Suggestions for a small, simple home NAS?

[Cliffh]

I'm looking to install a RAID 1 home NAS for file sharing across our LAN. 

We've got two Win98 desktops, two Win10 laptops, a Win10 tablet and some Android phones.  The Win98 systems are cabled, the rest are all wireless.  The main objective is file sharing for all the devices and full/intermediate backup for the laptops.  The storage requirements won't be all the much, I doubt we've got more than 1GB of data files, (not counting any system backup files).

We're most interested in getting network access to some of the data stored on one of the Win98 machines.  We can burn CDs and transfer that way, but that's a pain. 

It'd be nice to come in around the $300 mark, including 2 drives.  And since it's been a while since I've done more than setup a router, simplicity would be good.

[AZRedhawk44]

Win98?  Horee Chit.

Synology has been really, really good to me over the last 13 years of NAS ownership.  I've been through 3 of their devices.  None have failed, I have simply outgrown the offerings of each as I became more enthusiastic about what a NAS can do for me.  Started with a DS211, went to a DS214play, then graduated to a DS920+ about 4 years ago.  They tend to name their products after the year they come out... the last 2 digits represent that.

I recommend their DS224+.  It's a two drive system offering RAID1 backup of the contents.  The Synology OS is called Disk Station Manager (DSM for short) and it is super easy to use and wonderful.

One thing you're going to run into with this whole ordeal is authentication/security.  I strongly suggest you use your NAS as a Windows Domain Controller and set up centralized accounts for you to use on all your PC's.  This makes accessing the NAS from any given PC much easier.  Otherwise you're going to have to create user accounts on your NAS with passwords there, that will probably not match user accounts and passwords on your various other machines.

You're not getting a DS224+ with drives for $300 though.

You could step a year back and a tier lower in product power and go with the DS223j, for about $190.  That's driveless.  Then shop around for a pair of SATA drives that match your budget.  I suggest staying away from Seagate.  I've had more Seagates fail than any other brand, and they tend to go at the same time if they have the same batch/product code.  Within weeks of each other.  Best bet is to buy non-matching drives, IMO.  You lose a little performance doing that, but with a RAID setup you don't want to have both drives fail.

[Cliffh]

One of the W98 machines hasn't been turned on in years, that one might never be started again.  The other one belongs to SWMBO and she's made it very clear numerous times that it will not be upgraded to another OS.  What ya gonna do?  [Shrug]

What would be the major differences between the two you recommend?  If it's just speed, that might become a factor later on, but not right now.

[Hawkmoon]

I'm using a Western Digital MyCloud personal NAS. I think I've had it about three years. No problems. The model I bought has two 4 GB drives, configured as a RAID so I get 4 GB of storage, not 8. Supposedly if one drive goes out the replacement han be hot swapped in. I haven't had to test that.

https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Ultra-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B01AWH05GE/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1QPVSMJ6G45GF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ihjxI9uvgns0qOKpQex3XxhEBEqbvw7QYbE1K4HiF-XgxyN7BV87ynXr7Jvsb0Y9oI7Yu6diwDVoRyEZf_3TGbx7zAvN9sElPjZBJdBr2srSwGcM79UnOrFpZSM1xRLa5_1ybYC29b7tC75tVbaDXzvr_xTfoL7tOC1nmU_CFaqZsQguqN2_wXmJ25vTgWuk-d9qHk8vSCEtLAJ-vNmy0iQuYOKhKnt8SRx1N9PCwJs.wsyGhuw2LH0sc2T_g2P9QcAfxz0iuJ1Tvm4Lmi1UvJo&dib_tag=se&keywords=mycloud%2Bex2%2Bultra&qid=1709770734&sprefix=MyCloud%2Caps%2C397&sr=8-2&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.c3015c4a-46bb-44b9-81a4-dc28e6d374b3&th=1

One slight idiosyncrasy is that the drives are physical hard drives, not SSDs. The device goes to sleep after some period of inactivity. The next time I access it, there is a noticeable lag while it spools up, before I can get my file. This only happens after it has gone to sleep -- if I'm jugling multiple files and frequently saving or reading, the drives stay awake and any lag is imperceptible.

