I am a fairly computer-savvy person, who was just gifted a hand-me-down NAS. I’ve never had one before, and am thinking that I’ll use if for:
Local storage and streaming of a collection of mp3s
Local storage and management of photos (can I duplicate something like google photos, adobe bridge, or some other media sorting/tagging paradigm on a NAS?)
Local file storage in general (we both work on laptops here, which change every 3-4 years, and managing that transition is a pain. I’d much rather have persistent network storage)
Other useful things I’m not thinking of? Maybe I can rip my modest DVD collection and stream them? Maybe there are some useful ‘always running’ household type things I can be doing with IoT devices?
So . . . any tips on any of this? Best in class apps? Obvious dos and don’ts for a beginner?
The internet is full of articles in the vein of “top 10 things to do with your NAS”, but I’m not finding it very helpful in giving me any direct recommendations about useful apps from real people, and most of it is “set up a security system” (which I don’t want to do) or “stream media” (duh) or various flavors of “waste time duplicating already existing services on your own server” (no thanks, too busy for that kind of play these days).
If you want to stream any type of media from your NAS I’d look into Plex. It’s not super-intuitive to setup but is very cool once you have it going (and it’s free). It can stream music & videos directly to Smart TVs, Roku Sticks, etc on demand. Apparently there’s also an ad-supported online streaming component to it now; I’ve never used the online component so I can’t speak to whether it’s any good or not.
Right off the bat, I’d set it my main computer to back up to it on a regular basis (in whole or just the important parts like the My Documents folder).
It’s not as secure as offsite backup, but at least you’re protected against a hard drive crash or, spilling a soda on your laptop.
My CDs (maybe 400 of them? 500?) are all ripped already (I haven’t let go of the physical media yet, but most of them I’ve been listening to mp3s I created in like 2000-2004). have a small DVD collection (50).
This. I use Plex to stream my music and movies to any TV in the house.
You can use MakeMKV to transfer DVD and Blu-Ray to the NAS, and Handbrake to compress the movies to save space, if needed. Both are free, I think.
I have over 700 movies on my NAS that are accessible on any TV in the house, plus I’ve got a small partition set up for common documents (recipes and such) that are also accessible on any computer, tablet or smart phone.
Totally. I currently have backups of pretty much “all the things” on Google Drive, but I don’t keep up with it dynamically in an automated way. And, when I say I want backups, really, I want to be able to remove things from my laptop unless needed. So, a local NAS plus Google Drive gives me two locations for a file, neither of which is the laptop.
If you have Google Drive and whatever their app is (Backup and Sync?) then you’re covered. I have that, but I just keep it backing up my Documents folder. Since I’m always bumping up against the limit, I can keep big files, that don’t need to be backed up, elsewhere. Especially, if I’m only going to have them on my computer temporarily.