NAS

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Can anyone recommend a NAS for backing up several PC's on my network. I currently have a Western Digital My Cloud but cannot access it from my new W11 PC. I logged into my WD account which just tells me that the device is obsolete now. So what good is backing up to a NAS if it becomes obsolete and unusable before the PC's it is backing up. The WD NAS is not faulty as I can still access from other PC's on the network W10 & W8.

I have resigned myself to buying a replacement but not WD. I will need at least 16Tbytes storage. Any suggestions?

Dave
 
Synology would be my goto

Same, I have a DS920 and an offsite 420J as a backup.

You can probably strip the HDD out of the my cloud and put it in your new NAS as well..... Thats what I did when I moved from WD (for exactly this reason, they discontinued support for my mycloud in 2020....
 
A third vote for Synology. NAS Compares is a good resource if you are in the market for one.
 
I went for a storinator from 45drives
 
Can anyone recommend a NAS for backing up several PC's on my network. I currently have a Western Digital My Cloud but cannot access it from my new W11 PC. I logged into my WD account which just tells me that the device is obsolete now. So what good is backing up to a NAS if it becomes obsolete and unusable before the PC's it is backing up. The WD NAS is not faulty as I can still access from other PC's on the network W10 & W8.

I have resigned myself to buying a replacement but not WD. I will need at least 16Tbytes storage. Any suggestions?

Dave
It will probably work if you enable the protocol in windows, the only problem is windows used to like to disable in upgrades.
I believe they were made to stop that practice, and all my old ones have continued to work for a couple of years now.

Edit:


I'm guessing it is the same problem, though I don't know if you can enable it on 11
 
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It will probably work if you enable the protocol in windows, the only problem is windows used to like to disable in upgrades.
I believe they were made to stop that practice, and all my old ones have continued to work for a couple of years now.

Edit:


I'm guessing it is the same problem, though I don't know if you can enable it on 11
Interesting but this gives only temporary access to the data. As I have the original data and can access the NAS on another network PC, I have not lost the data. However, this does seem to explain what happened. Thanks for the advice.

Dave
 
Interesting but this gives only temporary access to the data. As I have the original data and can access the NAS on another network PC, I have not lost the data. However, this does seem to explain what happened. Thanks for the advice.

Dave
Mine works all the time now, they say the drives are obsolete because they don't support the new system, that is all :)
There are security issues with the early smb, but I don't see that an issue on a home network.
 
Mine works all the time now, they say the drives are obsolete because they don't support the new system, that is all :)
There are security issues with the early smb, but I don't see that an issue on a home network.
As this process seemed simple and low risk, I have tried it and can access my NAS again on my new W11 PC. I still have some concerns about continuing with WD in the longer term. I would be inclined to choose Synology but can now consider this in slower time. Many thanks for your help and the many other helpful comments above.

Dave
 
Synology, as you can see, is the knee-jerk choice but QNAP and Asustor are also well worth considering. Synology has arguably the best OS and choice of apps but tries to force you to use its branded HDDs and is still only offering 1Gbps Ethernet even on its Plus models where Asustor has 2.5Gbps well down the range.
 
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It will probably work if you enable the protocol in windows, the only problem is windows used to like to disable in upgrades.
I believe they were made to stop that practice, and all my old ones have continued to work for a couple of years now.

Edit:


I'm guessing it is the same problem, though I don't know if you can enable it on 11
SMBv1 can be enabled in W11 in exactly the same fashion as W10.
 
My vote, based on years of ownership, is for Synology, which I originally bought after rather a lot of research.
 
Synology has arguably the best OS and choice of apps but tries to force you to use its branded HDDs...
Not on the ranges that most users here will be considering.
 
What data transfer speeds do you get with synology? 500MB/s+?
 
