4 ms·

The entire concept of network attached storage is kind of cargo-cult in the vast majority of personal use cases. Just put the drives in your computer. Fewer abs

The entire concept of network attached storage is kind of cargo-cult in the vast majority of personal use cases. Just put the drives in your computer. Fewer abstraction layers, fewer problems, cheaper, faster, less fragile, easier to debug and fix if problems do happen. It's just not as hip or cool sounding as "NAS".

transpute 2y ago
> Just put the drives in your computer NAS works with phones, tablets and laptops with egregiously expensive, non-expandable storage. On iOS/iPadOS, use SSH/SFTP to workaround business-model-challenged "Files" client.
- superkuh 2y ago
  A NAS is not magical. It is just a rather limited computer. Anything a NAS can do so can a normal desktop, and it'll do it better. Sharing files over a network is one of these things. Managing the files is way, way, better since you just use your normal desktop file manager rather than some NAS web stuff that'll break due to CA TLS issues in a few years.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - transpute 2y ago
    Among many features, ZFS offers storage snapshots, deduplication and file integrity.
  - ac29 2y ago
    Desktop computers are becoming increasingly uncommon. I'm a pretty technologically inclined person and I havent owned a desktop in years. For most people, laptops have been more than capable enough for their needs for a long time. And for general purpose computing, smartphones are pretty heavily used too.
    - superkuh 2y ago
      Yes, people do think that. And then they end up with an octopus of fragile external drives prone to problems and breakage. It's a sad state of affairs for the non-tech inclined. Like everyone is buying mopeds and pulling around trailers rather than just buying a small car.
  - ranger207 2y ago
    Eh, I'm much more likely to accidentally reformat all my drives on my desktop than a NAS. Sure I can just restore from backup but it's just a security blanket to not have to worry about it
k8sToGo 2y ago
Good idea to put your backup on the same machine! /s
- superkuh 2y ago
  Or just put drives in all your computers and back-up between instead of buying a limited (potentially proprietary) NAS computer just for the purpose and having it being one central point of failure. I just don't understand the reluctance of people to put storage in their actual computer(s).
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
    HN readers' computers are typically macbooks with extremely expensive and non-upgradable drives.
  - k8sToGo 2y ago
    Because one of the reasons I got my NAS so I don't need to tinker.
senkora 2y ago
A NAS is nice for serving local media files to a smart TV. That’s my main use case.
- ajkshfkjsh 2y ago
  The thing I don't get is, why do I need to drop $1000 on a Synology machine just to do this? Let's say I want to create a setup with 8x18TB drives or something, do I really need to spend $1000 just to make this accessible to a couple clients at once (say a smart TV + another machine in the house)? Right now I have Plex running on a raspberry pi hooked up to an 8tb external HDD. Works fine, but I want to scale up to the 100-200TB range of storage, and it feels like the market is pushing me towards spending an inordinate amount of money on this. Don't understand why it's so expensive.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    This is my rationale for my specific circumstances: With my NAS, I pay for the box, install the drives, and it Just Works with basically no maintenance other than me clicking the upgrade button every few months when it emails me that an OS update is ready. I could build a similar system myself, but the hardware isn't that much cheaper. Cases, PSUs, hot swappable drive mounts, and all that add up quickly. And when I'm done, I have to install the OS, read the docs to see how the recommended configuration has changed since last time I did this, and periodically log in to look at it because it doesn't have nearly as much monitoring set up out-of-the-box. Given the choice between the small amount of money I'd save vs the amount of time I'd have to invest in it, I'd rather pay the money and outsource the hassle to the NAS maker. As to why I don't just hang a bunch of drives off the computer I'm already using: - Backups. If my Mac dies, I can restore it from the Time Machine on my NAS. - Noise. The NAS has busier fans than my Mac. It's in a different room from where I spend most of my time. - I run Docker stuff on it. I don't want those things running 24/7 on my desktop. - Availability. I want to reboot my desktop occasionally without worrying if it'd interrupt my wife watching something on Plex.
  - ac29 2y ago
    2 bay Synology NAS' are less than $200, 4 bay are less than $400. Yes, if you need 144TB of storage the NAS unit is going to be more expensive, but the drives themselves are the majority of the cost.
whartung 2y ago
My “NAS” is my late model Intel iMac. I have, like, 5 USB drives hanging off it. I SyncThing my wife’s laptop to it. I serve a bunch of videos off of it to our AppleTV. All our photos are there. I have a Time Machine backup of the main system drive (my wife uses TM as well). The whole thing is backed up to BackBlaze, which works great, but I have not had to recover anything yet. I would like to run ZFS mostly to detect bit rot, but each time I’ve tried it, it pretty much immediately crushed my machine to the point of unresponsiveness, so I’ve given up on that. That was doing trivial stuff, have ZFS manage a single volume. Just terrible. So now it’s just an ad hoc collection of mismatched USB drives with cables not well organized. My next TODO is to replace the two spinning drives with SSD. Not so much for raw performance, but simply that when those drives spin up, it hangs up the computer. So I’d like SSD for “instant” startup. Not enough to just jettison the drives, but if opportunity knocks, I’ll swap them out.
kalleboo 2y ago
The majority of users have laptops, not desktops.

