NAS for New Mac Mini – Itunes , Sonos, Sync, bakup

I am about to purchase a mac mini to replace and old Mac and have been going down the rabbit hole of storage options, learning about SSD, HDD, RAID, NAS. Here are a few things that I’m hoping to accomplish:
1. Store and backup my family photo and video library – this is priority #1. I have about 1 TB of data today.
2. Ability to easily add photos and videos from multiple devices, 5 family members with phones / ipads, laptops, camera. Ability for all users to access and store files safely on the server as opposed to devices.
3. Itunes Media Library – store music library, movies
4. Play music over Sonos system in the house, and play movies on apple tv
5. Easily back up system on hard drives as well as sync with an icloud service. I like the idea of a RAID system with 2 hard drives plus syncing to a cloud backup.

I think this is a pretty basic home use although I don’t think many people are careful about backing up their digital files. I’m a bit confused as to whether you can have an NAS with SSD drives which sound like the most reliable drives but tend to be just for mobile solutions. Also, the latest Apple products all have Thunderbolt 3 connections and the NAS tends to not support this type of connection yet.

As a Mac  user you probably want everything to simply work. No configuration, troubleshooting just results. And this is what you ca expect from Synology NAS. With their outstanding apps which are included for free you can turn this thing into a many very different things like Itunes media server, dropbox alike, surveillance, web server and dozens of other things.

You can backup your mobile devices automatically and later use artificial inteligence tools like found on facebook to quickly find your photos and video you need.

You can then play you usic on Sonos or smart speakers as well as play videos on your TVs and other devices.

The only thing you can not do is – Sync with icloud- because Apple lately have disabled this features due GDPR reulations I believe. But you can back everything up in the cloud using BlackBlaze which offers unlimited storage.

NAS can be populated with SSD or reular NAS drives like WD Red or Seafate Ironwolf. SSD will be faster but will also cost mush more.

As a 2 drive option I would suggest DS218+ (DS718+ if you need expandable solution) or 4 drives DS418play (DS918+ as expandable option)

Find regulary updated NAS offers here
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