The original post: /r/homelab by /u/kaitlyn2004 on 2024-12-28 05:10:17.

I have an ancient synology NAS that will need replacing soon.

The idea of something like a costly DS923 + multiple 14tb+ drives adds up quick… and isn’t so exciting.

I mostly remember buying my synology to have network-accessed storage for multiple computers, being able to pool the disks into one large storage share, and as a primary backup.

But my question, I think, is mostly about specifically RAID. What do I gain with something like a RAID 10 vs having a shared external drive + another external drive that gets backed up to.

I always hear raid is not a backup. Now with a single drive coming in as big as 24TB - far more than exceeding my current+foreseeable future needs… I’m not totally remembering why even set up a whole RAID array vs one large disk + a backup disk (+backup to cloud)?