Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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My personal data (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by jjmontuori@alien.top to c/datahoarder@selfhosted.forum

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For the past seven-eight year I have been using a WD My Cloud EX4100 24TB and some 10TB external drives as redundant storage for my data. I have about 10TB in total currently, including backups of cell phones, photos and videos etc. This is all stuff that I want to make sure it's preserved forever.

Something occurred within the past few weeks when transferring some data from the NAS to a new WD 22TB Elements (of which I now have two). I had to format the new external drives to be case sensitive, otherwise the files would not copy successfully due to conflicts, according to my mac.

I then attempted to change the RAID format of the NAS to give myself some more space (from 10 to 5). What's strange is that when trying to move the data from a WD 22TB Elements back to the EX4100, I also encountered case sensitivity issues, and was unable to copy my data back. I spent several days using different Python scripts to try and handle the file name discrepancies, but it was far easier to just format my two new WD 22TB Elements to HFPS case sensitive and call it a day.

Now I plan to keep my data on the two WD 22TB Elements and Backblaze for the time being. My question to you all is can you recommend a NAS device with at least four bays that is affordable, reliable, and as user-friendly as possible. Also, let me not forget my main issue, case sensitivity. My EX4100, although seemingly previously capable of storing my files without issue, is now case insensitive and that's not something I can reformat in Disk Utility or on the WD dashboard. I would certainly want my next device to be able to handle whatever I throw at it.

I'm not sure if Synology devices would give me the same issues or not but I would love to have a NAS as an additional back up. I appreciate all of your time and suggestions.

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[–] H2CO3HCO3@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

u/jjmontuori, the 'case sensitivity' issue seems more of a software/setting than anything else, especially since you've been getting it with your Drives, then NAS, so you should first look into your MAC, what type of settings you have, which I'm pretty sure if you dig in and search, maybe google search as well, you'll find the setting that you need to change to remove that constraint.

With regard to 4 Bay NAS(es)... any of the known brands, whehter Buffalo Tech, Asustor, Synology, QNAP, etc, again known brands are a pretty save option to go for.

Keep in mind, NO NAS OEM is 'perfect' per say... each has it's pros and cons and depending on your use case, you have then the options to choose from.

Now, if you want to have more of a comparison type of thing, then I'd suggest you take a look at a youtube channel called NAscompares (https://www.youtube.com/@nascompares/videos) and check out his videos. There you have good comparisons between brands and models and you can select what best suits your needs, budget and go from there.

[–] jjmontuori@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Thank you for your response. I have been down that road and spent countless hours trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, it seems like an issue with the NAS. WD has their own software, and it is not as customizable as something like Synology. My pair of external drives are formatted to be case sensitive and that is fine. I will take a look at the videos you recommended. Thank you.