My wife has volunteered me to choose a nas drive for her boss and set it up so would like some help from some tech bods.

I currently have a wd mycloud nas drive which has been running perfectly well for the last 4 years, but for a business in thinking something like a synology ds218j.

This one below

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/4tb-2x2tb-wd-red-2-bay-synology-ds218j-nas-pre-tested-and-configured-in-raid1-mirror

Any other options?

flyingpotatoes

Member
My wife has volunteered me to choose a nas drive for her boss and set it up so would like some help from some tech bods.

My advice would be to not get involved if you possibly can… 🙂

Once it is set-up who is going to administer it, update the firmware, check the virus software is running, handle back-ups etc? I would get whoever will be involved in this side of things, to make the decision. The software between Synology & QNAP is quite different – you can trial them on both of their websites.

The NAS you link to is really a home level-basic NAS from what I understand, which admittedly isn’t very much (I bought a QNAP TS-228A last year & while I have it running for the bulk of what I want to do, I am still learning about it).
Depending on what the NAS will be used for & how many people will be connecting to it etc. I suspect the one you link to won’t really be man enough. And assuming it will be set-up with mirrored drives, there isn’t that much storage on there for a business – depending on what that business is, I guess.

People with more experience than me, will probably need a bit more information about what it will be used for, size of the business etc. to make any useful suggestions.
There is a lot of information on YouTube about this sort of thing – I spent quite a lot of time looking at the NAScompares channel to find out as much information as i could.

@stumpy01 makes all the right points there 😉

I have the NAS you linked to. I use it at home to back up Macs/PCs we use to run our little consultancy business. Also use the photo app to backup all photos off the phone. We have a shared folder (that I can access remotely) which is very handy. That’s pretty much all we use it for.

On the plus side, it’s good for all those things. It’s fast and having RAID-1 means I know we have a copy if we lose a disk. It’s pretty simple to administer but it took me a while to work out why it was taking five copies of everything, how to set disk quotas, how to set up security, etc. The security etc is excellent. I have the drives encrypted.

On the downside, there are so many apps it’s pretty complicated if you get into all the functionality. It’s a bit noisy (which would be fine in an office, not so much if it’s sat next to you), the UI is okay a but slow.

I set up AV/Security logging/Disk logging and some other admin so I get regular reports. I rarely login to the box now. Since sorting out the multiple copies issue and configuring the security profiles, it’s been zero hassle.

It depends what the business wants to use it for and how many people will be accessing it at any one time. That Synology model looks decent enough for ad-hoc file storage/access for a fairly small number of people but 100+ people with user profiles and frequently accessing large files then probably not. Also being RAID-1 it’s not easily expandable

The new drive is for a small business with one shop on the high street.

There will be three people needing to access it and it will back up letters to customers and invoices. Not a massive amount of data at all.

I presume the nas will be situated in the home.

Currently they save documents to a pen drive but this doesn’t give them the ability to sync documents which is what they want.

As for administration, I’m guessing it will land at my door but I’m not sure if it’s worth the hassle for me to do it after reading comments above 🤔

I’d say go cloud-based – Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive would be worth a look.

We have one of the NAS that you mention, Synology 281j. I’ll be honest if I was starting now, I’d probably go for cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive). The only reason not to would be if you had poor internet speed and had the NAS locally. The 218j would be ok for what you are looking for, but it is designed for a home office and not for large numbers of users. Plus remember that you need to back it up as well, hold the backups off site.

The firmware updates itself and you can set up the AV to do the same. I’ve done this, but each time I go and play I have to relearn as I don’t have to do it very often!

Agree with Glenn, cloud based all the way.
Nas drive is overkill for the backup required and you’ll be free tech support for ever more, and if you’re really lucky every hiccup from now onwards will be your fault because you touched it last.

Jaded? Me? 😀

Thanks helpful people 👍
Looking like a cloud based option ftw.

You know what my new post is going to be don’t you?

Just for a bit of balance, I decided to buy the NAS as I didn’t want to commit just to cloud storage. I do like having all my photos on a hard drive and all my customer docs.

I’m sure I’ll never need to ‘leave’ a cloud service like google, but for peace of mind I decided it was worth spending the cash on something I can see, and isn’t shared with other people outside of us!

My advice would be to not get involved if you possibly can…

I was going to say this when the OP first posted but thought I’d stay out of it, but….. ^ This!!

If you’re going to get involved then show them how to save stuff to a cloud account and then leave them to it.
For invoicing requirements an online solution such as QuickBooks is really good.
(and mention that they should be looking at GDRP requirements also if keeping personal data.)

Remember that if they buy a NAS they still need to do backups on it as well or set it up to backup to a cloud storage.  They shouldn’t think that some form of RAID is the same as backup.  They need to work out how often they need to backup based on what would happen if they got hit by ransomware

Cloud (onedrive/google etc) is fantastic but some things can’t live in it e.g. Quickbooks files, Microsoft Access databases.  They need to be sure that the things they want to share can live in that space or that only one person needs to access them and they can then live locally and get copied to the shared space or backed up elsewhere.

I’ve got a few Synology drives in various places.  They seem nice to use and can be accessed remotely (I don’t keep anything super sensitive on them).   When a drive dies it’s just a case of pulling the old one out and sticking a new one in (assuming that it is configured correctly to start with of course).

Personally I would go Office365 if at all possible and unless there is a good reason not to.  Almost everyone that I volunteer for has rarely had to call me since moving across.  My life is wayyyy easier. I only use the NAS drives for some bulk media storage that would cost too much in the cloud and as local backup for some other stuff that I don’t want in the cloud

Remember that if they buy a NAS they still need to do backups on it as well or set it up to backup to a cloud storage. They shouldn’t think that some form of RAID is the same as backup. They need to work out how often they need to backup based on what would happen if they got hit by ransomware

This is very good advice. RAID is (in this particular usage case) there for availability and continuity, so you can keep running without interruption should a drive die. It is not in itself a backup solution.

Many ransomware attacks will also target backups, so backing up “live” to say the cloud is insufficient if malware can still see it. You need something isolated from everything else (what we call “airgapped”) even if it’s just a USB hard drive that you can backup to and then unplug. Also, anything held onsite won’t do you any good if you’re burgled or the building catches fire.

Thread hijack.
I know nothing about NAS or computers in general, read Luddite.
However I do have a Netgear 2×2 seagate NAS for sale if it’s any use to you. I inherited it but never used it.