Hi guys. Since a lot of POTN'ers seem to be using Synology NAS units, I bet there are many who are coupling it with Amazon Cloud Drive (ACD) for online back-up. I recently signed up for a trial of their unlimited "anything" plan after having been using the unlimited photos plan as a Prime subscriber. Tomorrow, I have a Synology NAS arriving. I have a couple of questions:
1. Does ACD support Synology's encryption engine? In other words, if I encrypt my drives/folders before syncing my NAS with ACD, will the latter accept (and later allow me to retrieve) the files without a hitch?
2. Do the various Synology apps (to view photos, videos, docs etc.) allow you to access encrypted files on your mobile device? Remote access capability is great and even if ACD allows me to upload encrypted files, it probably won't let me access them on a mobile device. If Synology's apps don't either, then I won't be encrypting anything except sensitive financial documents.
3. Regardless of encryption, does ACD offer a bi-directional back-up? Currently, the ACD app on my phone automatically uploads all photos and videos shot on the phone. Once synced to NAS, will ACD automatically push such pics/vids to it to make it a truly bi-directional sync?
Some background on my purchase, should you be curious: I chose the DS216Play model after much contemplation and calculation, having initially ordered a DS416J. I returned the latter, unopened, to Amazon yesterday. I also bought two 4TB NAS drives (WD Red and Seagate ST) which arrived on Friday. While researching my NAS options, I did extensive calculations of my expected storage needs for the coming years. As a hobbyist photographer who only saves his 'keeper' raw files, always shot at max res, along with full-res processed jpgs, it would take me a minimum of 4 years to hit the mid-to-upper 3TB usable storage space I will have in my RAID 1-configured NAS after formatting. And that storage calculation even accounts for my (as yet un-ripped) 500+ audio CDs along with my current mp3 collection of thousands of songs as well my current photographic+home video collection along with the 1080p/60 or 4K/30 videos my wife and I expect to shoot of our kids (with a far greater frequency than we currently do). And that is when planning very liberally. A more practical time frame is probably closer to 5 years before I will need more storage. At that point, I will likely add a then-current model of a second 2-bay unit (perhaps even with SSD drives!) and expand my NAS, or if it isn't possible, get a 4-bay NAS. Had I kept my 416J, its processing power would've been archaic by the time I actually needed to use its remaining 2 bays. I have no desire for anything but a RAID 1 config anyway.
The NAS will be backed up continuously to ACD and synced monthly to a 4TB external HDD stored offsite. I will also continue my current practice of manually saving full-res processed jpgs to my Flickr account.
