NAS, self-hosting and homelabs — tested, not theorized
NAS · Self-Hosting · Homelab · Backups
Hands-on NAS buying guides, self-hosted app tutorials and backup strategies — tested on real hardware, written for people who'd rather host it themselves.
TBW and DWPD are the two numbers that decide how long an SSD survives in your NAS. Here is what they mean, the official endurance ratings for WD Red, IronWolf, Samsung and Synology drives, how to estimate your own write load, and when a consumer SSD is fine — and when it absolutely is not.
Compare RAID 5, RAID 6, SHR and SHR-2 by usable capacity, drive-failure tolerance, expansion flexibility and rebuild risk.
Restrict NAS remote access with Tailscale users, groups, tags, ports and test cases instead of giving every tailnet device full access.
Compare Synology Hyper Backup and Cloud Sync by versioning, restore workflow, encryption, deletion behavior and the jobs each tool should handle.
Build a NAS backup retention policy from recovery goals, detection time, change rate and storage cost—with practical GFS examples.
The best NAS for Jellyfin in 2026 comes down to one thing: Intel Quick Sync for hardware transcoding. Here are our top prebuilt and DIY picks — and the AMD units to avoid.