We have a bit of a fragmented it set up as a family. All our files are spread across a MacBook Pro, a Mac mini, my windows work laptop, and 3 or 4 1tb portable hard drives. The only thing that is vaguely under control is our photos which all get synced to a paid Dropbox account.

I’m thinking that I need to set up a home NAS to get everything in one place and the important stuff backed up.

Any recommendations for a nas solution which will work nicely with windows and Mac devices? Happy to spend a bit for something that works and has some room for future expanding.

Can your Dropbox folder be on a nas, or are they kind of doing the same thing.

Last thing, for work I need to work offline in remote locations a lot. Is there a foolproof way of storing ‘master’ files on a nas but synching that to a portable hard drive when I get home. The files would be worked on/modified on the portable hard drive.

Last thing, for work I need to work offline in remote locations a lot. Is there a foolproof way of storing ‘master’ files on a nas but synching that to a portable hard drive when I get home. The files would be worked on/modified on the portable hard drive.

What are you working on offline really? For that I would go for something like Dropbox/Google Drive etc. They specialise in that sort of stuff. Files on portable HDD will in the end get messy especially with versioning. I’d also try and keep work and home seperate – the importance of certain files is different losing work is bigger for me than a ripped CD.
Is the Mac Mini on all the time? That could be the controller to host file sharing accounts like DB and GD on the NAS, some also will run as a basic PC Client for some of the sharing apps.

Also stuff like Google MUsic etc and the apple equivilent allow you to upload and hold files for things like that as an offsite backup

Reality check though 1 copy of everything in the house on 1 box in the house is not a full backup. It works if 1 machine dies but not in case of fire/theft

I have a wd mycloud nas which is a fairly generic type of nas. I treat it as a bit of a dumb drive in its own right and have disabled a fair amount of its features so that it just sits as a drive on the network I can access.

I back up to it from my mac using a program called chrono sync. This allows me to specify certain backup jobs (such as specific target / source directories) and then has scheduler than runs the jobs. I can also run each job manually if I want.

I also use chrono sync to sync with an external hdd drive too. It’s just another job to select and run the sync when I plug it in. This would be similar to your request where you could have a job that syncs from the external hard drive to the nas.

To me, in your situation the sync software is more important than a super fancy nas. You sound like you need to be able to easily specify your sync jobs. Once you have that then any nas should do.

I’m just being nosey here, but what’s the breakdown on the type of files and the size of storage you need?

As Mike says above minimum of 3 places for digital files for them to truly ‘exist’. We use a Synology 2 bay box at work for all our data plus rotating backups on 2 suitably sized desktop drives that are stored off-site in case of fire.

Drobo 5N worked well for us, although it does need software on each machine. Can even pretend to be a Time Capsule for networked Time Machine backups. Nice and easy to pull out drives and replace with bigger ones to get more capacity over time.

Personally, the NAS is just a place to dump music/video and bulky things that I might need later. Anything I might need when I’m out and about (including all the things I’m currently working on) live in Dropbox. For videos, as we run Plex it’s easy to sync any videos you want to watch to any device. Then we have a Crashplan sub for proper off-site cloud backup.

I use dropbox for most of my stuff and have a synology NAS at home which allows the cloud sync to backup my dropbox just incase something ever happened.

Works fine on Windows and Mac as it uses SMB shares for accessing it. Does time machine backup etc etc

thanks for the pointers everyone, I agree that I need to improve my storage and backup plan.

My files are nothing out of the ordinary or large ms office, pdfs, sketchup, autocad dwgs, photos, some small videos. Total capacity 4Tb would give me room to spare for now.

I have troubles with external hd formatting NTFS/exFat etc. for use between mac and windows. Seems like a NAS uses a different format(s) altogether so this shouldn’t be an issue.

Seems like synology have a good reputation, a few mentions above, googling threw up lots of good reviews. Something like their 216j with 2 x 4Tb drives looks like it would work for me.

I use dropbox for some stuff, but i’m pretty limited as I can’t access it using my work laptop, and i normally dont want to take 2 laptops when I go away. For now I really need to keep using external HDs for day to day working. Is there a way to sync (both directions) a NTFS formatted external HD to a NAS using my macbook?

Is there a way to sync (both directions) a NTFS formatted external HD to a NAS using my macbook?

You could probably get away with a simple script to do it when you’re at home and on a faster network. Plug everything in and run the script. Odds on the app for the synology won’t be blocked on your works network so you may be able to work just from that.