New Mac or NAS?

[Reddkryten]

Hello

I was wondering if I could get a bit of advice?
A few years ago I bought a Macbook Air, it’s great and serves all of my needs. However, I bought the cheapest model with a small SSD, at the time I thought it wouldn’t matter, I’d just use external hard drives.

The external drives have just become a pain. If someone wants a file and it’s on the laptop, I’ll send it right away, however if if’s on an external I’ll procrastinate and take weeks before I pull out the drive and plug it in. Sometimes I just want to quickly do something while I’m sitting on a couch, but that ends up being a balancing act of cables and drives. It’s just so annoying. I like to be portable and the drives make that so complicated.

I’m looking at buying a new Macbook with 2tb onboard, which is quite expensive and I’m worried I’ll fill those 2tbs up in a few years and end up in the same situation.
However, I’m very curious about keeping my existing Mac and getting a NAS.

I like the idea, I also like the fact that in the future I can simply upgrade the NAS when it fills up, rather than needing to replace the entire Mac.

I’m just wondering how the NAS would perform, both at home and when I’m out in town or travelling (I know local wifi will be a limitation, but assuming I’m in a hotel or coffee shop with an okay connection). I’d mainly use it for storing files, my iTunes library, watching videos and some video and audio editing (not much and not in 8k, but I’m curious if latency will become a major issue).
Are there any limitations or disadvantages I’m not thinking of.

 

[russell_314]

I don’t have a NAS, but I will put in my two cents.

I guess it depends on what you need and what these files are. If you’re trying to store years worth of large files just in case you need that one from 2019 on your laptop then you’re going to waste so much money on storage and probably lose data when it’s not backed up.


There’s a YouTube channel called SpaceRex that I watch because I was thinking about getting a NAS. It’s a big rabbit hole that you’ll fall into 🤣

 

[Apple_Robert]

Getting a 2 Bay Synology NAS would make your file tasks very simple and cheaper than buying a Mac with 2TB SSD.

 

[Velin]

Paying for storage with Apple devices is always a losing proposition. The markup is enormous, the value proposition is terrible.

If speed doesn't matter too much, get a USB-C 1TB portable flash drive. Multiple companies sell them, they are very compact, and they go on sale. Some even have 2TB flash drives, though they are a bit bulkier. You'll have it for a very, very long time, and can avoid Apple's atrocious storage tax for decades.

If you want performance, get a portable, lightning-fast NVME M.2 SSD enclosure using thunderbolt. It will be nearly as fast as a blazing internal SSD. Yes, it requires a cable.

But either of these solutions is very cheap, very portable, instantly accessible, and you'll never have to worry about internet downtime if you have the drive(s) with you. Just don't lose them, be sure to have backups.

but that ends up being a balancing act of cables and drives. It’s just so annoying. I like to be portable and the drives make that so complicated.

Plugging in a USB-C portable flash drive is ultra-simple, and does not require balancing or cables.

And if you really want a NAS solution, Macworld recently had an article about good MacOS options. If you're traveling and need to access remotely, my vote is for Synology. But do your research, and make sure you pick the correct one, including future proofing into a fairly large size, because Synology isn't cheap and you want to buy it once and be done for a decade, if you can manage it. I would make sure my Synology NAS (or any NAS system I select) has support for NVME M.2. Some of their boxes don't, and that really sucks, because who wants to be limited to SATA SSDs or even HDDs?

 

[HDFan]

’m just wondering how the NAS would perform, both at home and when I’m out in town or travelling (I know local wifi will be a limitation, but assuming I’m in a hotel or coffee shop with an okay connection). I’d mainly use it for storing files, my iTunes library, watching videos and some video and audio editing (not much and not in 8k, but I’m curious if latency will become a major issue).
Are there any limitations or disadvantages I’m not thinking of.

