Storage & NAS Guides

Everything you need to know about home storage: RAID levels, NAS hardware, file sharing protocols, media servers, and backup strategies. Whether you are buying your first NAS or designing a multi-drive RAIDZ2 pool, these guides cover the concepts and tradeoffs clearly.

RAID & Redundancy

What Is RAID?

How RAID combines drives for redundancy or performance — and why RAID is not a backup.

RAID 0 vs 1 vs 5 vs 6 vs 10 Explained

Every major RAID level compared on fault tolerance, capacity efficiency, and read/write speed.

NAS & Cloud

NAS vs Cloud Storage

Five-year cost comparison, privacy differences, and which is right for your household storage needs.

Synology DSM vs QNAP QTS

Compare the two leading NAS operating systems on UI, security record, Docker support, and ecosystem.

Media Servers

Jellyfin vs Plex

Free and open-source Jellyfin vs feature-rich Plex — which media server should you run on your NAS?

How to Set Up a Plex Media Server

Install Plex, organize media files, configure libraries, and optimize for direct play.

File Sharing & Protocols

SMB vs NFS for Home Network

When to use Windows SMB shares vs Linux NFS mounts on a home NAS and how to configure both.

iSCSI vs NFS vs SMB

Block vs file storage protocols compared for production and home use.

S3 Protocol Explained

Object storage semantics and the de facto standard API.

Filesystems & Data Integrity

Filesystems for NAS

ext4, XFS, Btrfs, ZFS compared for NAS deployments.

Encryption at Rest

Disk, filesystem, and application encryption — where each layer protects.

Deduplication Explained

Block-level, file-level dedupe — and the RAM cost.

RAID vs Erasure Coding

Two redundancy approaches at different scales.

Backup & Tiering

The 3-2-1 Backup Strategy Explained

Three copies, two media types, one offsite — how to implement this proven backup rule at home.

Snapshots vs Backups

Why snapshots are not backups and where each fits.

Hot vs Cold Storage

Storage tiers, retrieval fees, and minimum-duration traps.