Network Access Storage

Ok so I had nearly filled up another external hard drive and had to get another one or look at other options. I did some research and it was clear that a NAS made sense but which one was not so clear or the size that I should go for. A  NAS would allow me to access the storage from both my laptop and my PC which would be useful. Plus certain types would also allow me to do other things like  making the photos available over the web.  So NAS I believed was the way to go, brand and size is now the question. More research and reading of reviews led me to think that for me QNAP or Synology were the brands to go for.  Size wise the bigger the better as this would give me more longevity, I also want 3 or more hard drives so that I could use a higher level of Raid without losing to much hard drive capacity. This meant it was expensive and at the time of this research I just didn’t have the money. That said the one I liked the look of the most was a 5 bay Synology NAS. More umming and ahhhing ensued.

In January I got to the point where I really had to make a decision I either had to get another external hard drive or go for it and get a NAS. I had also decided to gets some lights which I had seen on Amazon with some christmas money I had been given. I couldn’t find a better deal anywhere else so was on Amazon getting these lights and some other bits and pieces when I saw the Amazon credit card which would give me 0% interest for a year. Brief umming and ahhing occurred and then I ended up getting the lights, bits and pieces, and the synology NAS with 3 2gb hard drives.

The NAS has now been up and running for several months and is fantastic. I haven’t quite finished moving everything over to it and sorting it all out, but I am using it in earnest and it really was a good decision. I now have loads of space and capacity to expand that really easily. It is set up with Raid 5 so I have built in redundancy, and I can access photos from pretty much anywhere.