Comments welcome - NAS for elderly users, as backup, thinking Synology so far

Networking Networking Hardware
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Hey All!

So I was at an elderly computer customer’s house recently, they have:

  • 2 PC’s (in separate rooms, but now, cable networked)
  • 1 iPad
  • 1 iPhone
  • 1 Slightly smart TV
  • Around 200GB of personal data

Their current backup is Apple Cloud, iDrive on 1 PC and an external 2.5in drive that is claimed to be a local backup…but it hasn’t been tested for years.

I’ve casually mentioned that they could have a NAS. Backups would go FROM PC’s TO the NAS, just using Windows Backup for simplicity to them, in case they need to restore a file.

Now I’ve done this with another elderly user: I setup plex on their windows machine, then connect it to their smart tv. So they can watch personal home videos stored on their PC, on their TV - worked well.

Thing is, I have little knowledge of Synology, so I’d like to get one that’s up to the job - any suggestions? Transcoding shouldn’t be needed as I’m sure they’ll only watch locally and on a TV…though may be it should be considered just in case? I would prefer to use TrueNAS as I’m familiar with it, but then to keep the cost down I’d have to build one, and I can’t be arse’d. Even then it would end up way more expensive than a synology.

I thought a simple mirrored pair of drives in a box should be good enough - I might even setup backblaze on it (if that’s possible?), instead of using idrive on individual machines. 2 x 1TB should be sufficient.

Look forward to any comments!

Cheers,
Chris :slight_smile:

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I like Synology. I have used them several times for clients. They are great as a plug-and-play solution for a lot of common NAS uses. Their support is also great. I just had to RMA one for a backplane defect and their support team was awesome.

The biggest advantage imo over TruNAS as a AIO solution is the surveillance station software if that is something on the horizon.

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Didn’t know you’re doing tech support for my dad.

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Thanks for that, good to hear.

I did think that the surveillance stuff was included as standard these days, is that not the case?

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He said something about you walking out, after he asked you to download more hard drive and GPU.

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Quite easy to set up with lots of cloud back-up services actually.
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I’ve got a Synology box because I didn’t want the hassle of managing all the things myself. I like to toy around, but for this I wanted something which is (mostly) plug and play.
So far I’m very happy with it. For your parents (and many other people) it would certainly be more than enough from what I’m reading in your post.

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What examples of that are you thinking of? Synology is the only product on the market that I am aware of that actually is a good NVR that isn’t vendor specific.

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Oh I’m thinking of synology’s, I thought the useful NVR app came with every Synology device? I saw @lawrencesystems show it in a video, it looked really great, especially time lapse - which I could use with construction projects to wow clients :slight_smile:

I saw the supported camera list for Synology, and it was enormous :astonished:

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Wow, thanks for the screen shot @Aug :+1:

Thanks for reading the post and assuring me it’s the right gear, really kind of you :+1:

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Ok, yeah. I have played around with blue Iris and honestly is just pay the money for Synology now

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It’s a “just works” where you pay Synology for software and validating and get a mostly carefree package. These build great stuff and 2-4 bay options are still reasonable in pricing. 6+ drive bay models get really expensive really quick. I personally would get a Synology myself for 2-4 bays if I wouldn’t want to tinker with stuff.

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No problem! I’ve got my DS220+ running here to easily check things :grin:
And while that does allow me to tinker a bit with settings, I don’t need to keep track of all kinds of packages or fool around with CLI (I could… you can just log in through SSH and control the whole thing).

To give some idea of what I’m doing with it:

  • Backing up data for my wife and I (connected through OneDrive, which syncs with a couple devices for us).
  • Backing up for my mum (connected through her Google Drive.)
  • Running a Plex server
  • Automated RSS searches for file shares (to “feed” the Plex server) :eyes:

Which is all still pretty light activity for this machine.

And I get that you’ll be the one maintaining the machine?
You can easily set up scheduled scans to check the health of it and get notifications when updates are available.

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Hy hopes you will be fine, I am facing a problem with my laptop storage. I delete many unnecessary things but the issue is not resolved.kindly give me some suggestion

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Welcome to the forum! :+1:

I’d suggest creating a separate thread to ask your question.

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Thank you very much for that full explanation of your use, really handy.

Perhaps could you expand on the RSS stuff? I’ve heard of it, but didn’t know it could be used for lots of things - any chance of tagging me in a separate thread? :smiley:

Answering the Q though, yes I’ll be remote maintaining when possible, but it’s only a 15minute ride away from me, so not the end of the world if I need to visit.

The scheduled scans would be helpful, I’m a keen user of ZFS scrubs, so I guess they’re similar to that on a Synology.

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Here’s some info on the status and scanning options in the Storage Manager:

I’m using Btrfs, which is the default option. Nothing fancy, but it does regularly checks and scrubs for me, so that I don’t have to manually keep track of it.

I’ll be short about the RSS feeds:
You just insert a feed link.

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And filter out what you want to get out of it.
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But there is documentation about that as well, so just read through that. :slight_smile:

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Thank you very much for that Aug, really helpful to see. I’m gonna do some research and RTFM, but that’s a great starting point. :+1: