How to save on Network Attached Storage?

Let’s get one thing out of the way, Backing up is not about what service you use, cloud, local redundant etc. It’s about backing up intelligently. Here’s an example : you can but the most expensive backup device, with data replication, RAID6, in case one or more of the hard dives fail, yet you delete the wrong file from your computer and you don’t notice that until it’s too late, after this change has been synced to your device. You need versions of your backup, and you need a backup of your backup. But this is a topic for another article.

Network Attached Storage , NAS, devices work like your local cloud, with the ability to be reached by all the user accounts that you set up from any device and from anywhere.

But in the past few years these devices got more powerful, backed by app stores and do much more than that, and save you a good amount of capital that’s usually spent on online subscriptions.

Preinstalled App Stores for NAS with many free apps in user friendly interface

Let me be very clear, this article is geared towards for soloprenur launching a new project with limited needs, for example when I say you can host a website on your NAS, I don’t mean it can replace your existing high traffic mission critical web store. And although many NAS devices come with complete email servers, I, and probably Hillary Clinton, won’t recommend hosting email on a NAS, unless your email use will be limited and non-critical before launching.

You might have noticed that these devices are getting really expensive, approaching the prices of mid-range laptops, mind you, they come with the actual Hard Drives that you store the data on, which will alone would at least double the price.

There are few options here:

  1. By new : but you might have noticed that these devices are getting really expensive, approaching the prices of mid-range laptops, mind you, they come with the actual Hard Drives that you store the data on, which will alone would at least double the price.
  2. Buy used : you will probably still need to buy new hard drives, because either the drive didn’t come with the device, or you just don’t want to risk a failing old drive.
  3. DIY : There are many opensource NAS operating systems out there, it can be installed to run on many types of hardware, even an old computer or a laptop. But beware how toy set up, you don’t want an old drive or a motherboard to die on you.
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