After all the other comments and recommendations, I’ll likely do something like that. Haven’t looked up Reatic yet, but Tailscale looks to be what I need.

This will be for long term storage of files like family photos and document safe keeping, i.e. “let’s dump all our important files here so we don’t lose them”. Two people writing to the same file will practically never happen.

Our needs are flexible in terms of how the backup is performed in the technical sense, so I would imagine any of the feature rich NAS units can do what we need in some way or another.

I def need a massive drive just for me lol. I have multiple drives loaded full of files including an 8TB drive.

We will likely read data from every location. That way people can access the data at full speed using WLAN

I’ll keep Syncthing in mind.

I’ll probably go with an all in one NAS just to keep things simple for the less tech savvy people of my family.

There will probably be several pools. Each household will get a private pool. Then there will be a shared pool for stuff like family photos. Finally I’ll have the second drive as my own pool. So there will be 4-5 pools on the small drive.

Each NAS will be identical so all data is mirrored to each one. That way if a NAS dies or something worse happens like a house burning down, we won’t lose any files.

I’ll keep that in mind. Since you’ve pointed it out I can definitely see the technical difficulties of a system like that.

One thought I just had: could each individual NAS unit have its own 1:many? For example, the NAS in one house controls the backup for those people and the NAS in the second house controls the backup for them. That way each household can still access their own files through a wire if needed.

Having read some stuff on that drama, I got looking into Asustor NAS units. Their entry one looks perfect for our general use and has all the apps and features I think I could use.

That would be nice. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like there’s enough relevant people here on Lemmy to keep it active. At least not yet.

We want multiple devices so we can have extra backups of our important files. Power isn’t really a major concern since this will be mostly for long term storage.

Is Synology still a good option? I remember them getting some flack a bit ago. Something about hard drives I think?

I’ll kept a look out for deals like that.

I took a look at Nextcloud and really like it from a usability standpoint.

My question is what would my hardware options be? A form factor like the off the shelf NAS units is ideal since they will have to go on shelves next to the routers. If it was just me, a server rack would be fine, but I gotta keep it clean looking and on the smaller side. Also, I would like to keep the hardware price per house not much higher than the $300 range (excluding hard drives).

Those are good points to clear up.

• At this point, 2 houses, but likely 3 by next year.
• The first two will be a short drive away, but the third will be hours away.
• The houses are on 100/50Mb fiber. Very stable internet.
• Me being the tech person, I’ll access them every way that’s available. For the rest of my family I’ll set them up either with a hardwire or local network.
• We will be using them as part of a 3-2-1 backup for all of our files like photos or documents. I’ll be using the second drive for occasional video backup storage.
• The shared drive will probably be 5-10 TB, depending on how much storage each household wants. The second drive for me will be around 20TB.