1. A NAS is basically another computer and operating system. It requires maintenance, such as regular disk scrubbing, software and security updates, etc.
2. The bandwidth in-house even with 10 GbE or thunderbolt connections depends on the number of disks you have in the NAS. More disks more bandwidth.
3. You buy a NAS but that normally doesn't include the cost of the disks
4. If you want redundancy you need a minimum of 3 disks. One of those is for redundancy and can't be used for storage.
5. If you are using it remotely then you need to open up your network to outside connections. As with internet connected devices this means you have to watch out for attacks. Most of the major NAS vendor have had experienced significant security issues. QNAPs had a ransomeware attack which locked up a lot of systems.
6. Check the Wifi speeds at the locations you might use it. Verify that it is fast enough for what you intend to do, particularly videos.

There are a lot of folks who swear about how great having a NAS is. I have 2 - a Synology and a QNAP which I just use locally. They are great since I can live with their limitations and I'm beyond the initial learning curve for setup (file system type, snapshots, network interfaces, etc.)

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Depending on your internet speed & data requirements, cloud storage could be a good solution for you. I moved away from a NAS a few years ago when Drobo went under, and switched to cloud. Everything is available on all my devices, even when I’m away from home. Works great!

 

[Alameda]

I have a Synology 4-drive NAS, and a lot of thoughts on the subject.

The first thought is: 2 TB is a LOT of data to carry around with you. Generally, it means lots of video. In my case, I have six years of high res digital photos that take up 4 TB, but it’s maybe hundreds of thousands of photos. I don’t need THAT much data on my local storage. 512 GB is fine for me.

I understand Linux systems well enough that setting up and securing the Synology NAS was not difficult. There’s an excellent YouTube channel called SpaceRex that walks you though Synology setup very well. You don’t need any special skills to set it up.

The downside of NAS is that it is slow. A 1 Gb/s link, even with Ethernet instead of WiFi, is SLOW.

There are many pluses: It secures your data very well. It can hold a nearly infinite amount of data. You can run your backups to it automatically. It’s always available and it’s avaiable remotely. You can setup accounts for people and they can login to your NAS and grab files or put files there. Many pluses to all of that; the main downside is that it is slow. Not a problem for Word and Powerpoint files, but if you want to open a folder of 1,000 24 megapixel images, or if you want to edit video, it is slow and you need to copy the data locally, which is also slow if it’s gigabytes you need to work on.

There are 10 Gb/s NAS solutions, but that kind of networking can be expensive. It’s getting cheaper all the time, though. Even using SSD to boost your NAS speed, 1 Gb/s networking is slow as an external hard disk. No problem for backup and remote access, though.

I think that if you want to get a NAS, Synology is the way to go and getting the best 4-bay unit you can is worth it… one which lets you add an SSD cache and upgrade to 10 Gb/s networking, even if you only start out with two drives.

 

[Fishrrman]

Get 1tb SSD in your next MacBook.

To go along with it, get something like the Crucial x9.
Small and fast.
1tb or 2tb (also comes in 4tb).

 

[zqbobs]

I don’t have a NAS, but I will put in my two cents.

I guess it depends on what you need and what these files are. If you’re trying to store years worth of large files just in case you need that one from 2019 on your laptop then you’re going to waste so much money on storage and probably lose data when it’s not backed up.


There’s a YouTube channel called SpaceRex that I watch because I was thinking about getting a NAS. It’s a big rabbit hole that you’ll fall into 🤣

I have had a Synology 4-bay NAS for several years and highly recommend the SpaceRex tutorial videos for beginners and more advanced users. If you really need access when "on the road", then a NAS is probably your best bet. Synology has a new, lower cost, basic NAS line, BeeDrive and BeeStation, reviewed here, and I think WD, QNAP, etc all have similar, small NAS "cloud" systems. Note that SpaceRex recommends, as the FIRST step with any NAS, to get another external drive and backup the NAS, especially if it's a single-drive NAS like BeeStation that's not using RAID.

 

[HDFan]

I think that if you want to get a NAS, Synology is the way to go

Personally, having both Synology and QNAP I would recommend QNAP.

 

[kinless]

I bought a 6-bay QNAP NAS (TS-664) in late 2022 which has become my end-all be-all device: file server, media/plex server, surveillance, backups, virtual machines, gaming file storage, and scratch disks.

