureproof.

  • Marty-69 on 28/09/2022 - 18:16

    Like @ChiMot, 4 bays and something like 2x8tb or 2x10gb depending on price and specials.
    Synology NAS with Synology Drive Client to backup local and Synology Hyper Backup to back it all up to the cloud (in case of theft or fire).

    • ChipsChicky on 28/09/2022 - 18:20

      Hyper backup is free or paid ? you can get it only if you have synology NAS ?

      • Marty-69 on 28/09/2022 - 18:35
        +1

        Hyper Backup is Synology’s built-in backup utility. (edit: free)
        Back up your NAS data to a local shared folder, external devices, another Synology NAS, rsync servers, and public cloud services like Google Drive, S3-compatible storage, and Synology's C2 Storage for Individuals and C2 Storage for Businesses.

    • yikes914 on 28/09/2022 - 18:58

      i was leaning more towards the 2 bay as it is more compact but is the 4 bay that much better?

      • Marty-69 on 28/09/2022 - 19:08

        It allows for growth, just in case. Since it's a backup you should (at least) have two disks in RAID-1 so when one fails, the other one is still running and you can replace the faulty one. But, you'll lose a disk as they are mirrored. The same data is written to two disks. So 2x4tb will give you only 4tb of space. If you run out, you can't add disks with a 2 bay. But, of course, you can start with a 2 bay and 2x10tb (or more) which gives you 10tb. Check the RAID calculator

        • moar bargains on 29/09/2022 - 22:21

          I've always wondered what the benefit of RAID is for a home user if high availability isn't a major concern? I.e. someone who doesn't care about speedy access to data on a failed drive, just reliable access? Serious question. E.g. if I have my family photos stored on a NAS with RAID and a drive fails, I can still access the photos straight away (or potentially quicker). But who cares? It's rare that a home user needs photos that same minute. As long as it's properly backed up offsite too, I just retrieve that version and carry on.

          In the spirit of Ozbargaining, and assuming everything I store on the NAS doesn't need urgent accessibility, I've always wondered if there's something I'm missing that makes it worth the loss of drive capacity over JBOD?

  • ChipsChicky on 28/09/2022 - 18:20
    +1

    Why no body is recommending QNAP ?

    • oscargamer on 28/09/2022 - 19:00

      The interface

      • ChipsChicky on 28/09/2022 - 19:04

        How would you rate both out of 10 ?

        • oscargamer on 28/09/2022 - 19:10
          +1

          Synology - 8
          QNAP - 6 (maybe 5 on a bad day)

      • Ramrunner on 07/10/2022 - 16:55

        That's funny - I have both and prefer the QNAP.

        Each to their own I guess

    • CyberMurning on 28/09/2022 - 19:06
      +2

      The hacking issue.

      • mhz on 29/09/2022 - 08:35

        What hacking issue?

      • Ramrunner on 07/10/2022 - 16:57

        HHmm. Same as Synology and ASUS then?

        They all get hacked if left open. Do a search.

        They all need to tighten up their security by default.

  • Presence on 28/09/2022 - 19:49

    I am looking at around 4TB total storage with hopefully two drives where in the event one drive fails, all the data is backed up on the second and can be re-written.

    Damn i hope you have an offsite backup too!

    If you house floods/burns down you wont care about your pirated movie collection, but you sure as hell will care about the family photos.

    • yikes914 on 28/09/2022 - 20:29

      yeah i realised how bad it would be recently, any offsite backup ideas?

      • Presence on 28/09/2022 - 20:32
        +2

        2 x USB HDDs and an appropriate app to sync it. I keep one off site at all times and manually swap them once a month or so.

        If you only have one USB HDD then you risk a problem when doing the backup. Maybe I'm paranoid but lightning or similar could kill the primary and backup at the same time.

        I looked into online options but with such shitty upload speeds it's not very practical, nor is it free

        • yikes914 on 28/09/2022 - 20:45

          fair enough, that is what i was thinking, but where would you store the device & HDDs?

          • Presence on 28/09/2022 - 21:41
            +1

            @yikes914: Work and/or families houses.

            Bank deposit box if you are really serious and can get one.

        • Marty-69 on 28/09/2022 - 22:51
          +1

          I pay $6 aud a month for about 1 Tb of storage. Everything I backup to a certain folder on the Synology NAS is uploaded (encrypted) straight away. The first upload can take some time, after that it's incremental.

      • Marty-69 on 28/09/2022 - 22:42
        +2

        As I mentioned, Hyper Backup on the Synology. Hassle free and offside within a minute. Real time upload to Backblaze in my case.