transpute 2y ago

> Just put the drives in your computer NAS works with phones, tablets and laptops with egregiously expensive, non-expandable storage. On iOS/iPadOS, use SSH/SFTP to workaround business-model-challenged "Files" client.

superkuh 2y ago
A NAS is not magical. It is just a rather limited computer. Anything a NAS can do so can a normal desktop, and it'll do it better. Sharing files over a network is one of these things. Managing the files is way, way, better since you just use your normal desktop file manager rather than some NAS web stuff that'll break due to CA TLS issues in a few years.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- transpute 2y ago
  Among many features, ZFS offers storage snapshots, deduplication and file integrity.
- ac29 2y ago
  Desktop computers are becoming increasingly uncommon. I'm a pretty technologically inclined person and I havent owned a desktop in years. For most people, laptops have been more than capable enough for their needs for a long time. And for general purpose computing, smartphones are pretty heavily used too.
  - superkuh 2y ago
    Yes, people do think that. And then they end up with an octopus of fragile external drives prone to problems and breakage. It's a sad state of affairs for the non-tech inclined. Like everyone is buying mopeds and pulling around trailers rather than just buying a small car.
- ranger207 2y ago
  Eh, I'm much more likely to accidentally reformat all my drives on my desktop than a NAS. Sure I can just restore from backup but it's just a security blanket to not have to worry about it

k8sToGo 2y ago

Good idea to put your backup on the same machine! /s

superkuh 2y ago
Or just put drives in all your computers and back-up between instead of buying a limited (potentially proprietary) NAS computer just for the purpose and having it being one central point of failure. I just don't understand the reluctance of people to put storage in their actual computer(s).
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
  HN readers' computers are typically macbooks with extremely expensive and non-upgradable drives.
- k8sToGo 2y ago
  Because one of the reasons I got my NAS so I don't need to tinker.

senkora 2y ago

A NAS is nice for serving local media files to a smart TV. That’s my main use case.

ajkshfkjsh 2y ago
The thing I don't get is, why do I need to drop $1000 on a Synology machine just to do this? Let's say I want to create a setup with 8x18TB drives or something, do I really need to spend $1000 just to make this accessible to a couple clients at once (say a smart TV + another machine in the house)? Right now I have Plex running on a raspberry pi hooked up to an 8tb external HDD. Works fine, but I want to scale up to the 100-200TB range of storage, and it feels like the market is pushing me towards spending an inordinate amount of money on this. Don't understand why it's so expensive.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  This is my rationale for my specific circumstances: With my NAS, I pay for the box, install the drives, and it Just Works with basically no maintenance other than me clicking the upgrade button every few months when it emails me that an OS update is ready. I could build a similar system myself, but the hardware isn't that much cheaper. Cases, PSUs, hot swappable drive mounts, and all that add up quickly. And when I'm done, I have to install the OS, read the docs to see how the recommended configuration has changed since last time I did this, and periodically log in to look at it because it doesn't have nearly as much monitoring set up out-of-the-box. Given the choice between the small amount of money I'd save vs the amount of time I'd have to invest in it, I'd rather pay the money and outsource the hassle to the NAS maker. As to why I don't just hang a bunch of drives off the computer I'm already using: - Backups. If my Mac dies, I can restore it from the Time Machine on my NAS. - Noise. The NAS has busier fans than my Mac. It's in a different room from where I spend most of my time. - I run Docker stuff on it. I don't want those things running 24/7 on my desktop. - Availability. I want to reboot my desktop occasionally without worrying if it'd interrupt my wife watching something on Plex.
- ac29 2y ago
  2 bay Synology NAS' are less than $200, 4 bay are less than $400. Yes, if you need 144TB of storage the NAS unit is going to be more expensive, but the drives themselves are the majority of the cost.

whartung 2y ago

My “NAS” is my late model Intel iMac. I have, like, 5 USB drives hanging off it. I SyncThing my wife’s laptop to it. I serve a bunch of videos off of it to our AppleTV. All our photos are there. I have a Time Machine backup of the main system drive (my wife uses TM as well). The whole thing is backed up to BackBlaze, which works great, but I have not had to recover anything yet. I would like to run ZFS mostly to detect bit rot, but each time I’ve tried it, it pretty much immediately crushed my machine to the point of unresponsiveness, so I’ve given up on that. That was doing trivial stuff, have ZFS manage a single volume. Just terrible. So now it’s just an ad hoc collection of mismatched USB drives with cables not well organized. My next TODO is to replace the two spinning drives with SSD. Not so much for raw performance, but simply that when those drives spin up, it hangs up the computer. So I’d like SSD for “instant” startup. Not enough to just jettison the drives, but if opportunity knocks, I’ll swap them out.

kalleboo 2y ago

The majority of users have laptops, not desktops.