Home iCloud.

[Liver]

What’s the easiest way to have a home iCloud-esq device?


Is it Synology or something else? I have 4 iPhones that need to be backed up without much intervention.

I already have the family plan with 200 gigs so what I really need is photo back up. The Apple iCloud can handle the rest.

 

[SamirD]

Generally most people will go the NAS route and synology is the name most use. I wouldn't bother with anything exotic like a 4-bay or anything fancy. Any 2-bay that's running the latest DSM7 should work fine and then just wall it off from the Internet so it 'just works' and backups occur when you're home.

You can have 'remote access' to it and stuff like that similar to icloud, but it's a security attack vector and imo isn't worth the risk. Nothing LAN-only can get hacked unless someone is on your LAN and that makes an attack far less likely.

 

[griff30]

Generally most people will go the NAS route and synology is the name most use. I wouldn't bother with anything exotic like a 4-bay or anything fancy. Any 2-bay that's running the latest DSM7 should work fine and then just wall it off from the Internet so it 'just works' and backups occur when you're home.

You can have 'remote access' to it and stuff like that similar to icloud, but it's a security attack vector and imo isn't worth the risk. Nothing LAN-only can get hacked unless someone is on your LAN and that makes an attack far less likely.

Not to deride your opinion at all. Some of us on this forum have spare, slightly outdated computers that we could convert into a personal cloud server.
Is there a Windows, Linux, or similar software program that can turn the entire computer into an iCloud-like server?
I see the 2Bay Synology is around $300- Without hard drives. Load it up, and you'll have nearly $ 1,000 in a personal cloud service. Great, but as before, some of us have everything already, sans software that works on Apple, Android, MS.
Any suggestions on say a Windows program that could be used to create a cloud storage for hardware most of us already have?
Thanks and as before, not trying to say your opinion or Synology products are bad, but why not recycle what most of us already have?

 

[SamirD]

Not to deride your opinion at all. Some of us on this forum have spare, slightly outdated computers that we could convert into a personal cloud server.
Is there a Windows, Linux, or similar software program that can turn the entire computer into an iCloud-like server?
I see the 2Bay Synology is around $300- Without hard drives. Load it up, and you'll have nearly $ 1,000 in a personal cloud service. Great, but as before, some of us have everything already, sans software that works on Apple, Android, MS.
Any suggestions on say a Windows program that could be used to create a cloud storage for hardware most of us already have?
Thanks and as before, not trying to say your opinion or Synology products are bad, but why not recycle what most of us already have?

Yep, totally can do that too. I believe TrueNAS is kinda the default go-to atm. You can install it on nearly anything as it is its own OS and basically works just like a synology.

There's also the xpenology project that basically allows you to use any hardware to run synolgy's DSM. I know it worked with DSM6, but not sure if it works with the latest DSM7 or whatever is the newest with synology.

Another way to get around the cost is to simply buy used. I've picked up 2-bay synology units for <$100. At that point the cost is maybe worth it for it to 'just works' once you put in the drives.

 

[griff30]

Thank you!