Updating my storage, and looking for ideas

[dimme]

I have a mac mini running OS X server. There is a WD MyBook USB 3 3 Tb drive connected to the server as my data drive. This drive is shared across the network. It stores all my Photos, music, documents, movies, etc. The drive is backed up every night to another WD MyBook USB 3 3 Tb drive, using super duper. The main drive is also backed vis crash plan. It's this for a larger drive which will most likely be a WD MyBook USB 3 4 Tb drive and I will buy a second to have a daily backup. This to me is the most cost effective route I can do this for about $250. I am pretty happy with the performance of the drives. I think with large copies to the attached clients the bottleneck is the network speed, also this is my home network so it's a leisurely environment. However I am looking for suggestions for alternative before I do the upgrade.
Any ideas?

 

[satcomer]

You need a NAS device with connected to the server or a tradional NAS from either Synology or a QNAP. This way you could have VPN server connection to your stuff on your smart Phone!

 

[marcinsf]

I went through several iterations of USB/Firewire attached storage and then became frustrates since my Mac Mini runs my entertainment area with full DVR capability. So it needs a large amount of space and my MacBook Pro needs to be backed up.

First I did what you are doing with some external connected drives. They were noisy and clumsy. One of my friends suggested Synology network attached systems. I did the research, bought an empty chassis and put in my 2 Tb drives. Since that time, I have completely switched all the drives (note here seamlessly unplug and plug in new drive!) to 4 Tb drives. The newest models can use the 6 Tb drives and I think some can use the 8 Tb drives. I’ve had my Synology for a long time and it is one of the best non-apple products I’ve used yet. It has full idle/power saving features to put the drives to sleep if you want, network accessibility with user authentication (eg. logins), network backup and restore for any Mac, http server for external accessibility (I often need access to my files when I’m not at home and have the ability to look at, download and upload files seamlessly). The Synology supports many different RAID types so you’ll be protected to the 2nd or 3rd degree of failure, it can even back up itself to an offsite system if you’re super cautious.

The Synology system seems expensive but when you compare the feature list and how long you’ll be able to easily use the system, it is much more economical than $250 here and $99 there.

Hope this helps and feel free to ask me anything here or private message.