Newbie to NAS - Basic Help Requested

[midnight_lightning]

Hi,

I've just bought a DS212J to use on my home network of three desktops a laptop and various phones etc. Perhaps the primary purpose is to allow family members to use any computer and see their recent documents without me having to sync all computers on the network, which is what I currently do.

Also I will be wanting to use RAID-1 and internal/external backup, probably a mail server and webserver etc.

There is lots of information in the user guides and on this forum showing me how to use the various tools but I am stuggling to find anything that tells me what the best approach is going to be for achieving my file sharing/backup objectives.

For example, ideally I would like to use the NAS as a share (drive letter:/folder) that each family member has read/write access to from their Windows PC (XP/7), with security to allow them to only see their own private folders but also access for everyone to see shared folders. I'm having difficulty working out whether this is possible, and if so how to achieve it/which tools to use.

I read a post saying you should only allow Read access to the NAS in real time to reduce the risk of a virus on a client corrupting the RAID array. Is this best practice, it seems to me that it defeats the objective of everyone seeing the latest files? How do people generally approach this, if the NAS is read only would periodic refreshes be used, would Data Replicator 3 be the tool to use for this, or do people just allow read/write and mitigate the risk with backups?

Hopefully these questions will provide an idea of where I am struggling. In a nutshell I am initially trying to understand how people generally use the NAS on a home network, what they can do, pros and cons of their approach. Then how to set it up, which tools to use for which bits. Once I know this I feel I will be ok with the user guides for actualy using the tools.

If someone could point me in the right direction that would be great.

Thanks

Jon

[mxstrand]

+1 with similar questions here. I'm a newbie to NAS. Got my 3TB Western Digital HD installed in the DS212J and downloaded the latest DSM.pat file from the download center.

The Synology Assistant is seeing the device and installation kicks off okay and runs a bit but fails due to "connection timeout". Both PC (Win7) and DS212J are on the network via Cat5.

My architecture is cable modem --> wireless router --> 16 port switch. I've tried running installation with the DS212J hardwired to both the router and the switch but getting "connection timeout" in both cases.

I really want to make this work! Help plz!

[mike42dk]

Hi

There's almost as many answers as users off DS to your question

I use my DS so each user have full access to their home folder, to do whatever they want/need, then I have setup backup on each computer using DR3 and TimeMachine.

Then all media files are put in shared indexed folders Photo, Video and Music, this way all devices, TV, Computer, SmartPhones, media player and so on have access to my media files and pr standard only 2 accounts have full access (Admin accounts).

This is all backupped to my external disk, and the app Antivirus Essential is run scheduled before the backup to my external disk.

And OFC I use a antivirus program on each computer.

[midnight_lightning]

Thanks Michael,

Sounds like I have done something similar. Took me a while to figure out how the Home/Homes accounts worked and how access tied back to the Windows accounts but seems ok now .

So I have set up each user with access to their home account and public folders with a view to all data being stored and used in one place - on the NAS. This way they users can swap PC's and always get their most recent data, it's all in one place for easy backup and the RAID-1 gives me some resilience/backup for a drive failure.

To help guard against virus attack or loss of some/all of teh LAN I am setting up various backup/synchronisation routines:
1) Regular Backups of the NAS to PC Drives (lots of spare space in these now)
2) Periodic Backup to Bluray disks of key data for off site storage (at parents house)
3) Regular full copy (possibly incremental when I have chance to see how this works) to External Hard Drive. Not sure where to tore this yet, when I can afford it I intend to get two and keep one offsite).
4) Regular Backup of each PC "Documents and Settings" to NAS, 'cos I know the kids sometimes forget to specify locations and they tend to default here.

AV running on everything.

Hopefully I have a fairly robust solution but happy for any challenges/suggestions. It seems like a lot of work, and perhaps belt and braces, but I balance it against the thought of having to explain to the wife and kids that I just lost all their data .

Jon

[Ifti]

In very basic terms, you have your NAS central in your network.

Once the NAS has been set up, you enter the user manager and create users for each person on your home network.

You can then enable DLNA - this will create 3 shared folder - music, video, and photos. You can give users read or read/write to this, and they can use them as their shared folders. By using DLNA you can access the media in these shared folder on consoles, smart phones, and much more.
You can create additional shared folders if you wish, or you can leave DLNA altogether and create your own shared folders - assigning persmissions to each user as need be.

As for private areas - create a folder for each user. Give each user account permission to their folder.
On each user's PC/MAC simply map a drive to the folder you have created for them, using their own user credentials to connect.

This way:
1. Users have access to shared folders.
2. Users have access to their own private folder.
3. Users do not even see any other private user folders.

When it comes to backup, you can schedule a backup to an external drive, or to a DX510.

You may find some of these videos useful:

Backup to an external drive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1Ya5nKyfDQ&safe=active

Setting up and backups to a DX510 expansion unit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6nc6GKU_8E&safe=active

[midnight_lightning]

Thanks lfti, good stuff.