The most common question I get about using a massive NAS at home, is how do I back it up. While a 9TB NAS can be a challenge, backing it up has the same considerations as any other disk drive. A backup has to satisfy a few requirements:
It has to be triple redundant A backup is no good if restoring it is not realistic At least one of the 2 backups must be located outside of my house Those are the basic rules for the backup destination.
My love affair with my Synology continues to get more serious every week. It’s a great NAS but I also really like the iOS apps.1 I figured it might be a nice to highlight what’s so nice about them, starting with DS File and DS Cloud.
DS File DS File is like a file navigator on my phone. I can browse all of the content on my Synology from anywhere. I can access the files and add new files right from my phone.
When I was eleven, I had a “beach cruiser.” It was a steel and chrome behemoth of a bicycle. It was two times too big for me and I’m pretty sure it weighed more than my mom’s Datsun. But, I road that behemoth five miles every day to a great fishing pond. That bike held two fishing poles, a tackle box, a lunch pail and a boombox.1 The ride up the hill was torture but the ride back home was like a two-wheel limo.
I’m a happy Backblaze subscriber. I love them all the more for their regular report on hard drive reliability.
The assumption that “enterprise” drives would work better than “consumer” drives has not been true in our tests. I analyzed both of these types of drives in our system and found that their failure rates in our environment were very similar — with the “consumer” drives actually being slightly more reliable.
Big, awkward and beautiful. Those are three adjectives. They also happen to describe the iPhone 6 Plus perfectly.
It seems very clear that our communication devices are turning into something different. I’m not happy about it but I’m also willing to accept that I may not represent the rest of the market.
Against my better judgment and personal bias I purchased a 6 Plus. This is a summary of what I like and hate about the device.
The past year’s turmoil and churn with photo storage services was a major motivation for me to get control of my own photo management. My primary goal was to develop a system that was service-agnostic. I wanted a file structure on a computer that I controlled and could easily be moved to a new sharing service if I needed to find another home.
I found a terrific solution in the most unlikely place: my NAS.
Synology just released their latest update for their network attached storage drives.1 DSM 5 provides a significant improvement to the UI of the management console but it also brings some new tricks the my all-around favorite piece of hardware, such as Cloud Sync for automatic syncing with Goolge Drive and Dropbox.
After installing the Clound Sync application from the Synology drive’s Package Center, create a new sync end-point. The options are Google Drive, Dropbox and Baidu Cloud.
I’ve used and enjoyed two iPad keyboards in the past. The Logitech K760 and the traditional Apple Bluetooth keyboard. In both situations I found the Origami stand to be an excellent option for supporting the iPad while typing or reading.
When I find something that I like, I usually stick with it. However, as the Logitech K570 enticed me away from the Apple keyboard, so the Zagg Cover Keyboard convinced me to try something new.
This new Bluetooth version looks great. $60 is a good price point for a peripheral like this. The addition of Bluetooth 4.0 and the apparent lack of cords also makes this very attractive for hardware control freaks.
Here’s a nice review of the Monoprice 19" tablet monitor. It’s a Cintiq but $389. Monoprice is really picking up steam with their branded hardware. I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon acquired them. They’d make a great team.
