Hey everyone! A group of friends and I are looking to set up a NAS (Network Attached Storage) mainly for storing movies and a bit of personal stuff. We're planning to use two drives in RAID 1 for backup, but there's a concern about privacy—specifically, the admin of the NAS will have access to all files, which is a dealbreaker for those who want to store personal content. While I've read that we can hide files from each other, that doesn't stop the admin from seeing everything. Client-side encryption sounds like a solution, but it seems a bit complicated for us. I came across the idea of using a Private NAS with Mesh networking—can anyone explain how that works? Also, I'm curious about setting up a NAS with a Raspberry Pi. Appreciate any help!
4 Answers
Using a VPN can help protect your files from the admin. Each user can have a VPN which encrypts their files at the system level, making everything appear scrambled to anyone on the NAS. However, if you’re encrypting everything on the client side, a VPN might not be necessary since the data is already secure before it even reaches the NAS.
Don't forget that RAID is not a backup solution. Just having your data on two drives doesn’t mean it’s safe from issues like accidental deletion or corruption. Make sure you have another form of backup outside of your RAID setup!
To fully prevent the NAS admin from accessing other users' files, you'd really need to use client-side encryption. Luckily, many backup and syncing tools offer this feature, often with it enabled by default! The users won’t have to worry about encrypting and decrypting files manually; the software does it seamlessly in the background. As for 'Private NAS with Mesh networking', it generally means having a NAS that’s set up internally without public access, while mesh networking improves Wi-Fi coverage in your home—it’s not directly related to NAS setups though.
I'm intrigued by the VPN idea, but I wonder how it all works together? If everything is encrypted on the client side, then why add a VPN? Also, what's to stop the NAS admin from toggling server-side encryption off? Seems like a risk.
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