Best NAS/Cloud 4 bay device?

Looking for a 4 bay NAS so I can do raid 5 w/ 4 8TB drives. I'm looking at moving away from internal storage and moving to a NAS device to run all my photo storage on.

I'm growing tired of a huge desktop w/ internal storage so thinking about switching to a 15" laptop w/ 32gb, 512gb pcie ssd and a 2tb HD. My ultimate plan is to basically keep current year photos on the 2tb, the lightroom catalog on the ssd and then have the nas/cloud back everything up.

also would like for the nas to be able to automatically backup the phone images/videos as well.

Looking for simplistic setup, nothing too fancy. I operate a Qnap TV-471 for work that we have 38 clients accessing files at any given moment and that thing has been one heck of a machine but a tad expensive/overkill for my needs at home.

Any suggestions?

Talley since you are using Lr anyway, have you tried using the Lr mobile app? I used to do the dropbox thing, and then watch the Dropbox camera upload folder to get the images/video directly off the phone to the computer and into my catalogue. Lr mobile is even easier, since it will auto upload all of your images directly in to whatever folder structure you use. I just do a year folder under Photos, and then have folders by date. Now all images either directly uploaded by the phone app, or loaded from the DSLR's memory card go in the same folders, I really like it. Since the files from the phones etc will be directly loaded to the computer file system your backup software should see those image files as new, and back them up to your NAS. You would need that for any new images you load from media too anyway.

Lr mobile is nice because you can also go the other way, and have access to smart previews from any collection that you chose to have Lr sync. I just wish it could do smart collections too, so that images could be auto added to Lr mobile collections, as they do with publish services. I like it since it allows me to have certain images available on my phone, without the need to convert them to a specific format. As long as I want the image under 2500px on the long edge, you can export the image form the mobile device too.

Alan

Synology ,buy or build one like I did. can no be more satisfied.
plenty on information on the net and easy to do.

Talley,

After years of trial and error, and a long admiration of the KISS principle, here is my year old setup:

I have a 5 bay Synology 1515+ in non-raid - which is backed up to a free-standing 4 bay non-raid Mediasonic. Hint, I don't trust Raid setups. I've seen over a dozen crash and burn. I've never seen one successfully recovered.

My desktop & other devices back up to an second 4 bay Mediasonic.

Both Mediasonics are periodically cloned to external hard drives, stored off site.

My weak link? I create my backups personally when time permits and the spirit periodically moves me. When real busy, that needs improvement.

Long ago, a venerable mentor cautioned that unless a digital file exists in 3 distinct places/systems, they do not really exist.

Discounting offsite storage, I believe my total storage is currently ~75 TB - not all of which is photography. Also included are various multimedia libraries - movies, tv, documentaries, music, ebook caliber & pdf libraries, career archives of my wife & I, family archives & publications, etc.

My Mediasonic boxes and drives only spin when actively backing up. Normally, they rest dormant.

Hope this helps.
Dale