I want to set up a personal cloud storage.
I understand all NAS drives can be easily accessed by all devices connected to same WiFi. But I want to be able to connect to it remotely (from any computer with browser and internet connection) to upload/download files from it.
Which NAS drive I should buy and how much configuration will be required?
It will be used predominantly as a backup device. No RAID configuration is necessary.
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What's your budget, and what sort of stuff do you want to access remotely?
You realise accessing stuff in your home can be slower than using a "proper" cloud service, as it depends on your upload speed which sometimes is really really low (ISP/package dependent)
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Budget is within £200 for 2 TB max.
Mostly to access photos, music and video from any device within home.
From outside mostly to access photos and documents.
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Mine's a Buffalo Link Station, now some years old. Ethernet connection to my router. Works fine as back up etc repository for the various PC's dotted round house.
It has instructions to facilitate remote access but I've never tried to use it that way.
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Good point, the NAS is invaluable as a backup device for every PC. I set everyone's machine up with an easy-to-use sync program and put them in charge of their own data, so backups are regularly done across the LAnow have mhy lot regularly syncing their volatile data, network onto the NAS. Good practice.
As far as which one - I would have said any of the major brands would do what you need so it's a matter of getting best bang for your buck
Here's one, in a variety of sizes, which look like good value for money. Recertified, which means something like refurb, but that's a lot of saving on a device which won't get heavily used.
3Tb comes in under £100 and 5Tb is within your budget.
www.wdc.com/en-gb/products/wd-recertified/my-cloud.html#RWDBCTL0020HWT-EESN
EDIT: Of the larger ones, only the 4Tb is available now @ £95. I doubt these will hang around long.
Last edited by: smokie on Mon 22 May 17 at 15:46
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The Buffalo devices are pretty simple and cheap - I've just passed my old one (6+years old) on to my daughter to use as a media streamer.
I tested my old Buffalo for web access, and it worked fine (though I never used it in anger).
If, as you say, you don't want to use Raid, you can save money by buying a single-disc unit (though mirroring will provide a further level of resilience, in many home situations this could also be regarded as overkill - unless the NAS is to be the main/only repository for key files).
Web access will require the appropriate network setup, AND a static IP address, OR, more likely, an IP translation service (often provided by the NAS manufacturer where the device incorporates Web access).
An embedded, or downloadable UPNP/DLNA server is useful for streaming media to a (similarly-equipped) client. Smart TVs usually are, and provide a nice way of displaying photos or playing videos, and other devices will often allow download if a client is not included.
The more sophisticated NAS drives from Synology/QNAP/Asustor, etc. are akin to "blind" PCs with the ability to download and manipulate a plethora of aftermarket apps, but those such as the Buffalo still ship with a good amount of embedded apps, even if they are less customisable.
Frankly (subject to spec) something like:
www.box.co.uk/Buffalo_LinkStation_210D_1-Bay_2TB_Netw_1552382.html
...is at the cheap and chearful end of fulfilling your requirements for under £100.
I'm not a great fan of the backup software they ship with it, however (Novastor Backup). The (earlier) version shipped with mine was more oriented to 'professional' use, and clunky, albeit effective, to use and manage.
There are plenty of free alternatives around, however - I use Aomei Backupper (free version) which is somewhat more user-friendly.
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Bought one of these in 2Tb form just a few days ago:
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00K67ECWE
I wanted to use it mainly to back up a billion (aka 9000) photos from an iPad and it's done that just fine. There's Windows/Mac/IOS/Android clients, and it will talk to the outside world if you want, apparently - there's some sort of wizardy thing to set that up but I've not bothered. I imagine it works.
If you use the Seagate "media client" for upload/viewing/replay then it automatically understands photos, music and video on upload and shoves it all in the right folders for you, if you want. Or you can ignore their client on any platform, and then it's just a USB drive as normal.
Finally, it's pretty titchy, and if you choose to run it off battery rather than mains, it apparently lasts "10 hours", so you can put it in your pocket and stream video to your tablet on the move or some such, I suppose, if that's your thing.
Happy with it so far, but also backed up iPad pics into Google Photos, for an off-site second backup.
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... for remote access there are other options, many for free and, for your purposes, probably as good as or better than a NAS.
