NAS

[JustAnotherSquid]

And I mean Network-Attached Storage not Naval Air Station.

I started building servers for the home back in the mid-90s. We used them for all kinds of things (more on that later), but then about ten years ago I switched to pre-built NASes. The reason was that these little shoe-box sized machines had become powerful enough to act as home servers and not just networked disk space. And they come pre-built with an operating system so they are super-easy to set up and configure.

Our current NAS is an eight-bay, quad-core beast with 14TB of storage (and it can handle waaaaaaay more than that) with enough redundancy that two hard drives can fail simultaneously and we won't lose a thing. Some of the things we use it for:

• Hosting all of our digital pictures going all the way back to 2000. This includes being able to access them from our phones anywhere in the world we have an internet connection.
• Hosting all of our digital video, same as above.
• Automatically backing up all of the PCs in the house in real time.
• Storing the video from our security cameras, and making it available to our phones anywhere.
• Hosting our calendars so we don't have to rely on / be tied to / give our data to iCloud or Google, and making it available to our phones anywhere.
• Hosting our contacts so we don't have to rely on / be tied to / give our data to iCloud or Google, and making it available to our phones anywhere.
• Automatically backing itself up every night to an off-site location so that if our house burns down we don't lose everything.

And honestly, we aren't even scratching the surface of what it can do.

I write this post because if all this sounds like something that would be beneficial to you, you should look at getting a NAS. The two best brands in my opinion are QNAP and Synology. QNAP tends to give you more powerful hardware at a given price point while Synology tends to have better software. I've owned both and currently have a Synology.

Anyway, if this is a road you might want to go down and have some questions feel free to ask. My advice is free and your satisfaction is guaranteed or you get double your money back!

 

[AndyMX47]

And I mean Network-Attached Storage not Naval Air Station.

I started building servers for the home back in the mid-90s. We used them for all kinds of things (more on that later), but then about ten years ago I switched to pre-built NASes. The reason is that these little shoe-box sized machines had become powerful enough to act as home servers and not just networked disk space. And they come pre-built with an operating system so they are super-easy to set up and configure.

Our current NAS is an eight-bay, quad-core beast with 14TB of storage (and it can handle waaaaaaay more than that) with enough redundancy that two hard drives can fail simultaneously and we won't lose a thing. Some of the things we use it for:

• Hosting all of our digital pictures going all the way back to 2000. This includes being able to access them from our phones anywhere in the world we have an internet connection.
• Hosting all of our digital video, same as above.
• Automatically backing up all of the PCs in the house in real time.
• Storing the video from our security cameras, and making it available to our phones anywhere.
• Hosting our calendars so we don't have to rely on / be tied to / give our data to iCloud or Google, and making it available to our phones anywhere.
• Hosting our contacts so we don't have to rely on / be tied to / give our data to iCloud or Google, and making it available to our phones anywhere.
• Automatically backing itself up every night to an off-site location so that if our house burns down we don't lose everything.

And honestly, we aren't even scratching the surface of what it can do.

I write this post because if all this sounds like something that would be beneficial to you, you should look at getting a NAS. The two best brands in my opinion are QNAP and Synology. QNAP tends to give you more powerful hardware at a given price point while Synology tends to have better software. I've owned both and currently have a Synology.

Anyway, if this is a road you might want to go down and have some questions feel free to ask. My advice is free and your satisfaction is guaranteed or you get double your money back!

I still write stuff down on paper and stick it on the fridge. Will a NAS help me remember to buy laundry detergent better than a sticky note?

 

[JustAnotherSquid]

You can set an event on your calendar with a pop-up reminder. "BING! Remember to buy laundry detergent."

They do have a notes-style server with a corresponding mobile app for your phone that would probably work better for that kind of thing but I haven't personally messed around with it.