NAS - Seagate vs. Synology

[howard08560]

I have multiple PCs and two Macs on my home network and I am looking for an efficient backup solution to replace my current scheme of backing each computer up on individual hard drives. I think NAS might be the answer.

I was looking at the Seagate NAS110, but then I began reading on this forum about Synology and other competitive NAS products.

I have a few newbie questions:

Is Synology a better choice from a software and hardware perspective than Seagate?
Does the Synology product require special hard drives or will any SATA drive work with the product?
Can either product backup/restore to both PCs and Macs on the same network or do the different file systems on the clients (NTFS and Mac OS Extended Journaled) not permit this?

I would appreciate any comments/experiences from users of these products in a mixed PC/Mac environment.

Thanks.

 

[r_manic]

What exactly are you backing up, and how much? If all your backing are office documents, maybe all that's needed is a 1TB external usb hard drive? If you have complete network access, you can even pull the files from the workstations to yours, then copy them to the hard drive on your computer, right?

 

[dseeley_123]

@howard - I am using a Synology DS509+ and just bought another 1010+. They are great products with professional support and OS. I have never used the Seagate NAS product but I can wholeheartedly recommend Synology.

Regarding drives - the world of NAS Raid 5 and drive selection is a tricky one. I am populating our new NAS with 1 TB drives because the 1.5 and 2 TB drives appear to have some voodoo in them for RAID 5 use.

 

[r_manic]

Best answer selected by r_manic.