I currently have three desktops and a Microsoft Surface in a docking station connected to the network. The MyCloud is mapped as drive Y: on each of them, for consistency.

[lee n. field]

I'm looking to install a RAID 1 home NAS for file sharing across our LAN. 

We've got two Win98 desktops,

Note, must support SMB1

two Win10 laptops, a Win10 tablet and some Android phones

And SMB2

.  The Win98 systems are cabled, the rest are all wireless.  The main objective is file sharing for all the devices and full/intermediate backup for the laptops.  The storage requirements won't be all the much, I doubt we've got more than 1GB of data files, (not counting any system backup files).

We're most interested in getting network access to some of the data stored on one of the Win98 machines.  We can burn CDs and transfer that way, but that's a pain. 

Are the W98 systems actually going to be used, or do you just have to get stuff off?  If the latter, invest in a USB to ATA adapter.  Pull the drives, and hook them to something else to get the data.

It'd be nice to come in around the $300 mark, including 2 drives.  And since it's been a while since I've done more than setup a router, simplicity would be good.

Got a scratch PC you can put Linux on?

[AZRedhawk44]

One of the W98 machines hasn't been turned on in years, that one might never be started again.  The other one belongs to SWMBO and she's made it very clear numerous times that it will not be upgraded to another OS.  What ya gonna do?  [Shrug]

What would be the major differences between the two you recommend?  If it's just speed, that might become a factor later on, but not right now.

The differences would be CPU speed and architecture, and probably onboard RAM on the NAS.  The "j" models are the entry level devices in Synology's lineup, and the "plus" models are the enthusiast versions.  If all you want is a file server with redundant drives, the J model is just fine.  I started stepping up larger in their lineup because I run a Plex Media Server off my NAS and wanted a CPU onboard powerful enough to do on the fly transcoding.

[cordex]

Unlike AZRedhawk44, I have, in fact, experienced hard failure of a Synology NAS.

[AZRedhawk44]

Unlike AZRedhawk44, I have, in fact, experienced hard failure of a Synology NAS.

Can you describe?

I've had HDD failures, including two very close to each other in a RAID1 config.  Both were matching model Seagates and later were eligible for action in a class action suit against Seagate.  I'll never own another Seagate, and I'll never run matching drives in a consumer NAS again as a result.

What Synology hardware failed, and did you lose data?

[cordex]

Can you describe?

DS1520 motherboard failure.  Fixed it by soldering in a 100 ohm resistor.  This resolved the issue long enough to extract the data, however it died permanently a few months later.

[AZRedhawk44]

Bummer.

To caveat your hardware failure, I do want to describe the ease with which I migrated from the 211j to 214play to 920+.

I pulled the drives from the old unit and plugged them into the new unit.  The OS is pretty much hardware agnostic.  In regards to your failure, plugging the drives into another Synology unit would have resulted in the system coming fully online and ready, or for data recovery.

[Calumus]

With the storage amount you seem to need, I’d buy a pair of Samsung 250 or 500gb evo ssd.

[Cliffh]

Looking over your suggestions (thanks!), it's looking like we'll end up with the Synology DS223j, with probably a couple 500gb SSD drives. 

Only one of the Win98 systems have info that she'd like to access on an on-going basis.  The other's my frankenstein that started off life as an 8086 and finally morphed into a PIII something or other.  I think the only original parts are the case and some screws.

Anyway, her computer has programs & such on it that she currently uses.  She's really into card making, and there are some programs and data files on it that she'll use a few times a month.  There is also a lot of music she'd like to have available on her devices.

I already have a few different drive adapters that could be used to pull the info from her drives; 2 of the 4 drives are even in removable mounts.  They were supposed to be removable backups, but ended up being used for storage.  Thing is, she just wants to access the info, not copy/move it over.  What SWMBO wants, SWMBO gets.  I'll just put on my 40+ year old Novell CNE hat and get to work.....

