I swear by my NAS, however I would not belief it with out a Google One subscription

I grew up within the bodily media period when each doc and file I owned was saved on a tool I might bodily maintain in my palms. Stacks of floppy disks, tower racks stuffed with CDs, a number of exterior exhausting disks, and dozens of USB sticks and SD playing cards; I’ve had all of them, carried all of them, and saved my information on all of them.

However because the years progressed, I noticed myself shift extra in direction of the cloud. The comfort of accessing the whole lot from wherever with out having to bodily carry it was life-changing across the late 2000s with the arrival of Dropbox. I might work on my pharmacology thesis and hospital examine instances from the college’s pc after which proceed writing from my laptop computer at house. It was such a incredible commodity. Nonetheless, I made the hassle to maintain a neighborhood copy of the whole lot — I used to be nonetheless very skeptical of tech and lived in a rustic the place the common connection pace was nonetheless 2Mbps in 2020 and the place electrical energy blackouts had been a lifestyle, so I needed to have backups in all places and native entry to the whole lot.

The immutable actuality is that tech breaks, so my present information and streaming technique continues to be that very same two-fold method many many years later: native and cloud-based. However issues have advanced so much because the late 2000s. I’ve had a Synology NAS for just a few years, and I’ve been subscribed to Google One for a few years. I’m a convert to each. Why pay for 2 storage options? Nicely, peace of thoughts and flexibility. And, as a lot as I applaud my colleague Rob for utterly slicing the wire and going full-steam together with his self-built NAS, I’m nonetheless a creature of comfort and worry. I’d fairly pay a bit extra for a handy and ready-made NAS and I nonetheless don’t belief tech sufficient to maintain my information in a single place and on one medium.

I had wished community storage in my house for years, however creating my very own answer with a DAS become a NAS or constructing my very own NAS utilizing some ready-made NAS software program felt a bit too next-level for my tech expertise and too concerned to keep up. I didn’t need to fear in regards to the repairs or troubleshooting on my own, so I went for a midrange Synology NAS that I immediately beloved.

I moved to a extra succesful Synology DS220+ in 2021 with a greater processor and extra RAM. It solely has two disc bays, however that’s sufficient for my and my husband’s storage wants. We purchased 8TB drives for every bay and set them up in a RAID 1 configuration, the place every drive acts as redundancy for the opposite one. This ensures that I’ve two native copies of my information always, so if one disk fails, I can swap to a different new drive with out dropping something.

For now, I’ve caught with exhausting disks in my NAS, not SSDs, given the excessive price of SSDs and their restricted profit should you use them for idle background storage as I do and arrange a redundancy backup in case one in every of them breaks. HDDs are a lot quick for my day by day wants and are OK for my primary video streaming and storage use. For those who work so much with video otherwise you’re continually saving, shifting, and modifying recordsdata, an SSD can be a wiser selection. I’m positive I’ll improve to SSDs sooner or later sooner or later, however for now, HDDs it’s.

It took me some time once I arrange my first Synology NAS to get comfy with it, however now, I’ve gotten used to each its quirks and hidden powers. A NAS has 1,000,000 benefits, relying in your wants. For me, that is the second mind of my private life, work life, leisure, and safety system. My husband and I take advantage of it to retailer recordsdata, pictures, necessary paperwork, media, in addition to our safety digicam feed. It handles all of these with seamless ease.

The very first thing I’ve finished on my Synology is about up separate directories for my husband and me, plus a standard joint one; that method, we don’t mess up one another’s recordsdata by mistake. We additionally rapidly realized that the easiest way to cope with recordsdata will not be by Synology’s Home windows XP-inspired internet interface. That’s lifeless gradual, annoying to make use of, and shortcut-less (or has so few keyboard shortcuts that it’s nearly ineffective). As a substitute, my Synology is accessible over the native community and mounted straight into Finder on my iMac and MacBook, in addition to File Explorer on my husband’s ACER laptop computer. That method, we are able to transfer, rename, manage, and entry all our recordsdata in a snap, nearly as in the event that they had been saved domestically on our computer systems. I can even do all of that from the DS File app on my Android telephones and tablets.

