STOP using Cloud Storage! Do this instead:

"what if your house burns down or NAS is stolen" - Most of us connect an external drive to the NAS, back up the important data to it automatically, and then put it in a Fireproof & Waterproof safe along with our passports/ wills and other important stuff. Rotate it with last month's backup drive. Don't have a safe? keep the external drive in your car/ parent's house. "Cloud providers, they don't go down" - eh... nope. Just google "google services down" and see that 3 days ago (at the time of writing this) it was down. "Can you backup the NAS offsite?" - 100% - you can do a NAS-to-NAS backup. So you take your nas and it gets backed up to your NAS located in your office or your parent's house. In fact, you can set up the NAS for your parents/ brothers/ sisters and you become each other's backup. If you want to, use CloudSyc to back up your data from your NAS to the Cloud and visa versa. So when Google goes down, or if you are locked out of your Google account, you can still access your stuff. You can use BackBlaze too. I want MY data to remain under MY control. If you don't and trust Cloud providers, by all means - you do that. Just please back up your stuff - and NOT just your documents. I have been in this industry for a long time and I 100% know that the same people who come up with all the excuses of why "on prem NAS is a bad idea", are the same people who will bitch and moan WHEN they lose their data and have to rebuild their entire system because they only backed up some data so they can make use of the "free storage". But hey, you can use whatever you want - there is no one-solution-fits-all.

Unfortunately, my house burned down in 2021. My family and I are fine, but we lost almost everything. Fortunately, my data is backed up on the cloud and it was hassle-free to access my data. NAS systems are great for those who can afford it, but it IS a physical system you must maintain and it's vulnerable to fire, natural disasters, and theft. Cloud storage is off-site and that's the biggest selling point for me. I'll stick with my external hard drive and my cloud storage option. It works for me.

That's why I wish they never got rid of DVDs. The DVD media itself isn't prone to shocks, floods, hackers, malware, extreme temps, or data depletion. Only scratches and fire. DVD's, if kept safely and securely, can lasts 100yrs. I saved all my pictures on dvd in the early years. I just wished they improved it. Imagine 100gb Dvd that are as fast as ssd.

A few years ago, I had set up something comparable. However, both hard disks were damaged by an unfortunate lightning surge, resulting in their failure. Therefore, I chose to continue using cloud storage.

Unfortunately I am one of the few that couldn't afford the price for this so what I ended up doing instead is I own probably 5 backup HDD's that are encrypted and I use a simple adapter to copy/transfer all my files to every single drive and then put each drive in a locked, fire/water proof safe. Tedious but works like a charm. For my phone however I back it up to my pc or keep files local that I need but also I am one of the few that rarely leaves my home. Great video though as I have been wondering about this. Tired of Google Drive and am really not liking or trusting Google Photos as much anymore. I only put what I am willing to lose on those with zero personal info and back it up to the hdds weekly. *As a side note I also have 3 backup clone drives for my pc specifically. Something very few people I personally know do. Its amazing how many people get so upset when their hdd or ssd fails and their computer doesn't boot anymore and wonder what to do. I work on pcs all the time and these are amongst the most common calls for service.

I got one a couple of years ago. The setup is a little more complicated than how you explained it. There are several channels dedicated to NAS usage that show you step by step setup. I also spent Covid copying all of my movies onto the NAS and setup Plex.

I have two NAS devices although I don't use them very often. But in the decade or so that I've used cloud storage, I have yet to experience down time or lost data. I get that having your own NAS allows control but it's not without its flaws. If the system board should die, can drives be dropped into another NAS and be expected to just work or do they get reformatted? If you use 3 or more drives in a striped array and one drive dies, then what? In a mirrored array you can rebuild the array and move on but in a striped array, isn't the data lost?

I LOVE Liron Segev and his channel. I have learned SO MUCH from him, I would be totally lost otherwise. Thank you very much!!

Their software has definitely come a ways. When I set up my DS220j a couple years ago I had no idea what I was doing. I have it as my backup storage for Time Machine and it acts as a de facto media server. I'm sure it's capable of more as there are a ton of apps I'm currently not using.

I agree with you that I would like to have the DATA on a RELIABLE DRIVE I HAVE ACCESS TO. I believe that the better thing to do it automatically back it up to a second off-site (maybe at your parents house) drive and in some case even on a third overseas location if you have a relative or friend available over there. What do you suggest?

Nice video. I also use Synology - the NAS DS220j two bay. But, online cloud backup with DropBox or similar is super easy, so you can easily do both. I even backup to an external hard drive every week that I store in one of those fireproof envelopes. So my laptop data gets backed up to Synology once an hour, DropBox cloud in real time, and to an external HD every week or so. Therefore there are "4 instances of all my files". For data that I keep "off my laptop" I use the NAS as primary and Synology will sync the off laptop data to BackBlaze cloud and I also back up the NAS off laptop data to an external HD so there are 3 instances of all of my "off laptop" data.

Hi Liron Segev, Great video. I have two questions: 1. How is this product different from WD Cloud products? I had one of those WD cloud products that failed during the pandemic and it costed me an arm and a leg to get my data back. 2. I have some SATA HDD from previous computers, can use those in this device?

Great vid mate. For a beginner who wants go backup mainly photos and videos on my phone etc, which of those u linked would u recommend? Thanks!

Sorry if I missed it, but is there a wifi option? Physically, I wouldn't prefer to keep the NAS next to my router.

Curious if it provides client-side encryption or not. Would be great if I could setup my own encryption keys so Synology or anyone else does not have access to my data.

Why is the term 'backup' used for a single copy/ instance of files and data? I.e. I've always considered "backup' to mean additional copies besides those on my PC hard drive. I understand advantages of data storage on a NAS but wouldn't consider that backup unless it was a copy with originals located elsewhere.

What size drive(s) can each slot hold and can they be SSD?

I use Synology as a file sync and file sharing solution for most of my clients. All clients also use Synology C2 offsite cloud storage to ensure that data is always redundant. I like the control and ability to setup customized retention policies vs. off the shelf cloud providers.

If i'm out of town and I click pictures on my phone, would they be automatically backed up on the NAS from the remote place or do i have to manually do it from offsite or will it happen only when i'm in the same netwrok at home?

Thanks for all your great videos. Can I put different sizes of hard drives( 12tb and 6tb) into those bays? And what is your advice about ds1823xs+ for the purpose you just mentioned and my movie server? I'm about to purchase it. Thank you