How to setup up your NAS?

In this post I will tell how I have centralized my digital storage so that all computers, smartphones, tables, media center, and what else we might have in our house, can access all your digital photos, movies, music, and much more. In this post I will describe the setup of the heart in my digital life, namely my network attached storage, or NAS ...

In short, is a NAS a network hard drive that you connect to your router, whereby the content is available on your local network (as opposed to the hard drive of your computer – which in somewhat simplified terms - only is available on your computer). By storing your files on a NAS you allows all computers and devices to access content on the NAS in an easy way. A NAS is a good solution if you have several computers, tablets, etc. in the household where you want to have access to your pictures, music, movies, etc.

There are many different types and manufacturers of NAS, and according to my knowledge there is not much difference if you buy some of the most recognized brands such as Synology, Qnap, Thecus, etc. I have a Synology DS211 (firmware is "Synology DSM3.2 ") and am extremely pleased with it - it's super easy to use. This, together with my desktop computer, is the backbone of my digital setup as this is where all files and data is passing through, are processed, archived and synchronized - and not least backed up! Before I begin describing my setup, I would emphasize that this post is not intended as an actual review of the product in a tradional sense – I believe that this have already been done, and I will therefore not be able to contribute with anything new. In this review of the product I will focus on how I have set up and use my nas in our digital home, then a more substantive review.

Setup

I would recommend that you follow the Synology guide to connect to your NAS for the first time, and how you write your administrator password. Then you can begin the actual setup. First you have to "set up" file system. You can compare it a little with first-time setup of a computer. This may sound very technical, but is in fact very straight via the built-in guide. The only thing you will really need to do is make a choice. This can really be difficult enough in itself so here's some help concepts. The most essential choices faced with a NAS is the choice of RAID. To learn more about RAID, I made a brief review of the main types here. In a two-drive NAS must either choose between RAID 0 or RAID 1 (you have a NAS with multiple disks, there are also other RAID settings). Consider what your needs are in terms of space, cost, performance and especially safety. I have chosen a RAID 0 setup, and manage backup (of the important files) to external hard drives that are connected to the NAS with USB connector (I tell how this is done automatically in a later post). Note that RAID 0 is no "built-in" safety, so this must be done otherwise, if desired. Is security an important factor for you then select the RAID 1 (or possibly. RAID 5 if you have more than two hard drives in your NAS).

When the NAS is set up with the desired RAID setup (note that this may take a looong time where the machine creates the file system) you have to create some "shares". A share can be considered a "main folder", for example, a folder for images, one for movies, etc. On your computer you will afterwards be able to add these shares as a separate drive on your computer and control who has access to the different shares. You can read this guide to create shares on your Synology NAS. I have structured my NAS so I have the following (primary) shares:

-Movies

-Photos

-Videos

-Music Sonos

-Documtens

-Disc image

Note that you can enable three features on your Synology NAS ("Photo Station", "Music Station" and "Video Station"). If you choose to activate these features the NAS will create/use the following three shares: "Photo", "Music" and "Video". Therefore, it may be an idea to choose some other names than these three IF you want to use these features AND IF you do not want all your photos, music and/or videos to be indexed in the "Stations". Personally, I don’t use these features, and therefore will not describe them in detail here. 

On the NAS you can create multiple users and you can completely control which users have access to which shares. Multiple users is not something we really make use of in our home (admittedly, we have a user each), but they all have the exactly same user rights. So I would recommend you to just have one user unless you have specific needs for multiple users. You can read this guide on how to create new users on your Synology NAS. 

One thing we care for in our home is the envoiroment. Not in an obsessed kind of way, but we try to do whatever we can do in our everyday life to e.g. minimize the power consumption. And yes, we do turn off the TV on the switch in order to avoid any unnecessary stand by power usage. And similar with our computers, etc. Therefore, the power consumption of our NAS is also something we try to minimize (without influencing the usability of the NAS). Of course it is a balance between have the data available when needed, but on the same not have the data available (and thereby the NAS turned on) when not needed. Therefore I have set the NAS to turn off and the night and during the middle of the day while we were not home. To learn how you can read my guide here. 

There are many things that you can setup on your Synology NAS, and if you have a inner network administrator hidden inside, there is a lot of opportunities to tweak your NAS setting, etc. But for general use, the above steps cover most of what you need to know in order to get started using a NAS. So now that we've created shares (and possibly multiple users), you can add your shares as a separate drive to your computer so that your data is always easily available when you need it. You can do this by following this guide. 

And now you're ready to use your NAS. I will in a later post talk about how you can use your NAS for backup, whether you want to backup your files on your computer to your NAS or you want to backup the contents of your NAS to a separate drive, e.g. an external hard drive.