A family member is interested in self-hosting their photos! They asked me if there is a NAS I would recommend.
They’re not very technical. They can manage their own Macbook, but not much else.
I can’t recommend them my setup because I built my own computer and just run Debian and Docker.
They would definitely need a ton of hand holding. I think they can manage clicking a web UI though. Any terminal stuff will probably scare them away.
Anyone have any recommendations? Something from QNAP, Ugreen, Zima, or something else?
They’re mainly interested in self-hosting photos. I was hoping to get them on Immich. I could see them doing some file hosting too. So maaaybe running Seafile would be nice. Or maybe just NFS.
I have a Synology DS918+. Older model, but it’s still chugging along and it serves me and my Plex users well. That said, I don’t plan on getting a new one if/when this one dies. They reversed their decision on the vendor lock-in for drives, but the fact they did that at all really put me off.
I get their reasoning behind wanting to vendor lock the drives - Synology is a great chassis for amateur network storage enthusiasts, the kind of people who likely blew their budget on the NAS chassis thinking everything would work fine long-term when they slapped some cheap used desktop hard drives into the box. The shitty drives eventually die, and they blame Synology for their own bad hardware choices. That’s not an issue I struggle with, though, so I’m just thinking I’m no longer Synology’s target customer.
These days I’d recommend just building your own rig if you can swing that. And if you do go with a prebuilt chassis, for fuck’s sake don’t just slap any old hard drives in there!