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Tech literate and interested home user, however no NAS experience. Other members of home not skilled with technology. Have been using external hard drives but would like network level solution. Primary needs are photo backup from multiple mobile devices, automated backups from 3+PCs, long term storage of documents and media (videos, music) without streaming. Potential need for sharing photos with family in future.
Primary motivations are data security and data redundancy. Currently running Unifi home network setup (UCG-fiber) and I am familiar with that UI. However, Ubiquity offerings do not seem to meet needs in regard to software support. Synology is not being considered due to hardware lock issue. Considering a UGreen device with TrueNAS. Looking for recommendations on best path forward. Budget is flexible.
Thank you.
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First path. UGREEN hardware with TrueNAS Scale on top. This gives you open source, no vendor lock in, very strong data integrity with ZFS, and the ability to build a truly long term solution. A DXP4800 Plus is the safe pick because it has enough CPU and RAM capacity for ZFS and background tasks, and you can start with two or four drives now and expand later. It also lets you add SSDs for apps or metadata if you want faster snapshots or indexing. For your eight terabytes of data, four drives in RAIDZ1 or three in RAIDZ1 will give you redundancy plus room to grow. Mobile photo backup with TrueNAS requires apps like Immich or Photoprism, which are very good but do take some setup time. Once running, they behave like private Google Photos replacements and work well for families.
Second path. A true DIY mini server with TrueNAS Scale. Something based on the Intel N100 or N200 platform with four to six SATA ports is extremely power efficient and quiet. Combine that with a small NAS case and ZFS, and you have the most flexible and private option. This is usually the cheapest route too. But it does require assembling hardware and choosing compatible components.
Regarding Ubiquiti. Their upcoming storage products look interesting, but right now they don’t provide the sort of automated backups, photo management or device sync systems that you are asking for. They are not ready to replace a proper NAS yet.
Your storage size. For eight terabytes of actual data today, I would start with at least sixteen terabytes of raw HDD space so you maintain redundancy and have a few years of growth. Four bay is always better than two bay because you can expand gradually instead of replacing everything at once.
SSD for the OS. TrueNAS should run from a small SSD. A simple two hundred and fifty gig NVMe is plenty. Do not install the OS on the HDDs. Keeping the OS separate also helps the drives spin down more often.