Synology additionally affords a Google Drive competitor with doc and spreadsheet modifying, however I haven’t touched it but in all my years as a result of I’m sitting firmly within the Google Drive camp (extra on that later). I all the time have my eye on Synology Drive, however I suppose I’ll solely actually make the swap if Google provides some deal-breaker to its personal suite. Till then, sorry, Syno.

Pictures are an entire different beast as a result of I depend on the cloud and Google Pictures for 95% of my lively photograph wants. Nonetheless, each time I get a brand new Android telephone, I arrange the Picture backup choice inside DS File and let it robotically save all of the pictures and movies I soak up full-res to a brand new folder on my NAS. I don’t trouble organizing these — there isn’t sufficient time on the planet — however a minimum of I do know the whole lot is backed up, and I can seek for any file by identify or date instantly. My solely group trick is creating a brand new “From [phone_name]” subfolder in my Synology’s pictures listing for every new telephone. That’s the extent of my lively involvement.

I’ve additionally arrange Synology’s personal Pictures app, which has facial recognition, locations, and tags, nevertheless it’s so primary in comparison with Google Pictures that I hardly ever trouble with it. For those who don’t need to promote your soul to the Google overlords, although, it could do the trick, supplied you’re affected person sufficient to merge all of the dupe faces it fails to categorize beneath the identical identify.

My third largest Synology use case revolves round safety. I’ve arrange a standalone alarm and safety system at house, however I even have a strong however inexpensive TP-Hyperlink C225 digicam ($55 on Amazon) that I activate once I’m away. It shops the whole lot on a microSD card and is accessible over its personal app, however I additionally save its stream to my Synology NAS. That method, if a thief is available in and unplugs the cam, I nonetheless have a backup on my NAS. I selected the Tapo C225 particularly due to its options (rotation, privateness mode, 2K, night time imaginative and prescient) and its ONVIF assist. Due to that protocol, I used to be in a position to set it up inside Synology’s Surveillance Station and began utilizing my giant 8TB drives as storage for my cam’s safety feed.

Like most individuals with a NAS, I take advantage of it as a media middle, too. My colleague Rob swears by JellyFin, however I opted for Plex sooner or later within the early 2010s once I lived in Lebanon (the place piracy was the one choice to entry new music, exhibits, and flicks), received the lifetime subscription at a ridiculously low value that I can’t bear in mind anymore, and I haven’t discovered a motive to modify since then. I nonetheless use Plex and my collected media library from that point, although my streaming habits have advanced since.

Now, I stream numerous what I watch. I’d say that fifty% of what I watch goes by a YouTube Premium Household plan (my husband and I like many meals, journey, inside decor, sports activities, and tech creators there) and 30% by our Canal+ subscription (a neighborhood French TV supplier for stay sports activities like La Liga, the Premier League, and the Champions League). The remaining 20% is split between our Plex server, the free Apple TV Plus subscription we get due to Canal+, and the free Amazon Prime Video sub we get with our Amazon Prime. I nonetheless completely hate the interface of each streaming service I take advantage of, although, and discover all of them utterly inefficient for monitoring what I’m watching. Plex is miles forward; Trakt helps, too.

For music, we’ve a Spotify Duo sub, an awesome value compromise for {couples} who don’t need to pay individually or splurge on a Household plan. It’s Spotify for me all the way in which (I comply with numerous community-made playlists across the Eurovision nationwide ultimate season yearly that I simply don’t need to trouble creating by myself), whereas my husband goes for a mixture of Spotify and YouTube Premium.

After all, there are methods to do all of that with only a NAS should you purchase digital media to maintain without end as a substitute of streaming, or use your ingenuity to unearth content material ‘without spending a dime.’ For us, although, having each a NAS and a few subscriptions has been a candy compromise between comfort and offline entry.