As for using Linux, there's no doubt that could happen.  There are enough parts around here to build a low power system, or put another drive in my frankenstein.  Unfortunately I've got way too many other things that need done, there's no time in the foreseeable future for learning a new OS.  I need something that's pretty much a plug & pray solution.

Regarding the SMB1 and SMB2 thing, that would be a component of the OS for the NAS?  How would that be determined?  I haven't seen anything about that in the ads. 

[Cliffh]

Been doing a bit of reading on the SMB1 & 2.  Seems that SMB1 can be enabled on Win10 systems, allowing communication with older devices. There's mention of a vulnerability to ransomware using SMB1.

If we're behind 2 firewalls, (the Spectrum modem and our router), run a decent AV program* and are careful about opening attachments (never open one except from known business - not even friends), how susceptible are we to getting hit with one?

*Unfortunately, the Win98 system doesn't have an up to date AV program on it, haven't looked to hard for one since it doesn't have a browser that can connect to the internet.  I feel fairly secure because of how it's used.

[AZRedhawk44]

You're really constrained security-wise with the Win98 system.

What do you have for RAM on it?  Maybe 256 or 512MB?  I just opened Task Manager right now and my Firefox session I am typing in at this moment is using 1.2GB of RAM.  Firefox does offer a 32 bit downloader at least, so that's good, but you're going to be paging like mad just using a browser in the first place.  And using a less than modern browser will result in greater vulnerability.

Synology DSM does allow for enabling SMB1/NTLMv1, per this article.

https://kb.synology.com/en-in/DSM/tutorial/I_cannot_access_shared_folders_from_WinXP_computer

Do not expose your NAS to the internet via port forwarding if you go this route.

[lee n. field]

Been doing a bit of reading on the SMB1 & 2.  Seems that SMB1 can be enabled on Win10 systems, allowing communication with older devices. There's mention of a vulnerability to ransomware using SMB1.

The only time I end up dealing with SMB1 at this point is if someone has a really old networked printer/scanner/copier, and the scanner only wants to talk SMB1.

*Unfortunately, the Win98 system doesn't have an up to date AV program on it, haven't looked to hard for one since it doesn't have a browser that can connect to the internet.  I feel fairly secure because of how it's used.

Don't even try.  4-5 years ago I went looking for a AV that would work with XP.  Couldn't find one.  Get far enough past EOL, and nothing supports it.  No way W98 is going to have anything remotely current.

The best ting to do with an old W98 system, is to virtualize it.  You're running on borrowed time, on that old hardware.  Hard disk, especially.

[Cliffh]

I've looked at the 32 bit Firefox and decided to not install it.  She really doesn't need to access the internet from that box, she's got at least 3 other devices to use.  And if it were to access the internet, security would suck. 

Synology allowing SMB1 is a big plus.  I wouldn't have to enable it on each Win10 system, keeping the SMB2 protocol security intact on them.

My plan is to just plug the NAS into our router, which should then (hopefully) make it accessible to others on our LAN.  No plan or need to give it access to the internet, we won't be accessing the files while off site.  That is, unless it'll automatically be able to access the internet by simply plugging it into the router.   If that's the case, I'd think there would be someway to shut the access off.  I can chase that down later.

Yep, the Win98 hardware is getting old, most of it, if not all, is over 20 years old*.  That's another reason I'd like to get the info and a system backup onto a server.  I could transfer the data to newer drives, but that would be a headache.  All the drive bays are full, as well as all the drive ports.  There would be a lot of connecting/disconnecting of drives along with the copying.  My head hurts just thinking about it.

*I didn't use anything more than what I put into my customers' systems.  Just tried to pick decent parts from decent manufacturers, nothing hi-end.

[AZRedhawk44]

Another option... have you looked into dumping $300 into updated software for SWMBO?

[Cliffh]

Yep.  That's been a big "Not going to happen".  Hell, I've offered to buy, or build to her specs, a new computer with a newer OS & up to date versions of most of the programs she uses.  Not all of the programs have newer versions, but we could find something similar.  Still not going to happen.

She's willing to compromise on pretty much every thing.  This is not one of those things.