G+_Christopher McKee Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 I have a general question for the community about NAS solutions. Recently had an external drive fail and didnt have the data on it backed up anywhere else, so decided to look into doing a raid1 or raid10 setup. Not sure though where to go. I"m looking for a solution that should hopefully last me a decent enough time. My concern with getting something like a synology box is its upgradability. If i buy a syn box, in 4 years will I just have to scrap that previous box and buy a new one, or is there an upgrade path on them? Alternately if I did a FreeNAS solution, I could upgrade cpu or ram without too much issue, or swap the whole OS if FreeNAS ever died out. Would I be best off getting just a Synology solution, or in terms of budget and future proofing, is a DIY solution the better bet? Any input would help as I'm pretty ignorant on this issue. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Brown Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Depends on the amount of time you want to invest in building and self support. DIY is nice, but you can end up investing more time and money than you expect, to get the same results from a premade appliance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Well, you can generally pickup a server from xbyte.com - Home page for close to the same price of a new Synology. If you have a spot for one, it makes a lot of sense (very noisy tho). Personally, I'd never touch FreeNAS. All it really is, is a gui that slowed down your security and bug fixes compared to one of the BSDs. Edited: Autocorrect messing things up for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Brown Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 If you're married, there's an additional cost to DIY you might not have considered either. ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 I went DIY - partially for the budget-related SAF (spousal acceptance factor). I would have preferred to buy a 5+ drive Synology, but instead repurposed my old computer by installing Xpenology. There are 3 drives installed now with room to expand (6 SATA on board and room for PCI controller cards). As for room to grow, it depends on which model you get. A 2 drive NAS doesn't leave much room, but a 4 or 5 drive might. I'm not sure how long Synology supports their hardware with updates, but I'd assume longer than my DIY solution will last. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Brown Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Ben Reese I'm stealing that. SAF, lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Shawn Ashe Posted November 2, 2017 Share Posted November 2, 2017 I have one Synology device (1813+) that I have had for years, and after a few years I've purchased a second (916) which is now my primary. Older device is now kept out of state, and I back up my primary raid using the DSM Cloud Sync to the remote NAS .. thus providing remote backup and raid at each location. (important data from local computers get pushed up to local NAS.. then synced out to remote) I fully expect in a few more years (3-4) to do the same. Cost is not that huge over large time periods, and redundant data gives me some stress reduction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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