Though my Synology NAS is my second — generally first, if I’m sincere — mind, I nonetheless don’t depend on it for the whole lot. For me, storing information is half the equation; utilizing it’s the second half. That’s why I don’t use Synology’s costly C2 Storage plans; they would offer me with no added comfort in comparison with my native NAS, and their solely profit can be creating an off-site backup for all of my information.

Nevertheless, not all of my information must be backed up a dozen occasions; only some dozen GBs do. So, as a substitute of paying for my NAS-provided cloud backup answer, I opted for the comfort and utility of Google’s cloud providers. I used to be lured by the free 15GB Gmail account a few years in the past, received used to its options, and after I repeatedly hit the cap and skated it by deleting massive recordsdata right here and there, I finally capitulated and signed up for the $2 month-to-month 100GB household subscription with my husband.

Plus, there are a number of situations the place you may hit the restrict of what NAS storage means that you can do should you don’t need to waste hours babysitting your information like a helicopter mother or father with their first new child. That’s the place cloud storage like Google One can take the wheel and information you with numerous good and additional options. However firstly, backups!

Not each doc or media file I personal is saved on my Google One account, however the paperwork I continuously want or need to have entry to, even when my Synology is offline or unreachable for some motive, are all there. At first, I believed that this could be the secondary method we entry our recordsdata, however as a rule, it’s turn out to be the first one.

As I’m scripting this, I simply actually got here again from the pharmacy the place I went to select up my bronchial asthma meds. I had my prescription paper, however as I opened it on the counter, I spotted it was the previous one. So I merely pulled up the Google Drive app on my telephone, discovered the brand new prescription, and emailed it to the pharmacy on the spot. Might I’ve finished it from Synology’s DS File, too? Sure. However Google Drive is just quicker.

So sure, there are lots of folders and paperwork which can be shared between the cloud and my NAS, and I admire that I get the comfort of quick entry with Google One, the peace of thoughts of bodily proudly owning the doc on a neighborhood drive, and the serenity of getting my information in two completely different locations on two completely different mediums. I do know that one of the best backup technique often requires a 3rd backup, however for now, two is sufficient work and expense for me.

Maybe the only motive I might by no means unsubscribe from Google One is Pictures. Google dangled a noose in entrance of my neck with that service; I slipped my head in willfully and gave it full management. I like Google Pictures, its options, its albums (guide, good, or shared), its enjoyable reminiscences and funky creations, its good group by place and factor, its facial recognition, and extra. I do, nonetheless, restrict uploads to the Storage saver high quality; the compression there’s a ok compromise for me.

Pictures and movies are probably the most private, human, affectionate information I’ll ever personal, and Google Pictures has my private story, from my early college days to my yr finding out overseas, my first journeys, tons of of hikes, my first pictures with my husband, our marriage ceremony, our transfer to France, and a lot extra. The primary pictures I took once I purchased my pharmacy, how I renovated it, how I crammed it up with meds and received it working, then 10 years later, the empty cabinets once I determined to promote it. It has my residence in Lebanon, my rental in Paris, then my new house, and all of the levels of my grownup life. However most significantly, it has the individuals. A number of of them at the moment are deceased, and plenty of extra are fortunately nonetheless alive. I can’t neglect the way it face-matched a black-and-white super-old photograph of my father-in-law in his 20s with all of the pictures I’ve taken of him in his 80s. It simply knew! Pictures additionally has the map of each photograph I’ve taken and my path round this house we name Earth.

Plus, Pictures integrates with the screensaver mode on my Nest Hub, Pixel Pill, and Google TV Streamer. I’ve picked up just a few albums to rotate, and each time I come again from an occasion or journey, I discover the pictures there, in my house, greeting me. You may’t put a value on that.

Sure, as I mentioned earlier, Synology Pictures exists, and extra competing providers are sprawling up, however do they require work? Sure. Are they pretty much as good as Google Pictures after you’ve put in all the hassle of verifying and organizing the whole lot? No. So there you go. Take my cash, Google.

Right here, too, alternate options exist, and Synology has its personal within the type of Synology Drive, however you may’t beat the comfort and universality of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Everybody has a Google account. Therefore, everybody can view a doc or spreadsheet I share, edit it, and work on it with me, recommend feedback and modifications, and collaborate stay and rapidly. It really works on the internet, no app obligatory, on each desktop platform, and on each cell platform. Android, iOS, tablets, iPads, Chromebooks, and so forth. As I mentioned, for me working with information isn’t nearly safeguarding it, but additionally conveniently utilizing it, and Google Drive is the epitome of that. Plus, my husband and I swear by our shared spreadsheets for monitoring issues like escape rooms we’ve performed, occasions and concert events we’ve attended, pantry gadgets and expiry dates, and our intensive assortment of liqueurs and cocktail substances.

Past simply paperwork, Drive is superb for folder sharing, too. There’s a enjoyable story about how I resurrected my mother’s (gradual typer, highschool superior chemistry-level trainer) disappeared 4-page chemistry examination that was stuffed with formulation and super-superscripts and sub-subscripts, and that had taken her two full days to kind, all by going to our shared Google Drive folder’s trash, discovering the .temp file that Phrase had saved on her pc whereas she was engaged on it, which was then backed as much as Google Drive. I transformed the .temp again to .docx and remotely put it again within the folder for her. To at the present time, I’m her private hero.

I’ll say, although, that I do make an effort to avoid wasting lots of my necessary collaboration paperwork and spreadsheets as PDFs and throw them on my Synology NAS. That method, I’m not simply counting on Google’s servers and I all the time have a neighborhood file to entry ought to the necessity come up.

Lastly, the final motive why I couldn’t surrender my Google One subscription is backups of a special nature. My Android telephones and tablets, in addition to a number of apps I take advantage of like WhatsApp, resort to Google Drive — and thus my Google One space for storing — to avoid wasting their backups. I’m not your typical tech journalist who modifications telephones each three days, however I do swap extra continuously than the common Joe, so having these telephone backups prepared once I don’t need to trouble organising a telephone from scratch or once I need to get better an necessary piece of information is essential.

For those who’re contemplating organising a NAS — be it a Synology, a special model, or perhaps a self-built NAS — in addition to subscribing to cloud storage, my first piece of recommendation can be to be sure to can create some type of sync guidelines between the 2. Nobody ever needs to manually copy or again up each file and alter they’ve constituted of one platform to a different. Sure, create computerized guidelines to avoid wasting secondary backups of these folders, however your foremost folders needs to be live-syncing to avoid wasting you time and complications.

That’s why I take advantage of Synology’s CloudSync service to maintain a number of necessary folders working spick-and-span between my private Google account and the one I share with my husband. We put a doc in a single place, and it robotically will get saved to the opposite; we don’t have to consider it, manually bear in mind to do it, or something.

I’ve additionally created a number of native synchronizations between my iMac/MacBook and my Synology NAS or Google One storage. I take advantage of Synology’s Drive Shopper to ensure my Android Authority work folder is synced domestically on my pc. My article pictures and screenshots, movies, concepts, random Photoshop makes an attempt — all of that lives on the NAS and each computer systems. That method, I’ve a 3rd backup of kinds, however I additionally don’t want to attend for recordsdata to load, even on a quick native community connection. Plus, once I’m working away from house, attending occasions like MWC or IFA, I do know that the whole lot I do may even be instantly saved on my NAS. This additionally permits me to seamlessly swap between my desktop iMac and my MacBook with out giving it a second thought.

Lastly, I’ve additionally built-in Google Drive into Finder on my Macs, so I can all the time entry recordsdata that method. The online interface is for freshmen; the file browser is the place it’s at. I can’t let you know what number of occasions a day I take advantage of that — trace: it’s greater than a dozen in all probability. From saving occasion tickets straight into my shared Occasions folder with my husband to protecting financial institution statements, well being information, work invoices, press releases, and extra, there’s no day that doesn’t cross with out me clicking on Google Drive to avoid wasting, transfer, or verify a file.

