Need an easy to use NAS.

[ingeborgdot]

With people's experience using a NAS which one seems to be the easiest to use? I am getting this for a friend of mine and he wants some things to be able to do. He wants to be able to access with his iPad at home and on the road. His co worker needs to be able to access it when he is on the road also from his laptop. The user interface needs to be user friendly if that is possible. 4 bay would be good so raid 5 can be used. Anyone care to give their 2cents. Thanks

 

[stevech]

Beware RAID is not a backup! Step one in NAS purchase planning is how will you back it up?
I chose a 2 bay for price reasons, given drive capacities are high now. So 2 drives, 2 independent volumes (not RAID), volume 1 gets backed up to volume 2 once a day by NAS utilities. And a high capacity USB3 drive is the anti-theft-of-NAS backup.

Easiest to use? But with internet access to files and media streaming? Hmm. I don't have experience with WD Cloud. It's rudimentary but highly marketed. So too, Netgear ReadyNAS.

On this forum, many or most small NAS owners have Synology or QNAP. Try their on line demo logins.

 

[ingeborgdot]

I understand that Raid is not a backup. It is a hell of a lot more secure than just having one drive on a computer with your information though.

 

[thiggins]

I've used WD MyCloud for years now. Easy to use and has reliable remote access that works through firewalls and doesn't require router port forwarding, UPnP or dynamic DNS.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/32643-wd-my-cloud-dl4100-reviewed
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/32741-wd-my-cloud-ex4100-reviewed

I've done remote access from Windows laptop and Android phones and tablets, not iOS devices. But there are apps for both platforms, mobile and desktop.
http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=wdmc_afa&language=en

 

[stevech]

I understand that Raid is not a backup. It is a hell of a lot more secure than just having one drive on a computer with your information though.

3-2-1 strategy for backup. You probably know what that means.
I rank drive failure low in the list of risks of how to lose data. And RAID protects only from that single risk.