NAS Box recommendations for Mac and PC with wireless connectivity and 4TB storage

Connect a Synology or other NAS to the wired network backbone behind your access points.

You’re discussing transferring a whole lot of data here. You do not want to be sharing (more) of that data via Wi-Fi than you have to. Wired connections halve the amount of data necessarily traversing the Wi-Fi network.

4 TB is woefully inadequate for a design team. Configuring storage for 4 TB each, I might consider. For backups, determine all of the storage available to the design team, double that value (storage use ~never shrinks), and round that result up for growth.

Local preference is Synology. Synology is quite capable gear, with many added services available, and can provide off-site backups as well.

Whatever NAS you pick, you absolutely want a NAS with Time Machine server capabilities.

You won't find many wireless NAS's. They're best on ethernet for reliability and speed. If your wireless router has got an ethernet port then plug it in to that. Mine's got 2 ethernet adapters that can be run in parallel for more speed if needed. You might find models that can take a wireless dongle, but I wouldn't bother.

Wireless aside there are any number of manufacturers. I've only used QNAP - I'm on my second one and I currently run a 4-bay RAID 5 array for home use - Time Machine and rsync backups for a couple of Macs, archives and large video library. I use the old one is a backup for the new one (excluding videos). My views are (based on Mac, I don't use Windows):

Pros

• good and responsive support via email ticket system;
• supported for a long period - I was able to buy a PSU for my first NAS eight years after buying it and it's still getting security updates;
• it supports Time Machine and has other data-integrity features like snapshots;
• regular security updates - but see below;
• good range of features - surveillance, virtual switch, backup, AV, VPN, cloud, etc.

Cons

• the web management interface is a bit slow and clunky;
• I'm not totally convinced that QNAP have got security completely under control - see below;

As a general warning, NAS devices are prime targets for web-based attacks so my comments about QNAP security above are probably more a function of QNAP's popularity than a general lack of security. Synology were taking a lot of hits a few years ago too, I think. There are security features but my NAS sits behind the router's firewall and doesn't get direct access to the web. If you're going to have yours on the internet then you need to read up on security and make sure you've got access control managed properly both on the NAS and your router.

4TB is a small amount of space if you're buying a NAS - Assuming you're going to run some sort of RAID then you'll need ~6 to start with to end up with 4 and if you're going to use snapshots to protect from data loss then you'll need more. Also, remember that RAID isn't backup.

Then I suggest that you go with either a Synology or QNAP NAS.

FWIW, I have been using Synology NAS's for years and they have a number of models to choose from. You can use this link to help narrow down which would work best for your company: NAS Selector

In my case, I need to use my NAS to support a mix of Macs, and PCs (Windows & Linux) for a number of tasks, including backups.

There aren’t many (if any) mainstream NAS devices that are purely wireless-only, as most NAS systems rely on wired Ethernet for stability, performance, and reliability. However, there are some workarounds and alternative solutions that can function as a wireless NAS:

• Using a Raspberry Pi as a Wireless NAS
• Using wireless external drives with NAS features
  • Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro – Battery-powered, supports SD card backup, and works wirelessly.
  • SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD with Wireless Connectivity – Works similarly but has limited full NAS capabilities.
• Using a Synology or QNAP NAS with a Wi-Fi dongle
  • While Synology and QNAP NAS devices typically require Ethernet, some models allow USB Wi-Fi adapters.
• DIY Wireless NAS with a Mini PC

Zurarczurx wrote:

My money's on you being back here in a year asking advice for transferring a bunch of developer backups from a 4TB HD to a bigger NAS cos the HD you bought just to do daily backups for a small team's current project is being used by everyone in the company for a variety of things from backups to team briefings and the boss wants to host an intranet on it.

Yes; I'd expect that.

But I'd not want to forgot to account for the time and focus and money spent creating and maintaining custom task-tailored backup scripts for a subset of the files involved, and of occasionally discovering missing important files from the backups after some Mac had crashed. That effort accumulates.

This as compared with running Time Machine server and the built-in backups and built-in restoration tools.

As for HDD sizes, I've been installing 12 TB HDDs in the smaller Synology arrays for the last ~five years, intended for backups and file sharing for small workgroups. The smallest of those deployments was the initial 2-bay Synology test (RAID-1 mirroring with two 12 TB HDDs) configuration, and that's been rock solid. And those 12 TB HDDs are getting small for recent NAS deployments, too.

Or there's always the classic fallback approach for backups: buy a box of external 4 TB HDDs, one each for every Mac used by the design team. Configure Time Machine, and off you go.

Part of the usefulness of the NAS approach over the per-Mac HDD approach is that the total capacity is pooled across all users.

But in another view, this is probably a nascent IT group formation project. These formations are always interesting to watch and more interesting to participate in, as management and the nascent IT group get their relationships and roles sorted.

PS: random Synology trivia: the last two digits of the product model number are the year that the model was introduced. Synology product support lasts a while, but the older models do eventually drop off support.

mandarcy wrote:

No this is not for final archive, only daily backups for a small team on current projects, 4TB is more than enough.

I’m skeptical, but you know your current and likely future hardware configuration best.

One 4 TB HDD is a reasonable choice for a Time Machine of one user with one to two terabytes of storage to be archived. (By “archive”, I mean “backed up”.)

This capacity for some depth of backups.

For a team, I’d expect well higher storage usage, unless those Macs are kept pristinely empty and each with a very small storage configuration.

My money's on you being back here in a year asking advice for transferring a bunch of developer backups from a 4TB HD to a bigger NAS cos the HD you bought just to do daily backups for a small team's current project is being used by everyone in the company for a variety of things from backups to team briefings and the boss wants to host an intranet on it.