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The cloud was supposed to be that invisible safety net, the place where everything important went to stay forever. All my photos, documents, and files were backed up (read: scattered) across different cloud services like Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, and others. While it did give me the convenience and reliability of accessing my files from anywhere in the world, my NAS showed me how it didn’t make sense to put the cloud at the center of my storage system.

The permanence illusion

It was an illusion after all

Like a lot of people, Google Drive was at the center of my data management universe. I had built my entire workflow around it and didn’t think twice before uploading my files there, considering it as my personal archive — a place I didn’t control. Google Photos was my primary and only place to store photos, and all my files had their default destination set to Google Drive. The idea that something might get throttled or locked behind a paywall wasn’t part of my thinking. It felt like an infinite place that I could trust — until I couldn’t.

While Storage Saver mode in Googel Photos doesn’t bring about any noticeable difference to photos, it surely compresses videos a bit too much. Downsampling 4K videos to 1080p should be criminal. Meanwhile, syncing a folder with Drive showed several problems with cross-device syncing. I had to set up the sync task all over again to make it work. That was the opposite of the reliability I had signed up to Drive for.

Taking back control

One drive at a time

When I bought my first NAS, the idea was to keep my files closer to home for instant access and better control over my data. It was supposed to be a replacement for portable hard drives that I had to plug in every few weeks to take manual backups just in case something broke. The NAS not only automated all that but also gave me control over redundancy, uptime, and data structure.

Honestly, it did feel like a lot of work early on. Setting up RAID, enabling remote access, and configuring version history — all of it demanded a lot of attention and my hands-on involvement, something the cloud didn’t ask for. It gave a certain kind of control over my data, as if I owned it once again, instead of some third-party cloud provider.

Cloud storage does give you a level of convenience that a NAS simply can’t match. You don’t have to think about the inner mechanics — everything just works on the front end, taking care of everything on its own. You don’t have to meddle with backups, redundancy, and whatnot. But this outsourcing makes you stop asking questions and surrender to the service provider completely. My NAS just made me realize what the cost of convenience really is.

Calculated trust

You can’t just blindly trust anyone

Digital trust is quite fragile. You don’t “own” a movie even if you buy it on Google TV — it will vanish if Google doesn’t renew its license.

Google has killed off a lot of services like Play Music in the past, while the limit applied to free Google Photos uploads was something that pinched the most. When business decisions like these have the power to one day change your workflow randomly or make you shell out a lot more each month, you begin trusting them less by the day.

Once you own a NAS, your storage system entirely depends on your decisions. The software that comes with it won’t disappear randomly — you actually own the system with no intervention from product managers working on the other side of the world. My NAS made me much more pragmatic with my files. All the master copies stay local, available immediately even when the internet is down, and in full quality. I am not affected by price fluctuations or server outages — my work goes on no matter what.

Cloud services are still a part of my system. I use tools like Google Keep to share notes with my family and friends, use Docs for easy collaboration, and use Drive as an off-site backup destination. But I don’t trust it by default anymore. The NAS now sits at the center of my digital world, while the cloud is just one part of the web.

An aware relationship

Between NAS and the cloud

Both local and cloud storage have their perks, and they can be different depending on who you’re talking to. Those who travel a lot and can’t wrap their heads around the tricky remote access features on a NAS are much better off relying on cloud storage. But when data integrity and ownership take precedence, NAS becomes the more sensible choice. It is up to you to decide which one suits your workflow better — actually making it better instead of slowing you down.

Bringing home a NAS not only means bringing home some storage hardware but also a sense of awareness about data management. It breaks your existing habits that are built around comfort and actually makes you trust technology more, not less. Because now, when something fails, I know how and why. I can fix it all by myself instead of being at the mercy of the cloud service provider and having to deal with its customer support. That kind of liberation is hard for the cloud to replicate.

QNAP TS-464

Brand QNAP

CPU Intel Celeron N5095

Memory 8GB DDR4 (max. 8GB)

Drive Bays 4

Expansion 2x M.2 PCIe 3.0, 1x PCIe Gen 3 x2

Ports 2x 2.5 GbE, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, 2x USB-A 2.0, 1x HDMI

QNAP’s TS-464 is an impressive four-bay NAS with a striking design, powerful internal specs, and IR support for a remote control. If you’re looking for the best-equipped NAS for running Plex (or other media solutions) without spending a small fortune, this is the NAS for you.