The Beginning: My Introduction to Selfhosting via Synology NAS

My Journey to Selfhosting Began with a Synology NAS Link to heading

It was mid-2021 when I began to consider the need for an alternative method to archive my personal data. At the time, I was about a week from the birth of my first son and like most people, I had all of my photos saved to Google Photos and syncing to Google Drive. I was starting to run out of storage and two things crossed my mind almost at the exact same time. First, did I want all of my personal photographs, including ones of my impending child, to be stored in “The Cloud”? Second, there must be an easier way to save photos than to buy more cloud storage. And this was it, the moment I would enter the rabbit hole of self hosting. I started searching for hard drives where I can save my photos locally. I had the typical USB-powered external 1TB HDD that you can buy at the store, but wanted something more “convenient.” Nothing seemed to come more highly recommended than Synology’s line of small, consumer Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliances.