Home NAS Solution

[Andropov]

Interesting so this is essentially a mass storage device for SATA drives, without NAS? If so that’s a great solution for me to deal with all my other drives.

If being network-attached is not a requirement, you can also get enclosures with hardware RAID in that price range, in case you fancy that. I got a QNAP TR-004 recently and it works well. The only issue I've had with it (and I believe this is common with other DAS enclosures) is that it automatically enters into standby mode and pulling it out of that mode takes a few seconds to spin the disks up again. Finder sometimes doesn't like that and freezes until the disks are online.

I ended up not using the hardware RAID and setting it up so I could manage each disk individually, but I may set it up as a 4-disk RAID1 in the future, once I figure out where to store my second backup.

 

[leman]

I am currently eyeing the new NAS units from Ubiquiti: https://ui.com/integrations/network-storage

Not super happy with my Synology, it never performed as I expected, and there is just too much fluff. The UNAS is exactly what I want in a NAS — essential storage with good UI and polish. These units are also quite affordable, given Ubiquiti usual higher price point.

 

[fischersd]

When I first started working with PCs way back in the 90s as a hardware tech I remember we had to install Windows 95 on each new build and it was 22 3.5' floppy disks, each 1.44 MB. Next disk, enter > next disk, enter > next disk, enter >... Good times! You can imagine the excitement once it was all done with CDs.

Heh - Microsoft actually boned IBM by buying up all of the 3.5" disks in the market when IBM was trying to launch OS/2 Warp to compete with Win 95. Virtually no-one had CD-ROMs back then - much less writers.

NT was 33 disks, if I remember correctly.

 

[Eric]

And eventually went with a five slot Sabrent desktop docking station. It more than meets my modest needs using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner,and the price was reasonable. Every so often I take a walk to the bank and trade out disks I store in their vault. And have a few disks laying around as a third back up. If our house were to burn down, or burgled, I can always recover with what's in the bank vault.

It's more manual than a NAS, and not 100% perfect, but works for my modest needs.

I like this solution and am going to buy it, so I'll just have it attached locally to my Mac Studio and just swap out my drives with a pair of 18TB on my NAS, which I'll use for more important data.

 

[rdrr]

I like this solution and am going to buy it, so I'll just have it attached locally to my Mac Studio and just swap out my drives with a pair of 18TB on my NAS, which I'll use for more important data.

Just make sure you are diligent in labeling the drives if you are going to swap drives in and out, and storing them securely. Since you are a retired IT person, I am sure you are already inflicted with OCD, (just reminding you). Also, as I am sure you know, wherever you store them, make sure that it is a somewhat tempurature controlled environment. Haven't been keeping up on the spinning HDD technology lately, but I remember that they don't like just sitting around for years. I remember Conner made drives that the heads were notorious for sticking to the platter after sitting for a long time, and you had to bang them unstuck.

 

[Citysnaps]

I like this solution and am going to buy it, so I'll just have it attached locally to my Mac Studio and just swap out my drives with a pair of 18TB on my NAS, which I'll use for more important data.

Also... I've been using these portable drive cases when I need to rotate my drives at the safe deposit box. Nice design, rugged case, dense foam interior (eh... wouldn't count on that saving your drive from a large drop), stack well, fit nicely in a 1 unit high safe deposit box, and are a decent price.

 

[mr_roboto]

Haven't been keeping up on the spinning HDD technology lately, but I remember that they don't like just sitting around for years. I remember Conner made drives that the heads were notorious for sticking to the platter after sitting for a long time, and you had to bang them unstuck.

This issue has been solved for some time with head load/unload ramps. While the platters aren't spinning, heads are stowed off of the platters, on the ramps.

If the platters ever come to a stop without unloading the heads, that's still a serious issue. More so than ever before, in fact. One of the factors that limits magnetic bit cell size in HDDs is head fly height, so as recording density has increased, head fly height has had to decrease. This required making the surfaces of the head slider and the platters extremely flat and smooth (except for aerodynamic features on the slider that help it create the air bearing which governs fly height).

To deal with the risk of unexpected power loss, modern drives use a trick first invented some time ago, even before the invention of unload ramps: when the drive detects power loss (but is still kept slightly alive by capacitance), it swaps the main spindle motor from acting as a motor to acting as a generator. The stored energy in the rotating platters is more than enough to safely park the heads before the rotational velocity drops enough to compromise the air bearings.

(The energy recovery trick was developed in the 1990s when HDDs were still doing CSS - contact start stop - meaning the heads stayed on the platters. At that time, the state of the art "unload" tech was a little zone at the innermost part of the platter where they roughened the surface a little to avoid having the heads stick. But that scheme still needed a way to guarantee the heads only came to a rest there, and nowhere else.)

TL;DR you shouldn't have to worry about powering them up periodically to avoid the heads sticking. That said, there might be other reasons to give them a little runtime now and then that I don't know about.

 

[Eric]

Upgraded my existing NAS to a pair of 18TB SATA drives on the RAID (SHR). so I'm all good to go on that front now. I hot swapped one at a time and it took a couple of days to complete writing, this should carry me for the next couple of years I would think.

 

[Cmaier]

Synology Reverses Policy Banning Third-Party HDDs After NAS sales plummet

Synology has backtracked on one of its most unpopular decisions in years. After seeing NAS sales plummet in 2025, the company has decided to lift restrictions that forced users to buy its own Synology hard drives.

www.guru3d.com

Synology finally reversed course??

 

[Eric]

Synology Reverses Policy Banning Third-Party HDDs After NAS sales plummet

Synology has backtracked on one of its most unpopular decisions in years. After seeing NAS sales plummet in 2025, the company has decided to lift restrictions that forced users to buy its own Synology hard drives.

www.guru3d.com

Synology finally reversed course??

It was a ridiculous policy change. That said, any manufacturer still worked but just wasn't officially supported which is why I decided to stay with it and upgrade my Seagate Ironwolf pro drives. The whole thing feels like an unforced error on their part.

 

[fischersd]

I had a Synology DS2413+ that I picked up back in 2014 that I'd populated with 4TB drives (RAID 5). Ended up selling it in 2018 when I sold/gifted/donated everything that I owned to move to Australia (which didn't work out)

Been contemplating doing a NAS again. No rush though. Good to see that Synology reversed that ridiculous decision!!!

 

[Cmaier]

Some more details here. Seems like they still plan on being somewhat dickish in the future.

Synology caves & allows all hard drives in 2025 NAS range - for now

Synology has backed down from only allowing certified hard drives that it conveniently sells in its 2025 network attached storage device line — but the new 7.3 DSM update is far from a complete reversal of policy.

appleinsider.com

Also, the annoying limitations seem to remain for the high end products (like the 12-bay products - I own 3 of them, but mine are old firmware that allow me to use whatever drives I want).

 

[Nycturne]

The whole thing feels like an unforced error on their part.

Absolutely. But it's just another case of someone approaching market saturation, but expected to continually grow revenue. These sort of things should be expected in today's business environment, IMO. Because it's easy these days to pivot into that recurring revenue gravy train on "consumables". And yes, when talking about a NAS, things like drives are consumables.

I actually migrated my primary NAS away from Synology this year because of the timing of the announcement. It's now a DIY setup running TrueNAS. Wouldn't really recommend it unless you like buying your own mobo and case and installing an OS onto it yourself.

 

[DT]

I had knocked around the idea of another NAS (old one is perm offline), needed some storage, but just scored an 18TB and hung it off the Mac Mini. Done.

Hard to beat the cost, WD Mybook, 3 year warranty, < $300.