Synology, as you can see, is the knee-jerk choice but QNAP and Asustor are also well worth considering. Synology has arguably the best OS and choice of apps but tries to force you to use its branded HDDs and is still only offering 1Gbps Ethernet even on its Plus models where Asustor has 2.5Gbps well down the range.
I've an old Synology 4 bay unit that's been quietly running in a corner for years.
Only issue I've had is the PSU died, but was able to get a reasonably priced 3rd party replacement of Amazon.
I think about getting a newer unit every so often, but there's always been something higher priority to spend my cash on (as I'd want to use a new set of disks in the new unit - never seen any restriction on which HDD's to install?
No point in having 2.5Gbps on the NAS as everything else on my network is 1Gbps, which is plenty fast enough for my use - switches, mesh units and PC would all need upgrading ahead of the NAS for 2.5Gbps to be useful.
 
I am in a similar position, I got a cheap, used, Synology NAS to give it a try before committing, and that unit has been great and I haven't felt the need to spends a few hundred quid upgrading it.
 
What data transfer speeds do you get with synology? 500MB/s+?
Not when the LAN speed is only 1Gb/s. Maximum transfer speed is about 120MB/s. After that you have to think about the number and layout of the disks. My main NAS has a 10Gb/s link to the switch as does my main PC. With six HDDs in RAID10 the maximum transfer speed I've seen is 4500Mb/s so about 550MB/s. Using SSDs instead of HDDs would probably substantially increase that but I won't find that out until suitable 8TB SSDs become affordable. However, going from two NVMe SSDs in RAID1 in the NAS to a Gen4 NVMe in the PC did give me the full 10Gb/s on a suitably large file.
 
One thing I'd point out regarding NAS of whatever make is the hidden, or less obvious, benefits.

I can access my files via my TVs using DLNA, so can sit and watch photos, videos and listen to music in any room in the house with a suitable TV, as well as from my phone's, tablets and laptop anywhere in the world.

I can't speak for other brands but all the above is really easy* to implement with my Synology NAS machines.

*has to be easy for me :)
 
I've an old Synology 4 bay unit that's been quietly running in a corner for years.
Only issue I've had is the PSU died, but was able to get a reasonably priced 3rd party replacement of Amazon.
I think about getting a newer unit every so often, but there's always been something higher priority to spend my cash on (as I'd want to use a new set of disks in the new unit - never seen any restriction on which HDD's to install?
No point in having 2.5Gbps on the NAS as everything else on my network is 1Gbps, which is plenty fast enough for my use - switches, mesh units and PC would all need upgrading ahead of the NAS for 2.5Gbps to be useful.
If you have several devices accessing the NAS simultaneously then updating just the NAS and switch would allow the extra bandwidth to be spread between the active clients.
 
If you have several devices accessing the NAS simultaneously then updating just the NAS and switch would allow the extra bandwidth to be spread between the active clients.
The NAS is used as the music source for our Sonos speakers - but usually I'm the only one using the library, everyone else uses one or other streaming services.
Other than that it's one of the backup locations for my PC, so the NAS rarely has more than one thing connecting to it.
 
Not when the LAN speed is only 1Gb/s. Maximum transfer speed is about 120MB/s. After that you have to think about the number and layout of the disks. My main NAS has a 10Gb/s link to the switch as does my main PC. With six HDDs in RAID10 the maximum transfer speed I've seen is 4500Mb/s so about 550MB/s. Using SSDs instead of HDDs would probably substantially increase that but I won't find that out until suitable 8TB SSDs become affordable. However, going from two NVMe SSDs in RAID1 in the NAS to a Gen4 NVMe in the PC did give me the full 10Gb/s on a suitably large file.

Right, I have a similar setup - 10Gb/s link from the main computer to the NAS and getting approx 500MB/s write speed with normal HDDs, I've seen read speeds close to the maximum of the link. The NAS is Unraid and I like that new HDDs can be added very easily. Probably not as user-friendly as Synology though.
 
Bought a Synology 2 or 3 years ago.
Has been rock solid.
 
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