Question for my Technology Advisory Panel!

We are wanting to set up an inexpensive external storage that can be accessed through our home wireless network.

We want to be able to back up both laptops to it as well as store lots of old files and pictures.

Any recommendations on an inexpensive option that is easy for a novice to set up?

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

If you have Macs and other Apple products, I think the easiest solution is to just buy an Apple Time Capsule. But I'm not 100% sure if it's anything besides a backup.

Else, there are a bunch of solutions. The WD My Cloud looks pretty easy and cheap: http://amzn.com/B00EVVGAFI

OOPS... stupid me for not providing details... we do not use Macs.... we have Dell laptops... only Apple products are our iPads and partners' iPhone.

The only thing you also need to be aware of is that you want a backup of that backup--preferably off-site; something like Backblaze, CrashPlan, OneDrive, Dropbox, or SugarSync.

Another idea would be something like the WD My Cloud device to perform a local backup (which can be scheduled to be performed automatically). Then get an Office 365 family subscription for $100/yr. That will give you unlimited storage on OneDrive--which you can set to automagically backup everything on your laptops.

There used to be a good Windows solution - Windows Home Server (I have WHS 2011). Backs up 6 family laptops/ PCs and stores stuff and media. But MicroSoft's current lineup have only business server (read expensive) options.

I _think_ one of the self-help/ support sites had articles on getting similar facilities out of Windows 8 - try wegotserved.com

The MyCloud products from WD are a good choice. They'll work in the home, but also let you access files away from home.

Additionally, they have apps for iOS so you can remotely access the content on them.

I'm another happy WHS user with its ability to schedule nightly backups from all our PCs.

Unfortunately, you cannot buy a preconfigured machine with the newest software version which is Windows Server 2012 Essentials R2 and setting that one up is non trivial and expensive. Windows 8 can be used as a server OS to save money over Essentials but will not pull the data from the client PCs for backup nor can you do "bare metal" restores of said client PCs without buying 3rd party software.

I like and use the WD MYCLOUD home NAS unit it is easy to use and you can setup separate folders (shares) for each computer. I have the 4TB unit and have 4 different machines using it. One of the things I like about it is you can expand the base if 4TB is not enough just plug in a WD external hard drive into the MYCLOUD and expand your capacity, I am thinking about adding a 6TB unit to my 4TB base.

Others have stated that you will also need a offsite copy and I agree, I just disagree on how to get it there. What I do is the most critical data is written to another external drive (locally) and that drive is stored offsite (repeated as necessary). If your storage requirements are low cloud works and can scale for you. In my case I do not want to think how long it would take to get 4TB into the cloud and back out. Or how much that might cost, in my case the scale that concerns me is bandwidth.

As someone who used to run a WHS at home (on the good old HP machine), I don't think it is a suitable solution for an average home user, especially with its limited support nowadays.

Abandoning WHS was a really big mistake by Microsoft. With a little more work, they could have owned the home NAS market. But things went downhill when they gave up on the Drive Extender

I have this plugged into my home router. Works great.

http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskS.../dp/B005YW7OLM

one option to consider is RAID with 2 removable drives, giving you two copies of backup

Would Pogoplug and freeware backup software be a good solution?

(Still loving my Pogoplug that ScottC put me onto -- it's one of my three current backup strategies -- Mozy online, Mozy backup to USB drive, and backup to Pogoplug)

I like keep a backup on an ioSafe fireproof waterproof drive, I then back this up to a portable USB drive that I store at the bank, and another copy done automatically through Carbonite.

wharvey, what's your price point?

I think it's important to distinguish between true backup vs file sharing. These are two different use cases and I recommend thinking about what you really want to achieve.

I recommend getting a real cloud backup solution for Windows users - something like Carbonite, Mozy, Crashplan, Backblaze, Livedrive,
SOS, or Amazon Glacier + good windows Glacier backup client. I use Crashplan.

I also recommend having a cloud storage solution like Google Drive, OneDrive Amazon Cloud Drive, Dropbox, etc. You use this as a file server in the cloud. I've also toyed with on-premise cloud storage - specifically Pogoplug. The Western Digital solution is also credible. My Asus router also acts as a file server and as an ftp server for when I'm on the road (though I haven't actually set it up yet). But the top tier home solution for local storage accessible on the road is Synology.

I must also admit to running a 30 TB Unraid server at home.

Another ex-WHS user here. I've used both versions of WHS and have since moved to Server Essentials R2. I use CloudBerry for my backups and have 2 nightly backups configured: The first is a backup to a local storage array, and when that backup finishes another duplicate backup begins but this one backs up to Microsoft Azure blob storage. So I always have 2 current backups, one local for fast recovery and another in the cloud for emergencies.