I want to do off site back and sync to a friends NAS. I am planning to use SyncThing. What NAS do you recommend I buy for use at my home? What are the least expensive but reliable options you recommend?
Hardware will depend on the amount of data you want to sync (e.g. a much less powerful device is needed to sync a few hundred GBs worth of data in comparison to syncing dozens of TBs worth of data, etc.)
In general, you want to have your Syncthingâs database located on an SSD and have a somewhat decent CPU. The amount of RAM is directly tied to the amount of synced data.
Based only on compatibility with Syncthing and similar programs, I say buy any normal computer (including, for example, a Raspberry Pi with an external USB disk) and install a Linux distro of choice. All the actual NAS vendors have weird kernels, weird filesystem shims, weird startup processes, and underpowered CPU/RAM.
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I highly recommend using (almost) any old computer with a bunch of hard drives and installing the free XigmaNAS. Mine is an Intel i3-3250 and I donât think I have ever seen the CPU get pegged at 100%. It boots off a USB thumb drive and runs from a RAM-drive, so it does best with at least 4GB of memory. If you want to run multiple virtual machines (using the included VirtualBox) you will probably want at least 8GB or more memory.
XigmaNAS and an âold computerâ give you a lot more horsepower, more flexibility, is based on standard software, wonât go âout of supportâ, and includes Syncthing. It also uses ZFS for data integrity: I recommend either 3 identical size hard drives in a three-way mirror, or 4 to 5 hard drives in a RAID-Z2 configuration for maximum redundancy.
If your computer doesnât have enough SATA ports (or even if it does, but they are mixed-speeds) I strongly recommend an HBA (Host-Bus-Adapter) like LSI 9300-8i 12Gbps SAS HBA IT Mode ZFS FreeNAS unRAID +2* SFF-8643 SATA Cable US | eBay . You will have much more reliable and faster disk transfers.
XigmaNAS does have a slight bit of a learning curve, but Iâve found it much easier to learn how to do âmy stuffâ than to learn the various pre-packaged NAS boxes.
Good luck!
I will add to say, whatever solution you settle on, be sure to use SSD (solid-state drives) or CMR (conventional magnetic recording), and avoid SMR (shingled magnetic recording) drives.
SMR drives will read fast and might be okay for data that gets read a lot and only written once or very minimally, but the time it takes for the initial write will give you gray hairs, or no hair as you tear it out waitingâŚ
And for any NAS box with any kind of RAID, do not use desktop drives. Always use NAS drives (WD Red, Seagate IronWolf or similar) because NAS drives will quickly return a read error and not time out like a desktop drive; the RAID hardware/software will treat a time-out (when the drive keeps re-trying the read error sector) as a drive failure instead of correcting the read error with redundant data.
The suggestions mentioned are good, but they require a native installation and familiarity with the terminal.
If you still want to use a NAS, you can use any NAS whose operating system has a capable Docker app. For example, TrueNAS, Ugreenâs UGOS, Synologyâs DSM, or Unraid.
Another option would be to use Proxmox, install DSM as a VM on it, and install Syncthing as an app from SynoCommunity. That would be a solution that likely doesnât require any terminal experience.
I would therefore consider the Ugreen DXP series, which is powerful and not too expensive.
For about 12 years I ran syncthing (along with a few other services) off an ARM board with 2GB RAM, and I had about 1TB of data to be synced (not too many changes though)
This ran beautifully, and I would still use it, but I think the SATA controller on that machine (Cubietruck) recently died, so I had intermittent problems with the root fs.
A recent RaspberryPi is a much more capable machine - that is what I am using now. So I wholeheartedly agree with @calmh âs comment here.
Just to give you some reference.