The only thing ng that is wrong with that is technology changes! You probably will have to find cable adapters when you finally join the modern age!
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What’s a good NAS and NAS software for home use with almost all Apple devices?
- Thread starter Luba
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The only thing ng that is wrong with that is technology changes! You probably will have to find cable adapters when you finally join the modern age!
Biggest benefit of Synology in my mind is being able to fuse mismatched disks into one volume. I’m not sure that can be done with a Mini, but then I haven’t played with the RAID tools for years.
I upgraded to a x21+ model with support for SSD caching and that made a huge difference when using as a Time Machine volume, for example. Overall transfer speeds for general data (photos, videos, data files) also increase over my x15 model. If that’s not useful, then I tend to stick with the hardware I have and avoid the hassle of changing it over. Only took a couple hours to setup and a day or two for the volumes to finally settle, but time I generally wouldn’t spend if there wasn’t a payoff.
Assuming you have parity enabled, I doubt a hardware failure would lead to unrecoverable data corruption, but someone here might have actual knowledge about that rather than my opinion.
I think my next setup will be a Linux based build. When I started my current setup I was on MacOSX server, now Apple has let it die. Before OSX server I was on Windows home server.
Yes, I have a Firewire drive, and have ditched SCSI drives. I have a Newton that doesn't talk to anything any more.
Fortunately my slide rules still work...
Another vote for Synology.
I lucked out and grabbed a free 12 bay unit from the company I worked for that died on day one with a known CPU issue. Synology replaced it no questions asked and even paid for the return shipping.
I've now got several docker containers running on it for NextCloud, Pi-Hole and an IKEv2 VPN Server, and it's also now my DHCP server.
Oh, and I store and backup stuff to it as well...!
I lucked out and grabbed a free 12 bay unit from the company I worked for that died on day one with a known CPU issue. Synology replaced it no questions asked and even paid for the return shipping.
I've now got several docker containers running on it for NextCloud, Pi-Hole and an IKEv2 VPN Server, and it's also now my DHCP server.
Oh, and I store and backup stuff to it as well...!
I have, a WD My Cloud, for which Western Digital have just told me there won't be any more software updates. It also has my FireWire drive attached, but only by a USB 2 connection.
Fortunately, I still have my Raspberry Pi, with two USB 3 3Gb drives attached. That works quite nicely, with SMB, NFS and AppleShare shares.
And I can do other things with it, like reply to Macrumors...
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Everything in my setup is usb3, or thunderbolt. I have hooked the up to my M1 Mac. So I am very modern.
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With Synology, you could, especially if you set it up as RAID1 or JBOD. Synology uses EXT4 by default (Synology NASes are essentially glorified Linux boxes) or any OS that they support. So that brings in BTRFS, EXT4, EXT3, FAT, NTFS, exFAT, and HFS+.
So you could pull out that drive, plug it into a Linux box and should be able to mount it.
If it's formatted as FAT, NTFS, or even better, HFS+, you should be able to plug that into a Mac and have instant access to the disk.
BL.
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I would agree. The backup plan is...to have a backup. Pulling a drive is a last-ditch long shot when one has no backup.
With a Synology, the easiest thing would be to schedule automatic backups up to USB connected HD formatted FAT, so it could be used with any platform. Cover all the bases: failed RAID controller/loss of volume or partition, corrupt/deleted data, etc. The same would be true for most platforms; backups should be on a separate drive/device.
I'll go even further. A backup plan is to have a successful restore. You can take all of the backups that you want, but if none of the restores work from that backup, then your backup has failed, leaving you with no backup plan.
Backups should be on a separate drive? Absolutely; in fact, having it on more than one drive is optimal, because you never want to be stuck with a single point of failure. Having, say, two or three separate drives with your backups on them, and rotated out on an occasional period is optimal... because when you think about it, unless you have more than one (which means you have the money to not have to worry about this to begin with!), your home is a single point of failure. So keeping one offsite is always a safe bet as well.
Sounds crazy/paranoid, I know; However, I'm a sysadmin. It's my job to be paranoid.
BL.
I'll throw another comment in here while I'm thinking of it: avoid Drobo like the plague.
I bought a couple of them in days gone by and like the appliance like nature and like the direct attach versus network attached design. Problem is that their support sucks. I wanted to move to dual disk redundancy, so I put a bigger disk in which, since I was still on single disk redundancy made my volume larger than the maximum allowed size at the time and forced creation of a second volume. I turned on dual disk redundancy, the extra capacity promptly disappeared, but the secondary volume remained. I contacted support to figure out how to remove it and was told my serial number was out of support-- I don't know if they wanted me to pay a support fee or what, but I was infuriated that I had a simple question about a basic problem and was told they weren't going to talk to me which probably took more typing than just answering the question I'd asked.
Never did figure it out. I just had this stupid extra empty volume that I had to unmount every time until the day I decommissioned the system.
Years later I'm trying to move data from those old Drobos to another drive, but the current versions of their driver software doesn't seem to support the older systems and the older drivers don't work on the newer MacOS, so I dug up an old Mini with an old MacOS install on it to talk to them and do the transfer and it's just a miserable experience.
Synology isn't perfect, but it seems stable and their support has been excellent and those are the two most important things to me when I'm using their product to archive a ton of valuable data.
