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by NikolaNovak 1003 days ago
Not the OP, but after a lot of messing with software software and OS RAID, Raid Cards and mother boards, dedicated loud Dell servers, UnRAID, this that and the other thing over years and decades, I just set up a big Synology device 5 years ago. Since then, I've had a NAS that just worked. I have data, it's there.

I do online backup to a cloud provider, and a monthly dump to external USB drives that I keep and rotate at my mother in law's house (off site:).

More than any technical advice, I'd strongly urge you to check and understand honestly whether you're looking for "NAS" (a place to seamlessly store data) or "a project" (something to spend fun and frustrating and exciting evening and weekend time configuring, upgrading, troubleshooting, changing, re-designing, replacing, blogging, etc). Nothing wrong with either, just ensure you pick the path you actually want :->
1 comments
sillysaurusx 1003 days ago
Which model Synology do you have? (Would you still make the same choice today?)

Did you settle on using RAID, or just rely on cloud backups?

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NikolaNovak 1003 days ago
I have the DS918+

I would not make the same choices today: I got a somewhat high end one and upgraded it to whopping 32GB of RAM, thinking I'd use it for running lightweight containers or VMs, and maybe a media server. But once I put all my data on it... including 20 years of family photos and tax prep documents and work stuff and everything else... I changed my mind and am using it only and solely as an internal storage unit. Basically, as mentioned, committed to the "NAS" as opposed to "Fun Project" path :-). So I could've saved myself some money by getting a simpler unit and not upgrading it. (the DS918+ also can hook up to a cage [DX517], but I ended up not needing that either, yet).

I have it with 4 WD Red Plus NAS 8TTB drives and RAID 10 currently. I've used RAID 5 in the past but decided against it for this usage - again, went for simplicity.

Just shy of 30,000 hours on the drives, daily usage (I basically don't use local drive for any data on any of my computers; I keep it all on NAS and this way I can use any of my computers to do/access the same thing), and really no issues whatsoever so far.

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