Although the cost to max it out was expensive (~$2500), it holds 6 HDDs and 4 SSDs with about 45TB of space. It's hard-wired to a 2.5Gbps connection on the home network (and 10Gbps directly to my home machine via extension card). It's been a solid workhorse thus far, and is accessed remotely via TailScale to keep from having to open up ports on the router.

Your provider's upload speeds will dictate how well a NAS performs when out and about. I don't have problems when remotely accessing files, watching plex media or checking home camera feeds on a 50Mbps connection.

 

[BigBlur]

I bought a 6-bay QNAP NAS (TS-664) in late 2022 which has become my end-all be-all device: file server, media/plex server, surveillance, backups, virtual machines, gaming file storage, and scratch disks.

Although the cost to max it out was expensive (~$2500), it holds 6 HDDs and 4 SSDs with about 45TB of space. It's hard-wired to a 2.5Gbps connection on the home network (and 10Gbps directly to my home machine via extension card). It's been a solid workhorse thus far, and is accessed remotely via TailScale to keep from having to open up ports on the router.

Your provider's upload speeds will dictate how well a NAS performs when out and about. I don't have problems when remotely accessing files, watching plex media or checking home camera feeds on a 50Mbps connection.

Curious what your NAS backup strategy is, if you have one. Since the backup should be off-site, I'm trying to decide if it's more feasible to set up a second NAS at my parents' house to backup to; or to backup to a cloud service, and if so, which one?

 

[ChrisA]

Hello

I was wondering if I could get a bit of advice?
A few years ago I bought a Macbook Air, it’s great and serves all of my needs. However, I bought the cheapest model with a small SSD, at the time I thought it wouldn’t matter, I’d just use external hard drives.

The external drives have just become a pain. If someone wants a file and it’s on the laptop, I’ll send it right away, however if if’s on an external I’ll procrastinate and take weeks before I pull out the drive and plug it in. Sometimes I just want to quickly do something while I’m sitting on a couch, but that ends up being a balancing act of cables and drives. It’s just so annoying. I like to be portable and the drives make that so complicated.

I’m looking at buying a new Macbook with 2tb onboard, which is quite expensive and I’m worried I’ll fill those 2tbs up in a few years and end up in the same situation.
However, I’m very curious about keeping my existing Mac and getting a NAS.

I like the idea, I also like the fact that in the future I can simply upgrade the NAS when it fills up, rather than needing to replace the entire Mac.

I’m just wondering how the NAS would perform, both at home and when I’m out in town or travelling (I know local wifi will be a limitation, but assuming I’m in a hotel or coffee shop with an okay connection). I’d mainly use it for storing files, my iTunes library, watching videos and some video and audio editing (not much and not in 8k, but I’m curious if latency will become a major issue).
Are there any limitations or disadvantages I’m not thinking of.

Synology makes a good product that is easy to use and reliable. I own a few different computers and now my 3D printers are really linux-based computers too and I'm working on robotics project that is really "a computer that walks".

With the NAS I have my files in one place and every file is accessible to every computer. In the past I woud do CAD work on the mac and then transfer the design file to the printer. Now the files never move all of my devices look to the NAS where ony one copy of the file exists.

This means I only have to backup the NAS. For that I use both a second NAS at a different location and a cloud backup service. So I have redondent backup

But in addition to the backup, I have enabled "snapshots" on the NAS so thatmultiple version of all the files are kept. By the magic of a "copy on write" file system on the NAS these snapshots do not require much extra space. so I can recover from file corruption of accedental delete without need to use the backup.

Synology NAS can run any number of services in addtion to just providing storage. For example ther are "office" type productivity products and a very good system for runing security video cameras. Synology uses a web based user interface. I can access it from home or anyplace world wide from a computer or my iPhone. An even my "smart" TVs. Synolgy can serve video, music and photos to TVs that use DLNA.

And of course a RAID system will not lose data even after a disk fails. You can set it up so that it can even survive thhe loss of two disks at the same time and if you are really nuts you can put in empty drives to be used as "hot spares" and the system will. swap them in after it detects a failed drive. You can buy two NASes and keep them as mirros an be even more secure. Youwould want this if you entire office depended on a NAS that stored bussinees-critical data.

