Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
Having data at my fingertips is a necessity in my world; and having services like Dropbox around made things very easy for me, especially with their mobile apps. Unfortunately, I have some issues with using services like Dropbox like having your data stored on their servers. Additionally, their free services just don’t give you enough space. With that said, I had been exploring other options for anywhere storage and with the latest firmware and app upgrades from QNAP, I don’t need to look any farther than my QNAP NAS.
With QNAP’s latest release of QTS 4.0.1 (their NAS OS), they have introduced a feature called QSYNC. QSYNC is a service, similar to Dropbox in that it allows you to synchronize files between multiple PC’s, share links with others, access data from a mobile device, but it is all done from your own network. Your data is at home (or office) where it should be; not on someone else’s servers.
Configuring QSYNC is easy… all I had to do was install the QSYNC application on my laptop (and wherever else I wanted), populate my DynDNS/MyCloudNAS information for my NAS (ensuring port forwarding in my router is correct), and entering my credentials. To access the data while on the go from your smart device, you can use the QFILE app for Android and IOS (capable of automatically uploading your photos from your smartdevice). Any user on your NAS can have access to your QSYNC, and sharing information is easy with the team folders or shareable file links.
On the server end of things, there aren’t any hoops to jump through. Your QTS 4.0.1 desktop has an icon for QSYNC (beta) that allows you to view the users, devices, event logs, team folders, and active shared file links. A team folder allows you to share the contents of a folder with other users of your NAS.
Although QSYNC is still tagged as BETA, the application works well enough for me to ditch Dropbox completely. Having information readily available to me is important in my daily activities and the space limitation of the free Dropbox service has been hindering me… until now. However, don’t forget that the bandwidth of your internet at your home/office connection vs that of Dropbox can be significantly different, even still… it makes sense for me now that I have virtually unlimited storage.
