Hey everyone,

My parents have a bunch of data just sitting on external drives, and that data is not copied anywhere. They have lost family photos to a failing drive before, and I want to prevent something like that from happening again.

In this vein, I want to get them a complete NAS solution for a Christmas present. I work in technology, although not in IT, so I am competent at understanding things of this nature but do not have the knowledge myself currently.

Ideally, this is my target system:

  • an easy-to-use NAS that they will find intuitive (and cannot easily break)
  • a automated backup solution (ideally one on-site and one in the cloud, I use Backblaze B2 personally)
  • perhaps a UPS to really mitigate the possibility of error (do you all think this is necessary?)

I will provide

  • a budget to get this done (I am comfortable spending between 1-2k USD)
  • the initial setup for them
  • support in the future should something go wrong

Any advice is greatly appreciated! I’m not currently aware of how much storage will actually be required, but I think 5 or so TB to start would be sufficient.

I’ve been looking at synology NAS options and am really just looking for advice on whether I’ve made some sort of mistake in reasoning, companies/products to avoid (or use), and any other advice you all would think is valuable :) Thanks again!

  • FiziksMayMaysOPBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for your comment!

    I’d look for something you can administer remotely,

    Totally agree! I’m not far now but who knows in the future :)

    something that can double as a media center might be nice

    That’s a great idea, especially because they have a collection of DVDs I could rip and put on there. Any particular considerations that matter when adding the ability to be a media center (besides maybe transcoding)?

    Thanks again!