JC has a ton of pictures on his computer and they aren't organized. It's a real mess on his hard drive. How can he organize them in the Cloud so that they are not only backed up but easier to access? Leo says that Google Photos is ideal, but they only backup unlimited hires JPEGs, not the uncompressed RAW versions that JC wants. But it's a good backup to the backup.
Steve Martin also uses a Windows computer and an iPad, and often they don't talk well together. He's also been getting a lot of his emails being routed into SPAM. He's had to physically move them back to the Inbox, and he's worried that he'll miss an important email from business or friends. Leo says that the SPAM filters have gotten so good, that they're now starting to get false positives as ISPs get really aggressive with the spam filters.
Adriana has a Synology NAS and she's had it for five years. She's ready for a new model with a little more "oomph" to it. Leo says she can go up to 32 drives in Synology NAS models. The naming configuration is based on the number of bays, expansion, and the year. So a Synology 2720 is a two-bay device, expandable to seven, made in 2020. She can also configure two drives for redundancy. Leo recommends a Synology 1520. Or the 418. That will house 5 drives.
Charles has a pair of Synology NAS storage devices and one was hit by ransomware. Leo suggests completely format it and rebuild and reinstall everything from the other backup. But Charles wants to know how it happened. Leo says that once he logs into the NAS, it's on the network, and can be bitten. Leo says that if his Synology is visible to the public internet, then he'll need to really limit it to things he really needs. The more services he turns on, the more exposed he is. Leo turns on SSH to keep it protected. Also, turn on IP blocking after a certain number of login attempts.
Kyle has a home theater PC loaded with media and backups on ten different hard drives that he swaps out. Leo calls that a JBOD (just a bunch of discs). But Kyle is having an issue with the drives getting errors while erasing and starting a new backup. Leo says that the flaw could also be in the backups themselves. It also changed to MBR (master boot record) and cut the drive storage in half. He also can't reformat it with GUID using Windows 10. Is there a special utility he can use? Leo says there is an MBR to GUID command in Windows.
Michael says the time has come to let go of his Apple Airport and update to a new router. Leo says new mesh technologies do a better job and Apple hasn't kept the Airport design up to date. But Michael uses Time Machine to back up his Mac. Do any of the mesh systems offer USB support? Leo suggests going with Network Attached Storage or NAS and backup that way. That will work with any router. Leo prefers Synology, and you'll also need to buy the hard drives to put into them. A good two drive model would work great, and it supports Time Machine. It also backs up to the cloud.
Scott is having issues with his Synology NAS. He can't access it remotely. Leo says it sounds like a settings issue and he recommends going into the router settings and see if the router can see it. Then reserve the DNS number that's listed for that Synology. If it doesn't, there could be a problem with your router or with a power surge that fried your board. But that's unlikely.
Tony has a Synology NAS, but the public folder disappeared from his Windows PC. And Windows won't let him browse to it. Leo says SMB has to be enabled for the folder to be discovered. It's the networking protocol that Windows uses. It will also give you a password challenge. But once you input the password, Windows should remember it.
Ivan has a 2 drive NAS that has files he needs, but the RAID 1 hard drive are reading as corrupted. He believes it is the corruption of one, synced to the other. Leo says that the hardware is probably fine, there's just corruption in the files themselves. But it could be a physical issue making it worth using SpinRite to repair it. However, if the corruption has spread, that points to a software error in the files, not the hardware itself.
Brett is worried he's been hacked. He used UNRAID to create his own Network Attached Storage. But he recently got a message that he had 114 login attempts on his network. Leo says that it is very common. Any server that is online and attached to the internet will be attacked. Mostly by a bot that is programmed to look for servers online. Make sure you have security features that only allow logins from approved regions, IP addresses, or from your work. There should also be a feature that will lock out an IP address that keeps trying to log in.
