Hi all, am thinking to create my own personal NAS. I've been a long time subscriber of Onedrive (2TB + Office365) and still using now.

I wanted a NAS after stumbling upon some Youtube videos and forum posts online, basically the main purpose is as a place to upload + backup family photos. I have a lot of Apple live photos and just find viewing / downloading and generally managing them through Onedrive very difficult. Either way, it will make me lose out the original live photos (either lose the live part, or the photos become decoupled into an image + video). I also do not want to lock myself into iCloud (hence Onedrive).

From what I gather a NAS might be able to solve my problem (plus keep the privacy). For some time I considered Google Photos but read some people got banned because photos of their kids slightly naked (very normal for parents with small babies / kids, sometimes you take pictures of your kids playing in the pool, etc), I don't want to trust my entire family album to this in the off chance that their AI flags 1 photo and I lose my all my photos.

Unfortunately setting up a NAS seems more complicated than I thought, at first I was leaning towards all in ones like Synology, but then I start reading about all the different kinds of RAID configs, bitrot, etc which then led to things like ZFS... this is too much for a non-tech savvy person like me

I wonder if sifus here that can guide me in a 101 dummies way to set up my own private network, mainly to store my precious photos (and allow my family to upload theirs) which a large part includes Apple live format. It should be able to preserve the live format (most services will decouple them into a image + video file).

The live format is important to me because it captures that few seconds (with sound) of what my family was doing, and it really adds to the memory and nostalgia factor.

I hope to preserve this for a long time to come until the day I am not physically capable to access these memories.

This is my main requirement. Any other bells and whistles (being able to stream my old collection of music, movies, etc) is a plus. Early detection of HDD issues, and being able to just slot in a new HDD to replace soon-to-be-dying HDD would also be good.

I understand given the newbieness, I might need to pay a premium for ease of use but it's something I'm willing to consider.

This post has been edited by phoenixxx: Feb 9 2025, 02:51 AM

Bump and follow..haha i want to do the same too.

Some routers offers Dynamic Domain Name Service (DDNS) like Asus.

https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1011725/

Then you have to port forward your server for it. You have to do it for every port. Common ones are HTTP = Port 80, HTTPS = Port 443, FTP = Port 21, Email services like SMTP = 25, POP 3 = 110, Bittorrent = Depends on your bittorrent settings. You can keep forwarding ports according to your apps. Like Remote Desktop is 3389 for Windows, Teamviewer is 5938 so that you can remote control your server.

https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1037906/

I use an old computer i3 2120 running Open Media Vault. Setup was not straight forward, had to do a lot of reading and Youtube-ing before I got the NAS to do what I wanted. If you not willing to do the same for setup, I suggest get a commercial made NAS like a Synology

Going to be a dangerous move without proper security awareness.
There are many script kiddies out there that does known exploit attack. Safer to setup VPN and connect back to home when necessary.

My server running more than 10 years. Not one single attack.

You can try opening remote desktop port to public (for sure a honeypot VM) and check log after a month, there will be tons of login attempts. Who knows if there is zero-day exploit one day that can compromise your VM.

Web Server?

It is open. I just don't advertise it. Yeah, IIS is up as well.

I'm not using iPhone so this is just based on what I read, the live format only works on Apple Photos app, If you backup on something not from Apple, it will break the live format if the software not configured for it.

Another way to do local backup is if you got a Mac, using Finder to backup your iPhone. Then your Mac is backed up to NAS using Time Machine. This way your iPhone data including the photos will also be backed up.

If you don't have any Mac machine, getting a Mac Mini and let it run 24/7 as server to backup seems the easiest solution. This is based on what's written here saying only first time need to use cable, subsequent time can be wirelessly.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254920692?sortBy=rank

For NAS, you can go either with pre-built such as Synology or custom built your NAS using PC components and use open source OS such as TrueNAS. Custom built can be cheaper but need manual work and time, pre-built will not be cheap but lesser time to set up. ZFS or BTRFS both can protect against bit-rot. Important is the NAS have at least RAID-1 or higher. No no for RAID-0 or JBOD.

If you need your family members to connect back to the Mac even when not at home, port forward is one way but it is very technical. Easier way will be to use Tailscale, but the intermediate machine is from Tailscale. If you don't want some company to be the intermediate, there's also the option for self-hosting, but need more technical knowledge to set it up. These 2 are some well known for self-hosting
https://github.com/juanfont/headscale
https://github.com/slackhq/nebula

This post has been edited by xxboxx: Feb 9 2025, 10:28 PM

I noticed a flaw on my suggestion, if your data reaching TB, the Mac Mini with bigger storage will be very expensive because Apple cut throat pricing
And Finder can only backup iPhone data to internal storage, can't directly backup from iPhone to external storage.

After reading some more, it seems when Synology backup live format, it will upload both HEIF and MOV files, if you want to restore it you have to copy both files to the folder in iPhone and it will show as live format in Apple Photos app.
https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/..._as_2_files_in/

But that means if as long as both HEIF and MOV files can be backed up and restore back to iPhone to get back live format, any software that can backup both files is adequate enough for your usage.

Thanks, that was one of the threads I chanced upon previously (ie Synology is able to store & view photos as live). I do not have a Mac though, and I don't think I want to further lock myself in.

All my googling suggests that the live format is really Apple proprietary as you mentioned and so far only Google, Onedrive and Synology Photos app can direct play live photos. Onedrive being slow + buggy for live photos, and Google risk of getting flagged (due to my numerous pics of my kids) plus over the long term, I'd rather keep all the stuff myself and just maintain Onedrive as a last resort / offsite backup which I don't have to care how slow it is to access.

