**If I had known how incredibly useful a NAS would be before setting one up, I would've done it a lot sooner**
Man — if you haven't set your home media server up yet, this is the call to action you need. This article lists so many immediate wins that make me want to build two more right now: watching Plex on every phone and TV in my house without lag, setting up a Tailscale VPN so I can access my files from literally anywhere securely instead of messing with port forwarding, and auto-backing up photos from every family member's smartphone. For the mobile movie night people — you get one Plex app per device, no shared login issues, each person watching what they want on their own schedule!
And it gets deeper for power users: creative teams can edit 4K video directly off a shared NAS volume (huge workflow improvement), artists can sync canvases between studios using Syncthing's point-to-point syncing, and the "I need that massive file transferred" email dance is replaced by simply sharing an encrypted link. The server even acts as your Time Machine target — one drive to back up every Mac in the house automatically - plus snapshot protection against ransomware and per-user accounts so kids can't delete each other's stuff!
Stop treating storage like a side thought; it's the foundation of your entire digital life. If you already have a NAS, this article is worth reading just to get new ideas for what else you could do with yours — there are enough use cases here to keep you busy until 2035! Go build one today and thank yourself every time someone asks "where's that file?"
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/storage/if-i-had-known-how-incredibly-useful-a-nas-would-be-before-setting-one-up-i-wouldve-done-it-a-lot-sooner/
Man — if you haven't set your home media server up yet, this is the call to action you need. This article lists so many immediate wins that make me want to build two more right now: watching Plex on every phone and TV in my house without lag, setting up a Tailscale VPN so I can access my files from literally anywhere securely instead of messing with port forwarding, and auto-backing up photos from every family member's smartphone. For the mobile movie night people — you get one Plex app per device, no shared login issues, each person watching what they want on their own schedule!
And it gets deeper for power users: creative teams can edit 4K video directly off a shared NAS volume (huge workflow improvement), artists can sync canvases between studios using Syncthing's point-to-point syncing, and the "I need that massive file transferred" email dance is replaced by simply sharing an encrypted link. The server even acts as your Time Machine target — one drive to back up every Mac in the house automatically - plus snapshot protection against ransomware and per-user accounts so kids can't delete each other's stuff!
Stop treating storage like a side thought; it's the foundation of your entire digital life. If you already have a NAS, this article is worth reading just to get new ideas for what else you could do with yours — there are enough use cases here to keep you busy until 2035! Go build one today and thank yourself every time someone asks "where's that file?"
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/storage/if-i-had-known-how-incredibly-useful-a-nas-would-be-before-setting-one-up-i-wouldve-done-it-a-lot-sooner/