Hey folks, over the past years I changed all my stuff step by step from big tech to open source and europe alternatives. I came from Google Workspace to iCloud with advanced protection to Proton to kSuite. (I left Proton cause of the lack of webdav, caldav, carddav)
I did this with all my stuff. From Instagram, X, Facebook, to Fediverse. And I like it.
Now I heard that Swiss is planning to add laws which are able to identify me, even as a German, and have all the rights to read my drive stuff if they want to. It’s not possible for me to trust them anymore.
So they choice is really thin out there. I could host my own NextCloud instance, and I did A LOT of times on my webspace and every time an updates comes, it brakes and I loose all my stuff. I don’t want this and I don’t want the overhead to fix this stuff or make sure, I can go back. 99% of all updates didn’t even let me login anymore. No login at all. Whatever … I thought about a NAS. Before the NAS, there is an OpenWRT router with AdGuard Home and Wireguard VPN.
So. Is this the end for my chase of a trustworthy Contact, Calender, Drive? If I buy this, I am on the most independent stuff possible? (I don’t want a big server or something like this - I just want to settle down and don’t switch companies because their country decided to get the next NSA).
And if so: Which one is good in terms of privacy? Synology? QNAP? I would buy a 2 bay NAS where one drive is the clone of the other, so I can change drives, if one is dead, without worrying at all.
Thanks for reading, excuse me for my bad english, and thanks for your ideas in advance.
A nas is just a crippled home server. Just run a home server and it can act as your nas, too, and not be crippled. You don’t need a rack mount solution just build a pc in your price range (I built an i3 server this year for around $200 that will blow any NAS out of the fucking water) and install the appropriate OS/Software. All it does is run plex now, but I’m thinking of stealing some of your privacy focused ideas maybe I’ll setup next cloud, too :)
You should be able to use some form of symmetric encryption on a cloud storage.
You could even do restic backup to a cloud storage like Icedrive.
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It’s a bit mortifying to admit, particularly given my tendencies toward data hoarding and building hardware for the long haul, but I’ve historically bypassed the whole NAS concept. My methodology has been straightforward: a motherboard with sufficient SATA ports (eight or so) and a collection of HDDs crammed into a standard desktop tower. It works, technically. But I’m now hearing a lot of chatter about NAS solutions, and I’m wondering what I’m missing. What’s the compelling reason to introduce networking into this equation when I already have direct access to all my drives? What are the practical advantages of a NAS that justify the added complexity and cost?
I doing the same thing but someone told me about HBA cards and that’s what I’d do next time I upgrade. Way more affordable flexible and efficient then trying to find a mobo with 8 data ports.
The biggest perk for me for a dedicated NAS is redundancy and hot swap ability.
It is inevitable that a few of your spinning disks will die and need to be replaced, a proper dedicated NAS box will let you pop out and swap that drive and then the NAS software will rebuild the array for you with no data loss.
Obviously you can do most all of this with a normal desktop, but it’s generally easier with the right hardware.
I custom built mine running Truenas which was way cheaper then a dedicated NAS, but also I’m an IT turbo nerd so I wanted to do the whole thing myself.
I have a dedicated server running nextcloud. So basically what a NAS does as well, without the proprietary part.
The compelling reason is simple. I can move data to nextcloud that I want to have a backup of (the data is nextcloud is so again backed up, using 3,2,1 principe). Reinstalling my operating system (Linux) is also much easier, I’m not afraid I might lose photos for example.
And sharing. I use nextcloud to easily share the data I want to share. Either within the household or even outside of that.
Maybe not what you want, but I’m running Nextcloud on a Raspberry Pi (4B to be precise). I would highly recommend that if you’re looking for a cloud-like experience with auto-uploads etc. Plus you can host all your calendars and contacts via it too. Just make sure you’re not running it from the SD card (use an external SSD), as I had some trouble with bricked SDs.
Hence I also recommend bananapi for example with a dedicated sata connector or nvme connection.
Self-built.
Personnaly I hate all the companies that are saying they are trust worthy because they are swiss, but nevermind this is not your question. Personnaly I wouldn’t recommended you at all a “prebuilt” NAS as later you will be stuck in a proprietary env that not gonna serve you well. So buy a cheap PC out of eBay and customize it to your needs
Edit : typo
I totally agree with your take here. I’d also like to add that I went the Synology route and since it is restricted to my local network, it did not require the creation of an account. Seems like it’s possible to be an anonymous Synology user for now.
