For those that might know me will know that I do want to back up my systems. I have an iMac with Backblaze, and my MacBook Air is using my Synology 2 bay NAS for Time Machine backups. I would have liked to use Time Machine for my desktop, but there wasn’t enough storage. With that said, my current system is working fine enough. The Synology NAS has two 4TB in RAID-1. RAID-1 is typically a backup of my backup. Anything written to drive 1 is written to drive 2. Therefore, if a drive failed, the system can continue operating, and should notify me of the failed drive so it can be replaced promptly. However, I have been having some problems with the drive, and with Synology’s current policy that their new NAS systems will only accept the overpriced Synology drives, it is forcing me to consider new options.

I have done some research, and found that UGreen provides NAS systems, and therefore something worth considering. Now, I could probably use my 2 drives in my current Synology and save a lot of money, I am at a dilemma where 4TB is simply too small. While it works for the backup of my MacBook Air, it is only because the Air has a 512GB (½TB) which is more than enough for backing up the Air. However, you should have at least 4 times the capacity of the drive for backup solutions. Therefore, my current 2TB desktop will not be able to use the current drives, and even after investing into a new NAS, it will not consolidate all of my backup needs.

So, what am I considering. While in a perfect world, I would get their 8 bay NAS, but that is simply too expensive at more than $1,000. Keep in mind, that I don’t even get that much in a month’s income much less discretionary spending. So, I will need as low cost of NAS as possible. I found the UGreen DXP2800 which will exceed my needs assuming that I also invest in drives. The DXP2800 will support 2 hard drives in either 2.5″ or 3.5″ sizes. There is also 2 NVME slots which I will like to use as well. I will also add 8GB of memory to make caching quicker, but this is a very small $30 cost to the system. All together, everything will cost me $2,500. This will be a problem as if my current Synology fails on me, I will have to draw on a credit card, and will take a year to pay it off.

So why do I need such a large amount of storage. Well, let’s look at things realistically. First, my iMac desktop has 2TB of storage. This is the primary PC, and the system that not only plays my music, but also where I conduct most of my activity on. I have an MacBook Air which as noted above is 512GB. I then have my Framework. I am not concerned about the OS drive, but the personal files drive is more important. That drive is 4TB. All together, backup solutions for all three systems will need about 26TB. Now mind you, that won’t be filled immediately, but there will be that initial backup, and then incremental backups to add to the backup file. This is why experts recommend 4 times the drive capacity. When you consider that, the 30TB drive now makes a lot more sense. I could technically buy smaller drives, but then I would have to upgrade them, and that would cost more money, plus downtime backing up the systems all over again. This too me just makes no sense. Next is the 8TB NVME. Again, I will need 2 and they will be RAID-1. The 8TB NVME will function as a cloud storage drive. This will eliminate the need to rely on Dropbox, iCloud, or One Drive. I currently am using the free capacities which is enough for the role they are performing for now, but there might come a time where I will need to upgrade storage. Dropbox 3TB option is about $20/month which will add up when you are paying $240 per year. The 8TB is simply much larger, and will likely pay for itself in a year.

I will use my current arrangements until I can afford to buy my proposed plan. However, if the Synology NAS was to fail in the near future, then my options will need to be more immediate. There is no point in buying everything in pieces as none of the components will matter without the NAS, and the NAS is no good if there are no drives. The drives are the expensive part costing about $550 for each drive. This is where the hit is very hard, and the reason of the high expensive of just a NAs with 4 drive slots.