  • bondi on 28/09/2022 - 19:56

    You need 5 bays DS model to start with, raid 5 for three drives. You will have plenty of data as the year goes by. If you don’t have the budget just don’t buy the NAS, specially Synology NAS, go somewhere cheaper but the risk of data breaching, or get your Bitcoin ready.

    • Marty-69 on 28/09/2022 - 22:59
      +1

      Raid 5 with 3 disks has the same risk as raid 1. You can only lose one disk.

  • tamckinnon on 29/09/2022 - 08:48

    Given that you're only using 800gb, have you looked at OneDrive or Google Drive?

    • yikes914 on 29/09/2022 - 14:32

      I have but it will grow, that is why I was considering a NAS

  • BrettSh on 29/09/2022 - 08:56

    I expect to be mocked for suggesting this but for someone who enjoys tinkering, a budget option for home could be to install Open Media Vault on a Raspberry Pi:

    https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-openmediavault/

    IMO, the biggest shortcomings of this suggestion are:
    1. Only two of the four ports on this device are USB 3 and USB 2 is slow.
    2. I imagine this would be a pain for someone who has never used Linux.

  • Chandler on 29/09/2022 - 10:35
    +2

    all the data is backed up on the second and can be re-written.

    Obligatory #raidisnotabackup.

    RAID is an availability tool - it allows you to keep watching your movies when one drive fails.
    It is not a backup tool - any data this is changed, overwritten, deleted, encrypted, etc will be in the exact same state on the second drive.

    • yikes914 on 29/09/2022 - 14:31

      wait, so the entire 1st drive isn't copied onto the 2nd drive. so if 1 drive fails, the content can't be copied over to a new drive? I want to make sure that the data cannot be lost. Is it better to get 2 separate NAS to backup from NAS 1 to NAS 2 and one offsite backup

      • tamckinnon on 29/09/2022 - 16:00

        For backups it's the 321 rule. 3 copies of the data across 2 mediums with 1 offsite.

        In a ideal world you could have the primary copy online on your PC, a replica on the NAS and have the NAS copy to cloud.

        • yikes914 on 29/09/2022 - 16:11

          instead of a PC, that could be a NAS right?

          like I have a NAS that copies to another NAS at home and then that being directed to an offsite backup?

          • moar bargains on 29/09/2022 - 20:43

            @yikes914: First copy is the "working copy", i.e. the photos that are on your computer or wherever. The second copy is usually a local backup to a USB drive or NAS, and the third is a copy offsite, e.g. cloud or USB stored at work or with family.

            So you don't need to have a second NAS that you copy to, it could be the USB drive you already have, that you leave offsite somewhere. Or it could be the cloud.

            • yikes914 on 29/09/2022 - 21:03
              +1

              @moar bargains: yeah, but a NAS can be used as the working copy, right? I don't have space on my PC to host a working copy and want this purely for storage

              • moar bargains on 29/09/2022 - 22:26

                @yikes914: Yes it can be. You'd need to think about your backup plan from there too though, because it can't be considered a backup of itself. I have the Synology DS218j and you can plug a USB into the back of it (and access through DSM), so that could be considered a local backup, or you could just go for offsite backup, as long as it was replicated.

                • yikes914 on 29/09/2022 - 23:02

                  @moar bargains: how does this sound:

                  NAS 1 (main content) —> NAS 2 (backup of NAS 1) —> Offsite/cloud (backup of NAS 1)

                  • Chandler on 30/09/2022 - 01:28
                    +2

                    @yikes914: I'd save the expense of a second NAS and do the USB drive plugged into the NAS as moar bargains suggested.

                    Just remember that the NAS is the working copy, the USB is the backup, so when copying to the USB, you want to keep an older version (or more), otherwise your backup could just be a copy of a bad edit.

      • Chandler on 30/09/2022 - 01:19
        +4

        One NAS is fine - the issue with RAID is that it is a synchronized duplicate of the entire disk - any changes to one disk are replicated on the other.

        So if you delete a file, the copy on the other disk is also deleted. If a bad (software) write is made to one disk, the same is done to the other. Bad file management with a RAID can result in missing (moved/deleted), corrupted/lost data (Word corrupted a file while saving it; some ransomware encrypted all your files; etc).

        RAID (in the situations we're discussing) works at the hardware layer - all it cares about is what writes are being made to one disk and doing them to the other. It doesn't care that your making the file unreadable to your software, or that you just deleted all your (insert important life event here) photos. It sees writes (which can be additions or deletions) and duplicates them.

