Question Deciding between a NAS and an external hard drive?

[LucaFire]

Hello Everyone!

To explain, I currently upload and store videos for my team. Currently, I have them saved through Dropbox while syncing to PC, in order to have both a local archive and an online one that the team can access remotely. Unfortunately, I only bought a 2TB HDD and now I'm at about 1.5 TB with the Dropbox (which I can plan to expand to 3TB and possibly 5TB) and 1.6/7 on the HDD (as it shares some space with the Photos file on my system - the other folders are on different HDDs*).

I was wondering, for long term considerations, would it be better to just get an external storage device that acts as a normal Hard Drive and install the Dropbox client on that? Or should I invest in a NAS?
If I were to choose a NAS, would I be able to install Dropbox on it? Plus, if I wanted to, could the NAS act as an external hard drive instead of purely as a NAS?

Thanks for any recommendations


*(I currently have 1 Nvme SSD for the OS, 1 SATA SSD for Games and General Files, 1 2TB HDD for videos, and 1 2TB HDD for personal videos and gaming videos)

 

[USAFRet]

From what you describe and your "team", a dedicated NAS would seem to be the answer.

QNAP or Synology.

QNAP and DropBox, from 2019...

QNAP Hybrid Cloud Solutions with Dropbox Support Facilitate Effortless File Sharing and Collaboration | QNAP

www.qnap.com

Another thing you did not mention was backups.
As in...a second/third copy of your stuff.

DropBox can be good for file sharing, but if it is the only copy of critical data, that is not good.

 

[USAFRet]

And my QNAP from 2017 natively speaks to DropBox.
As well as Azure, Amazon, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc, etc, etc...

Nothing you have to "install", it is natively a function in the OS.

 

[LucaFire]

From what you describe and your "team", a dedicated NAS would seem to be the answer.

Another thing you did not mention was backups.
As in...a second/third copy of your stuff.

DropBox can be good for file sharing, but if it is the only copy of critical data, that is not good.

First of all, I'd like to award you the best answer but unfortunately, I don't have the "check" option on the right hand side.

As for the backups, I've been using the physical files saved from Dropbox onto my local hard drive as my version of the backup. What would be a better option that you would recommend? Or would having a NAS in RAID already provide an extra level of redundancy.

I currently have Blackblaze as a general backup

 

[USAFRet]

First of all, I'd like to award you the best answer but unfortunately, I don't have the "check" option on the right hand side.

As for the backups, I've been using the physical files saved from Dropbox onto my local hard drive as my version of the backup. What would be a better option that you would recommend? Or would having a NAS in RAID already provide an extra level of redundancy.

I currently have Blackblaze as a general backup

Its not the RAID in a NAS that is the backup.

This is a common misconception.

Rather, you can have the NAS run a copy function to another volume in the NAS.
And then also out to DSropBox and/or Backblaze.

RAID is used for physical drive redundancy and uptime, not data redundancy.
The OS and the user sees but one copy of a file.

The basic concept of backups is 3-2-1.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite or otherwise unavailable.

So, this is what I might do...

2 volumes in the NAS, whatever size you need.
One of them is a central space for all your working files. All of you can access that space simultaneously, do whatever you need.
On a schedule, the NAS backs up everything to Volume #2. This is an actual second copy, not part of a RAID.
Also on a schedule, the NAS backs up to DropBox/Backblaze.

On an automated schedule, hands off.


(and I changed the thread type to allow BA selection)