Two questions about NAS

[_Sebaz]

Two questions:

1. What is the best and most easy to use NAS that you know?

2. Do I really need two hard drives in it to back it up?

[tt2468]

18 minutes ago, _Sebaz said:

Two questions:

1. What is the best and most easy to use NAS that you know?

2. Do I really need two hard drives in it to back it up?

1. Synology by far IMO You could get the ds216+ or ds216j. The reason I say synology is because they are SUPER easy to setup, and they have some very powerful 'cloud' applications that "just work". Like quickconnect.

 

2. If you want redundancy, 2 drives is a must. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 I'd get the cheaper synology and qnap nas. There much lower power and plug and play compared to a diy box. 

 

2. You don't need 2 hdds but if you lose the drive you lost all you data. 

[Simon771]

WDMyCloud seems pretty simple to use.

[joshfrog]

i work with 3 different qnap servers and its best feature for a nas would be its operating system. i didnt set them up so cant say how easy it is to set up but the OS is good so much inside it. they also have lots of different drive options.

[Quinnbeast]

5 hours ago, _Sebaz said:

Two questions:

1. What is the best and most easy to use NAS that you know?

2. Do I really need two hard drives in it to back it up?

2. It's important to distinguish between redundancy and backup. Even if you have a NAS that holds two HDDs to provide a mirrored copy of your data, it's still important to make backups of your NAS regardless. A mirrored copy of your data on a 2nd NAS drive does not protect against file corruption, accidental deletion of files, viruses, glitches in the software or firmware, or damage to the NAS itself (leaky roof or coffee spilled on it).

 

A true backup is something completely separate from your NAS (i.e. a USB / eSATA hard drive or cloud storage for small amounts). If the data is important enough and I had to make a choice, I'd rather have a true backup of a single-drive NAS than a dual-drive NAS without a proper backup. In a perfect world, I'd gladly have both of course.