Best network storage solutions for home...

Wondering what’s out there for network storage.  Looking for something to just live so I don’t have to plug and replug like my current drive stuff. Bonus points if it can double for audio purposes

Any reason you can't use Dropbox or Google Drive?

Yes. I hate Dropbox, it causes issues like how it will fill a hard drive trying to sync to local Dropbox folder and the Dropbox.

Google drive is possible but would need more space.
Hoping I have something that can also be used  for allowing access to others to share schematics

I would consider making the CPU and the storage devices separate so that it can evolve over time. For the network a simple gigabit switch for $50 would work just fine. If you're familiar enough with Linux to get "samba" (Windows SMB file service that pretty much everything understands) working, there are lots of small form factor machines with multiple nic and USB-C ports. Then get a portable USB-C 1TB SSD. It should all be small enough that you could put it in a closet somewhere. Now you can just plug into any cable and you have pretty fast access to 1TB. Or you could get a NAS device but I cannot help but think that at some point it would just be limited in some annoying way. For one you can't just unplug the drive and plug it into something else in a pinch. But if you need RAID or some such then a NAS might be better.

Well currently, I just have a backup hard drive. It works fine but would prefer a nas that is always connect that way I don’t even have to think about it.  Drobo and that ilk look ok but also seem limiting. The end goal is 1 have backup and 2 be able to allow others to read off it to share schematics

pucho812 said:

Yes. I hate Dropbox, it causes issues like how it will fill a hard drive trying to sync to local Dropbox folder and the Dropbox.

Click to expand...

Both Dropbox and Drive support folder/volume sharing to one or more people, or to aliases.

I used to have the same problem with Dropbox:  my 2TB plan would replicate itself to all of my linked computers, meaning that overall I had 5 redendant 2TB copies of my data all over.  However Dropbox (finally) allows for 'Smart Sync', which is where you can designate a folder to be either 'local' or 'cloud only'.  'Cloud only' files appear as greyed out in your local file system, hence they take up no space, as they only exist in the cloud.  Double clicking the folder will 'bring it down' from the cloud and make it local.  You can freely toggle between the two by right clicking.

When I was doing regular audio projects, I would work right in the audio as a local folder in dropbox, and when I was done, I would designate it cloud only, which would cause it to be removed from the local storage and thus take up no space.  Then I would always have a cloud backup of every project, which is a must (IMHO).

I had looked into NAS, but for the cost of the hardware and my setup time I could buy a decade of online storage, available anywhere with only an Internet connection.

FreeNAS, hands down.  It's a linux (freeBSD) based ZFS storage system that can run from a partition or separate thumb drive with the main HD(s) partitioned out entirely for network access. It can be installed on nearly any old x64 PC that has a nic, and was made in the last decade.

https://www.freenas.org/hardware-requirements/

Matador said:

Both Dropbox and Drive support folder/volume sharing to one or more people, or to aliases.

  However Dropbox (finally) allows for 'Smart Sync', which is where you can designate a folder to be either 'local' or 'cloud only'. 

Click to expand...

Yes they do. At one of the post places I tech at they use that regularly, however it's very easy to forget to smart sync and you end up with a full hard drive. LOL But I hear you, might be the way to go.  ownership is also a huge concern

pucho812 said:

ownership is also a huge concern

Click to expand...

That it true.  I do also keep an external HDD with a copy that I sync every once in a while, in case Dropbox decides to go out of business or some other disaster happens.

One last thing:  if you contact them, they'll sell you what was named the "Packrat' feature, which saves EVERY version of EVERY file going back 10 years.  That way, even if you delete something locally, and from all mirrored copies, you can go back and restore it even years after the fact.

EDIT: sorry I'm not addressing your question at all, but I myself ended up abandoning local NAS setups just for the security of knowing that the clients files were always stored immediately in the cloud at all time.

pucho812 said:

Google drive is possible but would need more space.
Hoping I have something that can also be used  for allowing access to others to share schematics

Click to expand...

Maybe look into the business plans of google drive, unlimited space.

wlinart said:

Maybe look into the business plans of google drive, unlimited space.

Click to expand...

Possible.

Hi,

I repurposed an old PC as a NAS, running openMediaVault.

It works really well for me and gives me an 8TB storage with Raid5.

There are other nas oriented distributions like freeNas.

The best is that you can also run an apache server on it and run Nextcloud so you get a home based cloud storage.



Thomas