I bought a couple of them in days gone by and like the appliance like nature and like the direct attach versus network attached design. Problem is that their support sucks. I wanted to move to dual disk redundancy, so I put a bigger disk in which, since I was still on single disk redundancy made my volume larger than the maximum allowed size at the time and forced creation of a second volume. I turned on dual disk redundancy, the extra capacity promptly disappeared, but the secondary volume remained. I contacted support to figure out how to remove it and was told my serial number was out of support-- I don't know if they wanted me to pay a support fee or what, but I was infuriated that I had a simple question about a basic problem and was told they weren't going to talk to me which probably took more typing than just answering the question I'd asked.
Never did figure it out. I just had this stupid extra empty volume that I had to unmount every time until the day I decommissioned the system.
Years later I'm trying to move data from those old Drobos to another drive, but the current versions of their driver software doesn't seem to support the older systems and the older drivers don't work on the newer MacOS, so I dug up an old Mini with an old MacOS install on it to talk to them and do the transfer and it's just a miserable experience.
Synology isn't perfect, but it seems stable and their support has been excellent and those are the two most important things to me when I'm using their product to archive a ton of valuable data.
Having supported both....I would agree. While Synology is not perfect, none of the half dozen Drobos I have seen would I recommend for more than a non-essential backup destination. Last one I have seen was new about 2018, but unless there has been a fundamental change or improvement...nope.
What do you mean with "it supports time-machine straight out of the box"? How do you use Time Machine with your Synology? Didin't you have to create some share on the Synology for Time Machine?
Thanks. The video says you have to create a share first. That was exactly my question to FilipeTeixeira, whether they did this. The "out of the box" just made me curious...
Yes, you have to create a share. But that is a good thing so you don't fill the entire volume, not to mention user permissions/privacy, especially if you have multiple machines to backup.
BTW, it similar step using Mac OS X Server for a TM destination. Again, essential to be able to manage the backups. Even with an attached drive for TM, I would typically make a partition to limit filling the entire drive if it was in use for anything else.
This is why you have a hardware firewall, email scanning and filtering, multi factor authentication, local antivirus and finally education. And of course, you keep your NAS boxes for backups only and they are not visible/reachable from the user subnet. Doubt many folk have this at home, disable UPNP on your nas and block internet access. Manually upgrade firmware when required. Get a proper router/firewall, don’t use the crap ones your isp supply.Not exposing a NAS to the WAN mitigates the external threat. Does nothing to protect against a threat initiated from the LAN side if a user downloads an infected payload in an email or from the internet. Given the historical track record of most OEM NAS vendors, who's business model is based solely on the initial acquisition purchase, there is no incentive for OEMs to provide long term software support even when vulnerabilities are discovered, except the potential impact on reputation and future product sales. Just read any OEM NAS vendor Limited Liability Warranty.
Potential Legacy Risk from Malware Targeting QNAP NAS Devices | CISA
us-cert.cisa.gov
Synology warns of malware infecting NAS devices with ransomware
Taiwan-based NAS maker Synology has warned customers that the StealthWorker botnet is targeting their network-attached storage devices in ongoing brute-force attacks.www.bleepingcomputer.com
Top 5 ways ransomware is delivered and deployed | Infosec
If your computer has not yet been affected by ransomware, odds are it could soon be. With ransom payments averaging more than $80,000 in Q4 2019, the covetedresources.infosecinstitute.com
How ransomware spreads and how to stop it | Emsisoft
How does ransomware spread? We discuss the most common ways ransomware propagates and how you can prevent ransomware from infecting your system. ✓ Click here!blog.emsisoft.com
Also install air-gap between your network and the Internet.
As well, the only un-hackable OS is CP/M.
Works well. Have an older Mini running Catalina that works fine as a NAS with 2 OWC RAID enclosures. Works great. Time Machine to the Macs in the house, NFS to the others.
Me too. Now I am considering replacement. I am almost most likely pick Synology but not yet decided to pick which version also 1 bay or 2 bay. They are quite expensive compare WD My Cloud but they are far better (what I have read online so far). It seems J series too slow and should go for Value series minimum and Plus series at moment price too high for me. Got until April to decide before my WD My Cloud cut off.
EDIT: Probably most likely get 1 bay DS118. That just in my price range.
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Let me ask you this. What's the difference between you getting a 1-bay DS118 versus simply getting an external HDD enclosure and putting in a big sized HDD?
I mean, outside of the software Synology has, you're not gaining anything except storage. If anything, you'd still need an extra disk for backups in case the single drive (the single point of failure in the DS118) dies.
If anything, it would be more economical and feasible (especially with the safety of your data) to go 2-bay. The DS218 or anything in the 200 series will work great. Yes, that will mean adding an additional drive, but with RAID you can add redundancy to your setup, so in case 1 drive dies, the other is there without any loss of data. Additionally, with the SHR (hybrid RAID) functionality Synology has, you can mix/match the sizes of the disk, in which Synology will use all of the space, as opposed to RAID, which will use the space relative to the smallest disk available. This, of course, assuming not using RAID 0 or JBOD.
BL.
I already have external drive for backup. You probably right but I want NAS function and access network on any my devices. I will consider 2 bay and see if I able get it on discount offer etc. I have got until April to think.
Thanks for info for me think about.