best external HD / nas with great access softwar

Hi Group

can i get any recommendations for a really good (but not too pricey perhaps max a few hundred pounds?) external HD / nas that has a really good web access.
I want it to sit in a location by a desk and all access to it will be online from anywhere in the world from family members mainly and freinds that have log in access.
But it needs to be easy to access and control via iphones and ipads as well as Pc's.
We need to be able to select photos on the iphones / ipads and drag and drop them onto the storage so that they can be stored and then deleted off the iphones or ipads. then we need to be able to access and view the photos easily from iphone and ipads as if they were on a hard disk connected to them.
and if possible i would also like software onboard to search for duplicate pictures so hey can be deleted and organised better.
I used to use Thumbs plus which was quit good at that but i would say that was perhaps 15 yeas ago.... surely there is really good software / apps these days?

I have tried doing this before a few years ago but the hard drives were not great for accessing photos really.
one was an iomega store centre ix2 and the other i can't remember but i think it was a Wd product in a white case...
what let them down was the onboard software and the internet cloud access they had, also they were quite noisy when being accessed.. but that is not really a big worry.
I am hoping HD's are better these days
any good suggestions?

A

I do not use the feature of remote access, nor cloud storage, but Synology NAS support remote acccess and (IIRC) also have availability of cloud storage via Synology. Look into Synology, and visit their website.
And two disk RAID 1 configuration support gives better data access ensurability than anything wholly dependent upon one HD.

Wilt wrote in post #19188258
I do not use the feature of remote access, nor cloud storage, but Synology NAS support remote acccess and (IIRC) also have availability of cloud storage via Synology. Look into Synology, and visit their website.
And two disk RAID 1 configuration support gives better data access ensurability than anything wholly dependent upon one HD.

Also, Synology NAS systems provide an excellent suite of software for all levels of NAS operation.

One feature I like and use is the ability to set up a folder on another drive that Synology watches and keeps replicated on the NAS. I've tried other applications to do that, but none of them has been as reliable as Synology's own software.

Hi RDkirk

thankyou for your reply, I have access to a synology ds918 at work, what is the feature called on there that watches a remote folder?
and can it watch several folders on different pc's?

A

I have a Synology NAS and the feature is called Synology Drive that will synchronise folders across differernt PC's. It will also sync across apple and android and I have used it on my android phone to sync with windows PCs without hassle. It also allows you to synchronise data whilst you are travelling - you do not have to be on your home/NAS network for syncing to occur.

Just note that in the past couple of years Synology ugraded Synology Drive - on an older NAS it may have a different name called Cloud Station but effectively the same.

You mentioned about duplicate photos - if you upload photo's that are duplicated you can have the duplicates removed as they will have the same filename. But be carefull - if you have several phones or cameras from the same manufacturer you need to ensure that different images from different cameras don't get overwritten in error as often they have the same filename system.

Hope the above helps!

Hi Shocolite

thankyou for your reply, I just had a quick look and I have the following apps on my Synology NAS:

cloud station server
cloud station share sync
cloud sync
file station
synology drive server

is it one of these or do i need to find another one?

Also is there a website that goes into detail on what all these apps do and how to use them?

A

Hi Shocolite

can i also ask, does the synology drive work across the internet or do all the pc's have to be on the same network?

A

Hi A

1 - cloud station server - this software will soon be replaced by synology drive server
2 - cloud station share sync - this software will soon be replaced by synology drive share sync
3 - cloud sync - use this to sync/share files on your NAS to cloud storage. I use this to automatically upload to cloud storage as cloud/remote backup of all my files.
4 - file station - this is like Windows File Explorer to navigate around files stored on your NAS, create folders etc.
5 - synology drive server - the latest version of software to synchronise files between different devices/pc's etc and your Synology NAS. Again this is the software I use (instead of those listed at 1 or 2 above).

If you go to "Package Center" in yoiur NAS, then "All Packages" and click on a app (not the install button) it will give you a brief description of what it does. Also, there are plenty of you-tubes and a Synolgy Forum that will give very good advice on how to set-up or use the apps.

Hope ths helps!

Hi A,

Synolgy has a useful feature called Quick Connect and it allows you to access your NAS from outside of the LAN that the Synology is connected to. This allows your phones/tablets/laptops​/PC's to connect from anywhere you have data/internet access. Again, plenty of forums and websites showing how to do so. Also, good security is a must to prevent hackers gaining access to your data - I use 2FA on my Synolgy accounts and the Synolgy has settings to help reduce things like brute-forcing of passwords - mine is set so that 3 consecutive failed logins from an external IP address get blocked. But don't worry about getting locked out as you can generally get easier access to your NAS whilst on the same LAN as the NAS. Overall Synolgy give the option of making your NAS very secure.

Hi shocolite

thankyou you have been very helpful

I have installed the Drive on my nas and the app on my phone and its working, i just need to expand it to other pcs, ipads and phone etc.. in the family so just got to figure some bits out. like:

- where to down load the PC app / client-side to access and use the drive

- how to set up users/individual shared folders

- and whether I can install the drive client on a WD my cloud nas at home...

hopefully I will get it all working ok in time

Hi A,

Good news so far for you!

Synology website has a download centre for the pc side of apps - a web search for "synology drive pc download" will get you there. For android the Play Store has the various apps.

Setting up users and shared folders: here it gets a bit tricky. Each user should have a user profile set up for them. I am a windows user so on a Windows PC it will map the My Documents folder on that user's PC account as the default folder. But you can map other, multiple folders instead if you want. Regarding shared folders, as an example you can share a "Pictures" or "Video" Folder with users. But users do not get automatic access to shared folders. You (as admin) will have to give them access. And they can have full access or reduced to read-only if you want.

A couple of pointers: 1) make sure you have a full back-up of all users files - it could be possible for you to make a mistake and accidently lose data until you get familiar with how it all works.
2) some house-keeping may be required to tidy-up files on various devices just to avoid duplication of files between users.
3) One issue I noticed with Synology is the following: just say you move a folder containing multiple files to another location but decide to cancel the move, you could lose files and end up with the source folder in both the original and new location but with missing files in the sub-folders. If you do move a folder (especially with thousands of files or of a large file-size) let it finish synchronising before moving it again. (hence rule 1!)
4) Depending on network speeds etc, if you have several users with 2-3TB of data this could take a day or two to sync. Synology NAS units have ram and processors (they are effectively a PC running Linux) so if you create a lot of users and have a lot of data it may take the NAS some time to crunch through all the data. Just depends on the age/type of Synology NAS you have.

I will definitely state they are worth the effort in the long term, but now and then (perhaps every couple of years) I have done a stupid thing and ended up spending a few days sorting out the mess. But usually I have never lost any data. I would never go back to not having a NAS but don't get frustrated if you have some teething issues getting it set-up first time around.

Re your last query, I don't think you can install the drive client on a WD my cloud nas. About all you could do, as far as i know, is use the WD my cloud for manual backups. I have a cheap Zyxel NAS for movies/films and cannot get the two NAS's to directly work with each other, I have tried to but to no avail.