There are downsides as well...

You have to learn how to use the NAS. And you m=needs to understand a little about networking too.

Files access over the network to the NAS as MUCH slower then over a Thunderbolt cable to a directly attached SSD. So you will likey want to copy at least some files and ALL system files to the local comuter's SSD.

Newer Synology NASes can have 10GBE networking. This is really fast but a litt expensive and same newer Macs have 10GBE as an option. This really does address the speed issue but still the local Thunderbolt is faster by far. But do you need the speed for day to day use? no.

 

[ChrisA]

Curious what your NAS backup strategy is, if you have one. Since the backup should be off-site, I'm trying to decide if it's more feasible to set up a second NAS at my parents' house to backup to; or to backup to a cloud service, and if so, which one?

The rule of thumb is that "the data should always exist on three different physical media". This way if a backup fails (it will) you are still safe. And the other riule is that the dat should exist in two different geographic loactions, ybut you'd have that covered.

I'd say the minimum is to do both.

One advantage of the NAS was thre parent's place is that they can use a NAS for their needs and you can be their backup.

I use a NAS for backup. But the NAS is only in a different room in the same house. The second NAS is much less powerful it is a low-cost "J" series with only two drives. It was the first one I bought. Then I replaced it with a "plus" seria NAS with 5 drive bays, internal SSD cache and lots more RAM.

The more powerfull NAS can run a "virtual MS Windows 11" system where Windows runs in a sandboxed environment and I can export the Windows desktop to any computer. Many bussinesses use this to allow people to work from home.

So the primary and backup NAS do not need to be the same. One of them can be 4X less expensive.

 

[kinless]

Curious what your NAS backup strategy is, if you have one. Since the backup should be off-site, I'm trying to decide if it's more feasible to set up a second NAS at my parents' house to backup to; or to backup to a cloud service, and if so, which one?

I have multiple contingencies in place. First line of defense is both file and media servers using RAID 1 to protect against drive failures. I know that’s not a backup, which is why the last slot in the NAS contains an 18TB WD Gold drive solely for cumulative nightly backups, version control and local Time Machine destinations.

Next is an external 2TB drive where critical/historic files are backed up monthly and stored in a separate room in the house, protecting against catastrophic hardware failure and ransomware.

Last line of defense is another pair of external 2TB drives, one rotated every 6 months with another critical backup and stored in a safety deposit box offsite, protecting against fire and theft.

This strategy may not be as conventional as a cloud backup or remote NAS, but it works for my use case. Luckily I’ve never had to restore anything other than a few mistakenly deleted files.

 

[ChrisA]

I have multiple contingencies in place. First line of defense is both file and media servers using RAID 1 to protect against drive failures. I know that’s not a backup, which is why the last slot in the NAS contains an 18TB WD Gold drive solely for cumulative nightly backups, version control and local Time Machine destinations.

Next is an external 2TB drive where critical/historic files are backed up monthly and stored in a separate room in the house, protecting against catastrophic hardware failure and ransomware.

Last line of defense is another pair of external 2TB drives, one rotated every 6 months with another critical backup and stored in a safety deposit box offsite, protecting against fire and theft.

This strategy may not be as conventional as a cloud backup or remote NAS, but it works for my use case. Luckily I’ve never had to restore anything other than a few mistakenly deleted files.

The BTRFS file system used by Synology is able to hold versioned files and even able to hold non-deletable files so ther is some safety there. The backup system works continously and is versioned so recent backup never overwrite older data. The advantage of continous backup is you only write the data blocks that changed. so not much data is sent.

Again, a major problem is that all of this technolgy is new to many people so it gets ignored and the fancy NAS is used as if it were just a really slow external disk drive

 

[Alameda]

The BTRFS file system used by Synology is able to hold versioned files and even able to hold non-deletable files so ther is some safety there. The backup system works continously and is versioned so recent backup never overwrite older data. The advantage of continous backup is you only write the data blocks that changed. so not much data is sent.

