Hey folks, over the past years I changed all my stuff step by step from big tech to open source and europe alternatives. I came from Google Workspace to iCloud with advanced protection to Proton to kSuite. (I left Proton cause of the lack of webdav, caldav, carddav)
I did this with all my stuff. From Instagram, X, Facebook, to Fediverse. And I like it.
Now I heard that Swiss is planning to add laws which are able to identify me, even as a German, and have all the rights to read my drive stuff if they want to. It’s not possible for me to trust them anymore.
So they choice is really thin out there. I could host my own NextCloud instance, and I did A LOT of times on my webspace and every time an updates comes, it brakes and I loose all my stuff. I don’t want this and I don’t want the overhead to fix this stuff or make sure, I can go back. 99% of all updates didn’t even let me login anymore. No login at all. Whatever … I thought about a NAS. Before the NAS, there is an OpenWRT router with AdGuard Home and Wireguard VPN.
So. Is this the end for my chase of a trustworthy Contact, Calender, Drive? If I buy this, I am on the most independent stuff possible? (I don’t want a big server or something like this - I just want to settle down and don’t switch companies because their country decided to get the next NSA).
And if so: Which one is good in terms of privacy? Synology? QNAP? I would buy a 2 bay NAS where one drive is the clone of the other, so I can change drives, if one is dead, without worrying at all.
Thanks for reading, excuse me for my bad english, and thanks for your ideas in advance.
It’s a bit mortifying to admit, particularly given my tendencies toward data hoarding and building hardware for the long haul, but I’ve historically bypassed the whole NAS concept. My methodology has been straightforward: a motherboard with sufficient SATA ports (eight or so) and a collection of HDDs crammed into a standard desktop tower. It works, technically. But I’m now hearing a lot of chatter about NAS solutions, and I’m wondering what I’m missing. What’s the compelling reason to introduce networking into this equation when I already have direct access to all my drives? What are the practical advantages of a NAS that justify the added complexity and cost?
I doing the same thing but someone told me about HBA cards and that’s what I’d do next time I upgrade. Way more affordable flexible and efficient then trying to find a mobo with 8 data ports.
The biggest perk for me for a dedicated NAS is redundancy and hot swap ability.
It is inevitable that a few of your spinning disks will die and need to be replaced, a proper dedicated NAS box will let you pop out and swap that drive and then the NAS software will rebuild the array for you with no data loss.
Obviously you can do most all of this with a normal desktop, but it’s generally easier with the right hardware.
I custom built mine running Truenas which was way cheaper then a dedicated NAS, but also I’m an IT turbo nerd so I wanted to do the whole thing myself.