For me, the 2 — a NAS and a cloud storage subscription — are inseparable. If you can also make them work collectively, they’re a really highly effective combo that may make any pc or any telephone your speedy ally. I can stand up and working on a brand new Mac, Home windows, Chrome OS, Linux, Android, iOS, iPadOS, or no matter platform you throw my method in minutes with each my private and work recordsdata. There’s no serenity or private digital energy greater than that.

I’ve already written greater than 3000 phrases about dual-yielding a NAS and a Google One subscription, but when I had been to sum it up in some succinct type, it might be this:

• With my Synology NAS and my Google One account, my most necessary information is saved in a minimum of two completely different areas with redundancy.
• I get straightforward and quick entry to the whole lot I want and care about on my computer systems and telephones, at house or away, and I can rapidly obtain, add, save, sync, change, and edit with out a hitch.
• I get pleasure from offline entry by Synology, and the serenity of realizing my information is bodily with me, not solely trusted to a cloud server someplace. I can even improve my NAS storage at a comparatively low cost one-time price, save full-resolution copies of all my pictures and movies, and use the remaining storage for safety cams, good house setups, and media facilities.
• I additionally get pleasure from cloud entry and all of the privileges {that a} Google One subscription brings, from Drive collaboration to the invaluable Pictures expertise.
• I’ve created a mash-up of synced folders and redundant backups that guarantee my most-used folders, whether or not they’re saved on the NAS, the cloud, or each, are additionally accessible on my computer systems always and all the time in sync with one another.

Oh, so now we get to the actual crux of the problem: cash. Clearly, all of this isn’t low cost, however I believe I’ve hit the candy spot between energy and options, all with out requiring an excessive amount of of my private time for upkeep or repairs.

Let’s break down the NAS price first. The DS220+ was priced at $299 once I received it in 2021, and the 8TB drives price me $85 every. That’s $469 whole over 4 years up to now, and nonetheless going robust. Proper now, if you would like one thing newer and related, you may seize the Synology DS223 for $249 on Amazon and a pair of 8TB Seagate Barracuda HDDs for $109.99 every (higher costs will be discovered generally). After all, it’s important to add up just a few dozen hours to get the whole lot arrange, however we’ll chalk that off because the geek tax.

On the upside, having this massive NAS storage has helped me save by choosing the most affordable 128GB iMac M1 and MacBook M4 configurations once I purchased my computer systems. I didn’t should pay the Apple additional storage tax on high of the costly Apple Mac tax; I simply went for the bottom storage choice, realizing I might offload the most important recordsdata to my 8TB drives in a wink.

For cloud storage, I’m sticking to the 100GB Google One plan for so long as I can, and meaning paying $19.99 yearly. If I had been to backup all my present NAS recordsdata to Google, I would want the $249.99 5TB yearly One plan, which equals the value of a brand-new diskless DS223. The NAS was a one-time buy, whereas the Google One subscription must be paid yearly — oof! After all, that’s not an choice I’m ever contemplating. I’m joyful sticking with the storage-saver Pictures uploads and solely utilizing Google for a very powerful paperwork to maintain my low cost Google One tier, leaving the remainder to my NAS.

Total, that is the technique I might advocate to nearly everybody as a result of it’s an ideal steadiness. Go for a midrange (though admittedly nonetheless costly) NAS that churns repeatedly within the background, realizing you even have quick entry to your most necessary recordsdata by an affordable, low-tier Google One subscription. The most important recordsdata, high-resolution pictures and movies, and fewer necessary information stay on the NAS, whereas the cloud acts as your foremost entry level for the smaller, daily-use recordsdata.

For many customers, it is mindless to pay for a dearer Google One sub should you already purchased a NAS with giant multi-terabyte storage drives, nor does it make sense to get a brilliant high-end NAS when you’ve got a Google One subscription. Use your cash properly, however do what you must defend your information.