Again, a major problem is that all of this technolgy is new to many people so it gets ignored and the fancy NAS is used as if it were just a really slow external disk drive

The immutable snapshots feature of Synology is very impressive. And you can buy a second synology, maybe just a 2-drive, install it remotely -- across the country, across the planet, wherenver -- and Synology HyperBackup will create an encrypted back up of your local synology in case of fire or theft.

Synology is very impressive.

 

[HDFan]

QNAP has the same features. Immutable backups, versioning, etc.

 

[ChrisA]

QNAP has the same features. Immutable backups, versioning, etc.

Yes. It is like deciding to buy an iPhone or an Android. The features are very much the same as is the performance and cost. People say Synology is like Apple with better attention to design and security. But on the other hand compare features and price, and decide Windows 10 is better than an Apple Mac. It depends on what is important to you.

If you are VERY concerned and software reliability and performance and have some IT skills, you should be looking at TrueNAS. It is built on BSD UNIX and runs ZFS.

In all cases, the NAS offers unlimited expandable reliable storage but that network cable is much slower than the Thunderbolt cable. The NAS connects to every computer and phone and tablet you own, the Thunderbolt cable connects to only one computer.

 

[HDFan]

The features are very much the same as is the performance and cost. People say Synology is like Apple with better attention to design and security.

Indeed you have to decide what is most important to you. Synology software may be easier to use. QNAPs' software is more configurable and therefore more complex, their hardware is better with LEDs, voice (actually quite useful), thunderbolt and 10 GbE standard on some models. They don't try to push you to overpriced Synology memory and other upgrades.

Both vendors have had security issues although QNAP experienced some major ones. Haven't affected me and hopefully QNAP has learned its lesson.

If you are VERY concerned and software reliability and performance and have some IT skills, you should be looking at TrueNAS. It is built on BSD UNIX and runs ZFS.

Haven't used TrueNAS but given my experiences with SoftRaid I tend to avoid 3rd party software solutions whenever possible. Since Synology, QNAP and others own both the hardware and software you don't end up with finger pointing. I have an open issue with QNAPs' excellent support right now. We don't know whether it is a hardware problem, software problem, a problem with the NAS or with my Mac. They own the problem.

 

[Alameda]

Indeed you have to decide what is most important to you. Synology software may be easier to use. QNAPs' software is more configurable and therefore more complex.

That’s super-vague, like when a Windows user says that Windows is “more configurable” than Mac without explaining what they’re talking about. What can you configure your QNAP to do that I can‘t configure a Synology to do?

TBH, I don’t expect my NAS to do all that much. It’s mostly my ultra-reliable storage.

 

[HDFan]

The Synology DSM platform is a lot more comparable in design and control with Mac OSX and is by far the more user-friendly option of the two. The QNAP QTS platform is a lot more comparable to Android in its initial GUI and then more like Windows in it’s navigation, arriving as the option with a greater deal of configuration and control, but with a steeper learning curve.

Synology DS423+ Vs QNAP TS-464 NAS Comparison

QNAP TS-464 or the Synology DS423+ NAS Drive - Which Should You Buy? Choosing Between the Synology DS423+ and QNAP TS-464 NAS is more than just about how you are spending your money at checkout! Making a move away from 3rd public cloud storage can be a big, BIG decision for some users. The 'freemiu

nascompares.com

Hope this answers your questions. Ran out of time.

 

[JamesMay82]

for ease of use the largest internal you can afford/justify is easiest option and then a couple of externals to back this up with time machine.

Thats the route i went as it’s been brilliant since upgrading from a 256 gig machine and relying on external drives.

 

[pmiles]

Hello

I was wondering if I could get a bit of advice?
A few years ago I bought a Macbook Air, it’s great and serves all of my needs. However, I bought the cheapest model with a small SSD, at the time I thought it wouldn’t matter, I’d just use external hard drives.

The external drives have just become a pain. If someone wants a file and it’s on the laptop, I’ll send it right away, however if if’s on an external I’ll procrastinate and take weeks before I pull out the drive and plug it in. Sometimes I just want to quickly do something while I’m sitting on a couch, but that ends up being a balancing act of cables and drives. It’s just so annoying. I like to be portable and the drives make that so complicated.

