Nathan Reynolds

If your media library keeps expanding and you are running out of space on your current storage, it is time to consider a 6-bay NAS. A 6-bay NAS gives you the capacity to store massive amounts of photos, videos, and documents while keeping everything protected with RAID redundancy. For families and content creators with growing … Read more

I spent three weeks running the UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus and Synology DS925+ side by side in my home office, streaming 4K content, running Docker containers, and pushing backup jobs across both. The UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus vs Synology DS925+ debate has become one of the most-asked questions in home NAS circles, and for good … Read more

I started running Docker containers on my NAS three years ago, and I have not looked back since. The ability to spin up Pi-hole, Home Assistant, Jellyfin, and Nextcloud on a single low-power box has changed how I run my home lab. Finding the best NAS for running Docker containers, however, is not as simple … Read more

Running virtual machines on a NAS changed my entire approach to homelab computing. Instead of maintaining separate servers for Plex, Home Assistant, and development environments, I consolidated everything into a single, efficient box. After testing 6 NAS units over several months, I found the best NAS for hosting virtual machines in . A NAS designed … Read more

I have spent the better part of two years moving large video projects across a home network, and nothing changed my workflow faster than switching to a NAS with 10GbE. A single gigabit connection tops out around 110 MB/s in real use, which means a 200 GB card of 4K footage takes roughly 30 minutes … Read more

Struggling to pick the best diskless NAS for a TrueNAS build? The mistake I see over and over is buying a slick consumer enclosure, unboxing it, and then discovering TrueNAS will not install on it. A locked bootloader, an ARM CPU, or a Marvell SoC can end the project before it starts. A diskless NAS … Read more

Mac users have relied on Time Machine for years as the go-to backup solution. But with Apple’s discontinuation of Time Capsule and the shift from AFP to SMB3 protocol, finding reliable network-attached storage for Time Machine backups has become essential. A dedicated NAS for Time Machine gives you automatic, centralized backups that protect against drive … Read more

After spending three years running a home server rack in my office, I learned that finding the right rackmount NAS makes all the difference. The best rackmount NAS for a home server rack needs to balance power, noise levels, and depth requirements that enterprise gear often ignores. I tested eight different models in my 12U … Read more

Every month, another cloud photo service changes its pricing, terms, or feature set. Self-hosting Immich on your own NAS puts you back in control of your photos, videos, and memories, without subscriptions or third-party scanning. Immich is an open-source Google Photos alternative that runs as a stack of Docker containers (server, microservices, machine learning, PostgreSQL, … Read more

We spent three months running Nextcloud AIO on eight different NAS enclosures, timing photo backups, file syncs, and remote uploads before settling on the models that actually make self-hosting enjoyable. If you are looking for the best NAS for self-hosting Nextcloud, the short version is this: get an x86 machine with at least 8GB of … Read more