Syncthing
Build your own NAS. It doesn’t need to be quite as beefy as a gaming computer or personal computer, but a lot of companies that make NAS devices are making them more and more proprietary.
So PC with TrueNAS or Unraid or something similar. Don’t get sucked into an ecosystem that won’t let you use your own drives.
Seems a good idea. Thank you for your help :)
Depends what you want to spend and how much you want to do with it.
If you’ve got the technical ability and interest, look into building one yourself (they’re just computers, just usually with a lot of storage) and running FreeNAS or UnRAID as the OS.
If you want a bit more of a plug and play solution, both Synology and QNAP are good brands. I’d also recommend over-provisioning the NAS in terms of bays. Sure 2 drives might be fine today, but it’s nice to have room for expansion down the line.
Whatever you choose, you’ll be able to run nextcloud and similar
(Also your English is great, don’t sweat it!)
Thank you for your comment :) really helpful!
Can you provide a reference to the Swiss privacy law you refer to? Also on Infomaniak and curious.
In French sorry, but it should be easy to auto translate
Or the paywall TDG with an article that says: Proton ready to quit Geneva if the confederation goes through its plan
TLDR: The Federal Council (aka Bern) wants to add a category for services like Proton and Threema in its surveillance law. They want to modernize this law to include newer forms of communication, possibly giving themselves more power over it to request data if they deem it necessary (opposite to today where they need a court order and companies can go to court to fight and refuse to give the data).
Thank you for the links :)
The simple answer is: Yes! If you want to be completely sure no one is accessing your data - now or in the future - then you have to host it yourself. There are companies and countries that are more trustworthy/safe than others, but you never know how politics will change.
I’ve been using a Synology NAS for ages, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it! Especially if you don’t have that much experience with Linux and servers, but also if you want something that’s more Plug-n-Play and stable, or you want access to some of their proprietary services or really good customer support. Just make sure you get one that supports Docker, because that’s how you’ll install most if not all of the 3rd party services.
That being said, building one yourself can also be great fun, and you do have that one additional level of control if everything is open-source and installed by you.
Thank you so much for your comment! Really helpful!
Well you could do that but honestly a NAS is “just” yet another computer with a specific form factor. So … do buy one if you want to but nothing is preventing you from grabbing whatever hardware you have around, e.g. old laptop, unused SBC like a Raspberry Pi, desktop gathering dust, put Docker or Podman on it, get going. If you want access from the outside you can use TailScale (easiest to setup), WireGuard indeed or OpenVPN.
Yes IMHO having your own data on your own NAS where you entirely control access (e.g. LAN only, no VPN even unless you go on holiday) is the safest and most reliable.
kSuite. (I left Proton cause of the lack of webdav, caldav, carddav)
Interesting, I’ll check that because indeed for now the support is not non-existent yet still not good enough IMHO.
It’s not even the form factor. You can build a NAS out of anything. Desktop cubes, rack servers, regular desktop towers, even a laptop. Some chassis just might give you features like hot-swap bays.
Afaik you can only use their apps on phone and import everything on desktop with their bridge. This is not enough. For example, I use WebDav to backup my encrypted Joplin notes. Not possible with Proton.
If that’s all you’re after (Contact, Calender, Drive) you may well be able to just plug a hard drive into your OpenWRT router (it has https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/radicale2 which does caldav and carddav), work out sharing (apparently at least samba works) work out how to back up the drive (plug in two, mirror and unplug one, RAID is not a backup) and call it a day. I don’t have one, but it seems likely doable… Tailscale in when you’re out and about…
This is what I use. Openwrt with a USB HDD attached to it. Radicale2 deals with caldav stuff. Samba4 shares the HDD over the network. Zerotier gets me connected to the home network when out and about. Syncthing on my router and phone. When I charge my phone it automatically backs up my pictures and documents folder into the HDD. Separate offline copy of the HDD every few months for backup. Not as fast or dedicated as NAS but cost effective solution. Openwrt solves most of my networking needs.
This sounds awesome! My OpenWRT Router is arriving on monday, maybe this post in general will be obsolet -_-"
All of this stuff uses up a lot of space, around 200MB, which is greater than the standard root partition size in Openwrt. I run it on an x86 box (PC Engines APU2) and the internal SSD is 16GB. Every update I need to expand the root partition size to be able to fit all the packages previously installed.
This post and it’s comments are likely helping lots of people either way! :) I know I’ve learned some things from it.
Perfect!
