this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
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My parents are looking into getting their own NAS to replace iCloud. I don't really have much experience with that, and zero experience with apple stuff. They are also not very techy, but at least enthusiastic.

Can sombody recommend easy NAS products where you basically just buy a device, do some basic setup, and then it functions as your at-home cloud? I don't want to get roped into doing too much admin for them, but they do already have DDNS for some other smart home crap. Bonus if it's non-US tech.

Personally I run a nextcloud server on a VPS that I could expand, that's not quite selfhosted, I don't know if that integrates well with apple though, are they better off if I just onboard them onto that?

Cheers in advance

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[–] Xaphanos@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I have an old surplus QNAP. I love it. Very capable, easy to setup, easy to use it and forget about it. Mine is set up for RAID5.

Be certain to get a reliable UPS for it. And have a spare drive on hand.

[–] funkajunk@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

This. Everyone starts off thinking they'll buy a NAS and it will just exist for years to come. There is some maintenance and monitoring involved, and if you "set it and forget it", you can say goodbye to all that data.

[–] RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Please consider RAID6 or ensure your data is fully backed up. RAID5 falls flat if a drive fails during resilvering the array.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 3 points 7 months ago

And, because a resilver involves significant load on the remaining drives, it's more likely than you think. If you have drives from the same batch, they likely have the same MTTF.

[–] alterelefant@mastodontech.de 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

@RunningInRVA
Please don't label RAID a backup because it is not. RAID 1, 5 or 6 will give you a robust drive pool that is able to recover from a failed drive.

Backups should be done on a different medium and ideally off-site.

@Xaphanos

[–] RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well I wasn’t trying to, exactly. Just trying to convey that RAID5 is not considered reliable and that I was urging the commenter to ensure they have a backup if that’s what they are going to use. Regardless of how you configure your NAS, you can always lose data by mistake.

[–] alterelefant@mastodontech.de 0 points 7 months ago

@RunningInRVA Apologies, I have clearly read your comment wrongly.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's not an extra life, it's another health point. Red mushroom, not green mushroom.

[–] alterelefant@mastodontech.de -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Mario analogy. In Super Mario games, a green mushroom gives you an extra life, a chance to start over from a point in the past. A red mushroom makes Mario bigger, allowing him to survive some damage that would have killed him. Also in many games it makes him able to do things he can't when small. RAID arrays often run faster than individual disks would.

[–] PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 7 months ago

thanks, I'll look into it