I’m looking at buying a new Macbook with 2tb onboard, which is quite expensive and I’m worried I’ll fill those 2tbs up in a few years and end up in the same situation.
However, I’m very curious about keeping my existing Mac and getting a NAS.

I like the idea, I also like the fact that in the future I can simply upgrade the NAS when it fills up, rather than needing to replace the entire Mac.

I’m just wondering how the NAS would perform, both at home and when I’m out in town or travelling (I know local wifi will be a limitation, but assuming I’m in a hotel or coffee shop with an okay connection). I’d mainly use it for storing files, my iTunes library, watching videos and some video and audio editing (not much and not in 8k, but I’m curious if latency will become a major issue).
Are there any limitations or disadvantages I’m not thinking of.

I own a NAS. Currently own a PC but had the NAS prior to switching back to a PC. Didn't have to do anything to the NAS during the switch as it runs its own OS so pretty flexible there.

My NAS is not accessible from outside of my personal home network. This is for security reasons. Being able to access it away from home opens up a whole can of worms regarding network security. So, if your intention is to store your data on a NAS so that you can access it while away from home, it can be done but it has its downsides.

2TBs is basically the bare minimum storage size these days. Tomorrow it will be larger. Just the nature of the beast. Used to be video files were 720p now they are 4K and larger. The amount of storage needed these days grows as fast as the cost of the hardware needed to store it. My base computer only has a 2TB drive so I understand where you are at.

So, here's the deal. I keep movies among other things on my NAS. My NAS is always on, but I have to log into it to access any files on it. My NAS has two bays, two 4TB drives. You can get them with more bays, and you can certainly put larger drives in them. There certainly is a risk of lost data, but that is true with anything. My NAS is not setup as a RAID (i.e. striped drives) so each drive is independent from the other. Combining drives to read as a single drive creates more risk of lost data, so I prefer to keep the drives separate. Had RAID setups fail in the past. While the drives were fully recoverable, the data on them was not. Rather have one drive fail and lose its data than have one fail and take both drives data with it.

The advantage of the NAS for me is that I can store large amounts of data on it keeping my computer drive as free as possible. Accessing the data is like accessing a local internal drive once I am logged in. You could get the same functionality with an external drive attached to your computer for less but would lack the ability to add storage when needed. I'm assuming you don't want a bunch of external drives cluttering your desk. NAS solves this.

A NAS can also be used as a media server. I use mine to watch videos on my TV. I use VLC on my AppleTV to watch my movies because I have no need for previews, descriptions, poster art, or ratings. Just log into my NAS from VLC, click on a file, and enjoy. No issues streaming whatsoever. Of course it is a wired network in my home.

So, in a nutshell, the performance of your NAS is as fast or as slow as the network that it is on. If wired, you have maximum performance. If wireless, depends on your network connection. I personally would not try to access my files over an unsecure network such as a hotel and the like. I'd just carry an external drive with me if I really needed to have additional storage with me, get a larger drive for my computer our use a commercial service such as iCloud or the like.

The NAS will do what you want it to do, but there is a risk to using the NAS remotely (on the road). A NAS really isn't a big investment, you could get yourself a 2 bay one and give it go to see for yourself if it meets your needs. Sort of like how you have already made external drive purchases thus far. It's funny how the Mac used to be the clutter free work environment but has turned into a mess as of late. My Mac Pro back in the day served me well for over 10 years. These new Apple Silicon machines seem to be more constraining than liberating due to their lack of storage and upgradeability.

 

[kinless]

My NAS is not accessible from outside of my personal home network. This is for security reasons. Being able to access it away from home opens up a whole can of worms regarding network security. So, if your intention is to store your data on a NAS so that you can access it while away from home, it can be done but it has its downsides.

If you use a 3rd-party gateway service like TailScale then you can access your NAS remotely without exposing it outside the local network. A personal account is free.

Or if your router allows, set up a VPN server to login remotely and behave as if you were still connected to your local network. Slower? Yes. But it’s handy for accessing files in a pinch.