Buying First NAS

[Enquiries]

Hi

I'm looking to buy my first NAS system. I'm tired of having a draw of 1 to 2 TB hard drives and want to put everything onto one system, with some room to grow (expandable drives). I would also like the security of mirroring a drive incase one fails.
I'm looking for a 2 drive system, roughly 12 tbs for now. I use a PC and a MAC Book and am setting up a guitar manufacturing business in Woking. I am doing a lot of content filmed on my iPhone and editing the footage but would like the option of using my much more powerful PC to do the work.
It's my understanding that having a NAS system would allow me to use the PC an MAC in a much more stream line way. Perhaps having the NAS in the middle allows for better crowd system workflow. I would all like the option to access CAD files in Fusion and work on them from both he MAC and PC.

I don't know if I need a NAS or I can do with the WD Home system. I don't yet understand how I can utilise my workflow on a NAS between platforms, i.e do let the NAS do the commuting or do I pull a file into a computer and use the computer to do the work? I assume my computers are more powerful and contain the software so I guess that's self explanatory. What I mean is, do I really need that much power in a NAS unit if it's only going to be used for safe storage, organising photos, videos, music, CAD files and documents etc..

My two current choices are the

DS220+
DS220J
DS720+
WD Home Cloud (which I'm not sure is still supported having watched on of your videos on the product).

Kindest Regards

[ed]

Thank you for your support, this keeps us going.

Yes, NAS is a very universal storage device. You can copy files from a MAC and Windows without having file system compatibility issues. With USB/Thunderbolt drive you could face these issues. You can choose to do all heavy work on your computer and then transfer data over. Or you can everything straight from the NAS. You can map it as a network drive or as ISCI drive (system will see it similar to C: drive).
The real question is, what speed do you need. CAD systems and file storage might OK with 1Gbit speeds. This is what you will get from the drives mentioned above. If you need 2.5Gbit or even put o 10Gbit speeds then Qnap TS-253D/ TS-264 would allow achieving those speeds with correct media inside.
The difference between plus and J/value series is additional functionality like server backups, snapshots etc.


I hope this helps.