hi @bj! Great to see you and @david on here.

Awesome. I have another question, but I'll throw it into a diff thread as you've pretty much resolved my thoughts on this one so far.

Okay... so I have been searching for a great home/smb NAS system.

For my home uses, here is what's driving it:

• Large family: 2 adult, 5 kids (means TONS of media -- videos/photography)
• My wife and I are both photographers (30-50mb raw image files)
• Plex Media Server (for our video library, plus family photo stuff)
• Possible corporate backup for my software company (big maybe here)

So... for home stuff, I want to be able to collect data from:

• 2 Macbook Pros (both with 1TB drives)
• 1 iMac (with a *1TB)
• Multiple iPhones and iPads (all with 128gb storage)

I want to do regular backups of these devices to the NAS, and have a central image/video repository for the family. In addition, we want a general file share... In other words, in some instances (like the video library, central fileshare for the family, or the image/video repository) this will be the primary copy of the data (we'll focus on funneling this content onto the NAS and then backing it up after. In other instances, like a timemachine backup of one of our main computers, the NAS is the backup.

My budget is fairly large for a home NAS setup...

I started by looking at standard solutions like Synology stuff:

• DS1517+ -- but then I read about all their CPU problems
• Also the DS1817+

But I sorta got turned off of Synology for some reason... their weird Hybrid RAID, CPU issues, etc... (even though I know people who love them)

Then I started looking at QNAP systems like:

• YVS-873

Then I starting thinking about FreeNAS and a DIY route... I am a former software engineer (now in management)... so I love the idea of a project, but realistically I'm somewhat limited in my time. I've been stewing over a NAS solution for my home for months reading up on what I want to do, and then came across this forum and wanted to get ur advice. Would love your take @scottalanmiller...

@scottalanmiller So let's get specific, here's my next post: My Home NAS