        Now don't take a this as you shouldn't use RAID - it's great for its use cases. It's just that you need to understand those use cases and not use it for things it is not suited, because that's when you have a bad time…

        A RAID gives you two (or more) synchronized copies of data. A true backup is not synchronized with the source file. I personally do this by (when I had mine running) having my 2-bay NAS (in RAID 1, which means one disk was a copy of another,) counting as ONE copy. I had a USB hard drive attached to the NAS which I periodically backed up the (important) contents to. Critical data was also stored on my laptop's disk and on cloud storage.

        Now cloud storage that is synced to your computer technically isn't a backup (because it is synchronized), but since most cloud storage providers give you the capability to restore the file to a previous version, they can count as a backup.

        Another thing to consider is when your making a backup of a file is what you do with the old versions. Syncthing (a file synchronization tool) has a good set of versioning options I like to use as an example:
        * no versioning: modified files are replaced (and Syncthing being a file synchronization tool also means file deletions are replicated, which is not something you want in a backup)
        * trash-can versioning: existing copy of modified files (and for Syncthing: deleted files) are moved to a trash can for a set retention period (up to indefinitely)
        * simple versioning: keep X number of previous versions
        * staggered versions: rather than Syncthing's philosophy here I'll talk old-school staggered backup, one method of which was: keep a copy for every day of the week, then every week of the month, then every month of the year (obviously you can cut this down or extend it to suit your needs). I.e. you have the file as it was at the end of the day on Monday in your backups, and it stays there until the following Monday when it gets overwritten for that Monday's backup.

        Now obviously the above versioning practices only matter for files that change. For static files like photos and other media, you just want an extra copy of the file.

        As tamckinnon brought up, there is the 3-2-1 backup rule:

        • 3 copies
        • 2 media formats
        • 1 off site

        3 copies so that if you lose two you still have the third.

        2 formats so that if something happens to one of the formats you still have the other: i.e.hard drive and a CD. If something happens to the hard drive to make it unreadable, the other format (i.e. CD) should (hopefully) have been unaffected

        1 off site so that if your house burns down and takes out the hard drive AND CD copies, you still have the third copy.

        Now for bonus points you could also add -1-0 to the 3-2-1 rule (to make it the 3-2-1-1-0 rule…)

        • 1 air-gapped copy
        • 0 errors

        Air-gapped to negate the risk of hacker or malware/ransomare: they can't ransom your files if they can't reach them.

        And 0 errors means to test your backups: you don't want to set yourself up a backup system (no matter how simple or complex) and in the event you need to restore something from it discover it wasn't configured properly.

        The other thing to remember is that all of the above would be considered good practice (IMO). You don't HAVE to do all this, and you certainly don't need to do it to all your files. I don't do all this! I'd like to get there, but it takes time, hardware and I've got a fair bit of technical and digital "debt" I need to sort out first… my important files are however backed up appropriately (at least in my opinion…). For example, photos on my phone are backed up to Google Photos and copied onto my laptop via Syncthing. Photos taken on our camera are copied onto my laptop (and backed up to Google Photos from there) and copied onto a USB hard drive before they're removed from the SD card. 3 copies (laptop, Google, phone/USB), one off site (Google).

        • yikes914 on 30/09/2022 - 01:47

          wow! thanks heaps for all of this information! looks like i have a couple of options open now, i'll definitely consider everything and will post an update on how i'll go

  • Ramrunner on 07/10/2022 - 16:59

    If you're going to stream 4K make sure the video files can be decoded RAW by the TV you are playing them on.

    If the NAS has to transcode generally the budget you're setting will not allow for a NAS powerful enough to transcode.

    All the best.

  • whatswrongwithya on 15/12/2022 - 07:51

    Hey OP, What did you end up going for? What Config, Drives, NAS. Curious to know, I am in a similar situation :)

    • yikes914 on 15/12/2022 - 08:20

      I've gone for a DS220j with 2x4TB Seagate NAS drives, with a portable HDD backing up every night. Monthly, another HDD is backed up and left in the office.

      • whatswrongwithya on 15/12/2022 - 10:00

        Do you see any performance issues with NAS? Seagate Ironwolf?

        • yikes914 on 15/12/2022 - 11:45

          not really, it's mostly a back up, if I am editing anything, I copy it to my PC, I haven't really used it for any streaming

      • whatswrongwithya on 15/12/2022 - 10:01

        Someone mentioned to go for DS220+ eventhough its almost double the price because loading thumbnails etc was painfully slow on DS220J

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