This reddit comment you linked is basically what I want. If I can rely on Synology app to view my live photos then it solve all my problems & I can safely offload all my photos from my iPhone . That's where I spoke to my friend and read up where all the QNAP, bitrot, ZFS came in and was suggested I don't use Synology, I'm still slowly going through all the resources he sent me which in itself is another rabbit hole



Right now I still keep all my photos in my iPhone eventhough they are in Onedrive but my phone storage is bursting already

This post has been edited by phoenixxx: Feb 9 2025, 11:26 PM

If you want to try using Synology, they have a demo site that you can try using the OS. It also already setup as if the machine being used with multiple users, so you can have a feel how managing the files and folders with multiple users, using the apps such as Drive and Photos, and others things that you might interest to use with the NAS.
https://demo.synology.com/en-global/dsm
Press the "Try DSM 7.2" button to start the demo

QNAP also have demo site to try the OS
https://www.qnap.com/en-as/live-demo

OS like QNAP use ZFS, this filesystem will periodically scans every file and checks it against that checksum, this is how it can detect bit-rot. Synology using BTRFS filesystem, it is also works the same way of scanning every file and checks it against the checksum. With either filesystem, you do not need to worry about bit-rot. Just make sure to schedule data scrubbing around every 6 months. With Synology, you need to enable checksum option when create the share folders.

Thanks, this is really helpful. Didn't know can try.

For starters, how many drive bays should I be looking at minimum (for redundancy purposes, future expansion etc? I'm thinking either 2 or 4 would be sufficient?

Minimum 2 bays so that can set it for mirroring such as RAID-1. If you want to maximize your storage capacity, using at least 3 HDD with RAID-5 will be better. RAID-1 use 2 HDD, the data is duplicate on both drive, so if you're using 2 8TB HDD, you'll have storage capacity about 8TB, not 16TB. RAID-5 using stripped parity data, if you have 4 4TB HDD, your storage capacity is about 11TB.

Future expansion really depends how many data will increase over the years. Getting more bays NAS will be more expensive but you can add more HDD of smaller capacity which is cheaper, less bays NAS price is cheaper but when you need more storage, upgrading to the higher capacity HDD is more expensive. Some NAS model also support extension unit, but the price is almost the same as getting another NAS. For me I feel better to get 4 bays and get 2 HDD that is enough for few years increment of data, then in future when need to expand only get another 1 or 2 HDD.

@xxboxx u know how to migrat Google Photos to Synology Photos? I cant seem to get live photo to be migrated... about 20GB of data

been asking around couldn't get real answer

You've been a big help. Thanks! I'll report back later before I pull the trigger. Peak period now, who knows it might take some months.

From what I understand live photos consist of 2 files, .mov and .heic and both need to be same filename. I'm not sure if can directly export from Google Photos to Synology Photos. One way maybe if download both files, copy back to iPhone and then only upload to Synology Photos.

I read from this site, specially on this post:


https://support.google.com/photos/thread/15...d-in-bulk?hl=en

After some time and research:
1. Live demo on Synology website - I couldn't get it to work (doesn't support live photo viewing) - it asked me to install an extension which I did, but still could not view. So the test was kind of a failure. However, I've seen threads talking about Synology Photos + Live Photos so I'm not (too) worried.
2. Immich & Photoprism - seems like good alternatives, but I just lack the IT know how to set them up. I tried using ChatGPT to guide me but it does not inspire confidence, especially if I face issues in the future and I don't know how to troubleshoot them.
3. Other NAS using ZFS, vs Synology Btfrs - seems like a calculated gamble to use Synology which is easy for newbies like me. Pay more for convenience and hopefully Btfrs serves its purpose long term. Looks like no other choice...

So it looks like I'm considering a Synology NAS. And based on reading, most recommend at least a 4-bay. So probably going for something like ...DS423+? Still haven't fully understood Synology's product line.
If I'm going 8TB drives x 4 it looks like the HDDs will end up costing more, Shoppee stocks seem low in particular for 8TB, and a few I saw costed around RM1k each.

Am I looking at spending at least RM6-7k to set up a Synology 4x8TB NAS?

I'm using DS423+ ; with 2 bays ; bought 4 bays so its future proof..

for synology SHR the best thing is that the raid is auto-resize.. i,e you can start with 2 drive which give u 7tb first.. then if you near the end just add another drive for 14tb

unless you get good deal for 4 drives and/or you need the full capacity of 21TB

I think live photo viewing only works on Apple devices

Immich & Photoprism need to install on Docker, some understanding of Docker will be useful as there's many apps/services that you can install on it and the app runs as if it is its own machine/server. It's something like a mini virtual machine. I use Docker to run my own Bitwarden and PiHole.

Synology have been using BTRFS for many years. Asustor also uses BTRFS for their filesystem. There's no reliability issue that happens after so many years which I feel it have proven as a reliable filesystem.

Yup, HDD is also not cheap, especially if it's the bigger capacity. You not necessarily need to get 4 HDD from the get go, you can add additional HDD when you start to run out of space. But 2 HDD is a must so that have redundancy. You also should plan to have backup of the data in case anything happens to the NAS. Backup such as on a external drive or on other NAS.

Synology going to release new models. It will have USB C and 2.5 GbE on some models. But successor to 423+ seems only have 2.5 GbE update.

Synology introduces eight new NAS systems