Question Can't decide between NAS and DAS

[tablespoon]

Hi, I cannot decide between the two. Mainly for home use myself. No plan to grant access to outside use. Also no plan to RAID as it is not 100% fail-proof. In this case, is there any good reason to pay more to get a NAS?

 

[q52]

Is unreliable for data.

To be fair it's fine if you're only reading data. I've had many external drives packed with movies and tv shows attached to Android TV boxes that run for years without issue just playing content from exFAT formatted drives. But i definitely wouldn't depend on it for my only backup drive or for volumes I'm actively reading and writing to, yeah

 

[q52]

If currently the PC is my main computer but besides backing it up, I need to also backup photos from my iPhone and iPad. In this case, what is the best way to do it given that exFAT is unreliable for data? Is it better to do it in two separate drives formatted in respective file system rather than one drive formatted in exFAT?

Given that the PC is my main work computer, is it better to set up smb file server on it than on a Mac?

this is what works for me and may or may not be applicable your situation; I use MacBook as my daily driver computer, but have Android phone and also have a secondary iPhone for misc tasks, along with another PC (Windows+Linux)

- Mac Mini + OWC external enclosure as I described in posts here, with two disks in RAID1 and an extra disk for Time Machine ; this computer acts like a "NAS" and only exists to share the storage volumes on the network and run Backblaze for cloud backups of the entire storage

- Amazon Prime gives you unlimited photo uploads via Amazon Photos + Backblaze for unlimited personal desktop backups on Windows and macOS

- iPhone gets backed up to MacBook via the built-in iPhone backup thing in the macOS Finder ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211229 ) ; this happens manually whenever I feel like it, not sure if this is automate-able ; the iPhone also runs Amazon Photos for extra photo backups

- MacBook gets backed up to Time Machine (automated) and also to RAID1 (manually) via rsync + ssh ; MacBook also has Amazon Photos desktop client backing up all photos too ; also has Backblaze backing up the MacBook local storage too

- Android phone gets backed up to RAID1 directly by periodically ssh'ing into Mac Mini and using `lftp` on Mac + FTP Server app on Android to allow `lftp` to mirror the file system to the RAID1 ; Android phone also runs Amazon Photos for extra photo backups

- PC has Backblaze running on the Windows side for backups ; also with WSL2 it is also able to use the same rsync scripts as the MacBook to backup its local storages to RAID1 ; Linux side of the PC just uses rsync script + ssh manually periodically as needed

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hope that makes sense, I agree with @Tech Junky to KISS, only difference really is that I am pushing everything to the RAID1 on the Mac Mini via rsync from most all devices, and doubling-up with automated and paid services (Time Machine, Backblaze, Amazon Photos + Prime) which require Windows/macOS instead of Linux

 

[Tech Junky]

require Windows/macOS instead of Linux

Well, the exception of Linux is mostly due to the higher cost of using something like backblaze due to their pricing tiers being $8/mo for everything but Linux. They know Linux tends to be "NAS" or Enterprise use mostly and don't want to drown their bandwidth / storage space at $8/mo for those devices. Just another hoop to jump through using a VM of either OS to trick them into thinking it's a PC instead of NAS. The cost difference is significant as the Linux package with them jumps to ~5X the costs annually using Linux clients. Not to mention you run into metering to calculate cost on data transferred monthly.

The other option would be placing a storage device at another location of someone you trust and just do periodic syncs. It all depends on what you consider VITAL data that can't afford to be lost vs just a PITA to get again. For vital data offline / portable options are probably best anyway with multiple copies. If it's a a large set of data it can still be done the portable way but, might be more convenient to sync. However, if it's under 1TB grabbing an NVME and putting it in an enclosure would be enough or some other small portable drive setup. Going to 4TB or 8TB gets a bit pricy depending on if you go SATA or NVME.

There needs to be some self reflection though and hunting down the data you can't afford to lose and in most cases it isn't that huge when it comes to capacity needed. Hoarding makes it hard to keep tabs on what's vital in terms of space needed.

 

[tablespoon]

this is what works for me and may or may not be applicable your situation; I use MacBook as my daily driver computer, but have Android phone and also have a secondary iPhone for misc tasks, along with another PC (Windows+Linux)

- Mac Mini + OWC external enclosure as I described in posts here, with two disks in RAID1 and an extra disk for Time Machine ; this computer acts like a "NAS" and only exists to share the storage volumes on the network and run Backblaze for cloud backups of the entire storage

- Amazon Prime gives you unlimited photo uploads via Amazon Photos + Backblaze for unlimited personal desktop backups on Windows and macOS

- iPhone gets backed up to MacBook via the built-in iPhone backup thing in the macOS Finder ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211229 ) ; this happens manually whenever I feel like it, not sure if this is automate-able ; the iPhone also runs Amazon Photos for extra photo backups

- MacBook gets backed up to Time Machine (automated) and also to RAID1 (manually) via rsync + ssh ; MacBook also has Amazon Photos desktop client backing up all photos too ; also has Backblaze backing up the MacBook local storage too

- Android phone gets backed up to RAID1 directly by periodically ssh'ing into Mac Mini and using `lftp` on Mac + FTP Server app on Android to allow `lftp` to mirror the file system to the RAID1 ; Android phone also runs Amazon Photos for extra photo backups

- PC has Backblaze running on the Windows side for backups ; also with WSL2 it is also able to use the same rsync scripts as the MacBook to backup its local storages to RAID1 ; Linux side of the PC just uses rsync script + ssh manually periodically as needed

-----

hope that makes sense, I agree with @Tech Junky to KISS, only difference really is that I am pushing everything to the RAID1 on the Mac Mini via rsync from most all devices, and doubling-up with automated and paid services (Time Machine, Backblaze, Amazon Photos + Prime) which require Windows/macOS instead of Linux

Are you using MacOS's RAID option or SoftRAID from OWC?
I don't plan to use any cloud storage.