Google photos lets you save unlimited photos in their cloud so long as the pics are below a certain size - which is quite generous and doesn't affect quality to my eye. You can share any you want to.
There are any number of cloud solutions which give you (often) 2Tb upwards - I use Google Drive and One Drive (Microsoft). I think Google gives you 15Gb for free which is a lot of documents!! Increasing that doesn't cost the earth either, and is a monthly plan so you can just turn on extra storage for a month if you want (remembering to cancel). Again you can share whatever you want.
Then of course if you are working collaboratively with family or friends on things there is Google Docs, where you can use an Excel or Word lookalike, which is stored oin the cloud. Updates are in real time. I use that for a few bits - e.g. shopping list, everyone can add/update it (sad or what!!)
But the NAS comes into it's own as a home media server and backup device, as you are running at your LAN speed not the speed of your ISP. I noted the comments above about RAID but I must admit I backup my most important stuff from the NAS onto USB drive once in a while which are kept offsite. No amount of mirroring will help if your house catches fire, God forbid...
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I like the Synology stuff. As RAID isn't important to you the cheapest option is the single drive box for 139 quid:
www.amazon.co.uk/d/Shops/Synology-DS115j-1-Bay-Desktop-NAS-Enclosure/B00MO6ZV52/ref=sr_1_5?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1495705020&sr=1-5&keywords=synology
... and a single 2TB drive for 80 quid
www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Desktop-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B008JJLZ7G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495705223&sr=8-1&keywords=nas+2TB
Synology have a really good web interface for a whole load of services for photo, video and file sharing, and a bunch of apps for your phone or tablet, apple TV etc. to access it.
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I've done a lot of work in the NAS and RAID arena and was sold on RAID level 5 security, though remember the main threat these days is malicious attack hence offline back ups are vital irrespective of how much security, redundancy you have on a LAN.
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I bought a WD My Cloud NAS storage.
With a Windows 7 Pro PC installation was fine. But with Windows 7 Home Premium PC it failed to show under Network. It is only showing as Storage and thus I can't access via Explorer.
I read all discussion with WD forums and tried all of them without any success.
On both PCs I can access the dashboard and can access via web user interface. I could have lived without showing it under Network but web interface allows to upload only one file at a time and not a whole folder :-(
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Was that one of the re-certified ones in my link?
I'm not clear quite what you mean, but have you tried mapping it as a drive? That way it has s drive letter just like your C drive, and in many respects is just a local drive. Mine is Z, on all computers so when I talk to the less IT literate family about their backups (nmo, not lecture!) I can easily talk about eh Z drive and they understand what I mean.
Press Windows key and E and choose map network drive. You ought to be able to navigate to the point at which you want to map the drive e.g. my NAS has a number of top level folders but everything I want is under NAS_Public so that;s what I map. I could map at a lower level, or have more than one mapping. The mapping will be persistent, i.e. it will appear every time you start the PC, so long as the drive is online.
It may be that on the Home Premium PC you can't see the drive to map it though.
Last edited by: smokie on Thu 1 Jun 17 at 10:07
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It is not re-certified model.
I can't map it because I can't even see it! Tried with static IP etc. all tricks none worked.
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If under FTP I can see shared NAS folders that would resolve my issue.
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Seems Home Premium has some features disabled. Try this.
Open Control Panel
Click on Turn Windows features on or off
(Or if you have the Cortana search on, just type Windows features in the box and select turn Windows features on or off)
Enable SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support. This installs support for Samba
Reboot and try again
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I shall try this when in home. But based on what I read on web this SMB feature is only possible in Win 10 and not in Win 7 (happy to be corrected).
Any idea what folder I should try to navigate when connected via FTP?
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Ahhh missed that it was Win 7.
This post tinyurl.com/y7ev3qkq suggests adding a registry key will enable it.
if your'e not comfortable with how to do that then come back for advice, as it's quite easy to mess up the registry which can be fatal.
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I tried many options. Finally I could see WDMYCLOUD under Network.
The trick that worked is disabling network discovery and then re-enabling it and logging off then on.
Now have to check if I lose the drive again under Network.
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What NAS drive? - smokie
