Online Accounts 2025: Little Tech Remote Access (Premium)

The arrival of reliable and reasonably inexpensive cloud storage services like OneDrive and Google Drive made the complexity and cost of server-based systems like Windows Home Server and Windows Server Essentials passé. And as they evolved to include what we now called On Demand capabilities in which one can selectively sync folders or individual files between a PC or other device and the cloud for offline use, that gap widened even further. But NAS devices still play an important role. They’re simpler and less expensive than those old server systems, not to mention smaller. And in this age of enshittification and the understandable backlash against Big Tech, they can play a crucial role for those who want to minimize their exposure to these enormous corporations or control their own data.

Different people have different priorities. But those priorities can change, too.

When I started Thurrott.com in 2015, those server-based solutions were on the way out thanks to NAS devices and the rise of the cloud, first with enterprises and then with consumers too. This shift led to conversations about hybrid cloud–a mix of on-prem and truly cloud-based infrastructure–and private cloud, a rebranding of self-hosted, self-maintained on-prem infrastructure. Predictably, NAS vendors like Western Digital (WD) began marketing their products–business or consumer–as private cloud solutions to keep up with the times. Today, this is largely still the case: Terms like cloud, hybrid cloud, and private cloud are still commonly used and well understood.

But the way I use storage, and my relationship with data backup and sync, has shifted over the intervening decade. In 2015, I wrote about my backup strategies of the day, bought a WD My Cloud EX2 NAS, and then proceeded to use it mostly as a data backup, since I started shifting my daily workflows to OneDrive. It included remote access and media sharing functionality, of course, but the former disappeared when the device went out of support in 2021. And by that point, the NAS had become slow and unreliable. This should have triggered an upgrade, a new device. But because OneDrive and other cloud services had advanced so much by then, I could put it off. I had shifted from a backup-focused storage strategy to a hybrid strategy that I now think of as sync and archive, with that archived data replicated to multiple cloud storage services (and to the old NAS, still) for replication/redundancy purposes.

My system, such as it is, always had one obvious Achilles Heel, even when it was working well: I could never stop paying for it. I get 1 TB of OneDrive storage as part of a Microsoft 365 Family subscription that now costs $130 per year. To be fair, that’s per user, and that subscription provides for 6 users, so it’s technically 6 TB of storage, which is one of a few things that puts Microsoft 365 into the “no-brainer” category, in my opinion. But my wife, kids, and father-in-law all use this subscription, so that leaves me with 2 TB: 1 TB tied to my primary Microsoft account (MSA) and a second 1 TB I can use with another MSA.

That feels reasonable to me on some level. But $130 per year may or may not sound like a lot of money. By comparison, the NAS I just purchased cost over $900, and I intend to get a second unit. That makes $130 per year look pretty good, as I could pay for almost 14 years of that service for the price of those two NAS devices, and I don’t need to pay it all up front. Furthermore, I will pay for both, at least in the short term: I’ll be using OneDrive, Google Drive, or some combination of both, along with whatever local storage, for backups at the very least. Plus, my family still uses Microsoft 365/OneDrive.

But I hear you on the money thing.

The thing is, Big Tech and enshittification go hand-in-hand. And in this case, I was bit by three major enshittification-based Big Tech strategy shifts in less than two years that triggered me thinking about and then making some changes of my own. Windows 11 started auto-enabling OneDrive Folder backup after I explicitly said no to that feature, a problem that persists to this day. Google quietly killed the additional storage option on my Workspace account, causing me to scramble to download all that data and put it somewhere else. And then YouTube quietly killed me access to all the Thurrott.com videos that I thought I owned, without warning, and I was lucky to get it all back.

This escalated over time. When Microsoft started force-enabling OneDrive Folder backup, I examined all the ways one might workaround that and other related issues. Then, I took the scary step of moving the data that matters most to me outside of the folders Microsoft kept replicating on my many PCs. But when I tested Google Drive as a potential replacement, I was surprise by how well it worked, and happy that it didn’t deliver any of the enshittification I still see in OneDrive. And so I switched to Google Drive. I went from a complainer to a seeker to a doer.

But I still got screwed, as I was still stuck in the Big Tech bubble. And it’s worth pointing out that two of the major enshittification problems I note above are tied to Google (which owns YouTube, in addition to Workspace). And by the time Google has bitch-slapped me twice, I had had enough. I coped with this behavior until I couldn’t.

?️ Losing my religion

Many, many years ago, a hard drive in a desktop PC failed and I lost data. Not for the first time, I realized that we often find religion only after a disaster, and in that case, I got the backup religion. Thanks to the events noted above, I have a new religion, one that’s about controlling my identity and my data and not relying on Big Tech. There’s a lot to this–my overreaching goal is to survive intact should Microsoft, Google, or whatever company separate me from what I consider my property–but this is why getting a new NAS, previously on the back burner, became more of a priority.

For me, the YouTube episode was the final straw: I was in Mexico when that happened and I was a bit constrained by cost and convenience. So I did what I could: I purchased an external hard drive to back up my newly-(re)accessible YouTube content temporarily, and then I began researching which NAS to get. When we got home from Mexico last month, I purchased the Synology DiskStation DS224+ NAS I’m currently using, and to some degree, still trying to figure out.

Now as in 2015, the NAS is all about storage. Now, as in 2015, I can access that storage locally or, via the Internet, remotely. But cloud storage services aren’t the only personal technology that’s evolved over the intervening decade. With this NAS, I can actually replace OneDrive and Google Drive, and I can do so for both my current working set–the “sync” half of this new religion–and for the older data–the “archive” half–that I don’t need to access regularly. Not entirely: I will still maintain backups of the archived data–which includes all my work data going back over 30 years, of course, but also a literal lifetime of personal memories in the form of my photo and home video collections–in these cloud services.

This work is ongoing.

I wrote about my shift from OneDrive and Google Drive to the NAS-hosted Synology Drive a few days ago, and I remain impressed by how well that works. The Synology Drive client for Windows and Mac supports on-demand sync, just like OneDrive and Google Drive. And while the Linux client does not, it at least exists, and you can configure it to only sync specific folders in both directions. And there are third-party solutions for sync that may be worth exploring if you’re a Linux user.

? Local network access

Beyond working from a PC, the NAS is accessible locally over my Wi-Fi network. PCs, Macs, and Linux PCs all work the same way: When I navigate into Network in whatever file management app that platform provides, my NAS shows up automatically because I configured it to make itself and whatever shared folders it has discoverable over SMB. (It also supports AFP, NFS, FTP, rysnc, and more for those with different needs.) It can be confined only to the latest SMB3 protocol as well, if desired.

There’s a lot going on there, but it’s straightforward to use. The first time you try to open the NAS in the file management app, it will prompt you for a username and password. And then because I configured it this way, I’m prompted for a 2FA code, which I get from a mobile authenticator app. (You only need to do the additional 2FA verification the first time, unless you prefer otherwise.) From there, you can simply access whatever shares you have permission to access. (Synology offers an impressively extensive list of security protections that I’ve only begun experimenting with. Among other things, it has DoS protection, 2FA enforcement, adaptive MFA (multifactor authentication), account protection, and many other capabilities.)

The default shares that Synology creates are … interesting, and I may reconfigure that at some point. But each user gets a root folder called home, and then a separate root folder called homes that contains that home folder and another home folders, for other users, to which they also have access. If you configure Synology Photos, that create a root photo folder. And if you use a Plex Media Server for streaming content, you will likely get a root PlexMediaServer folder that contains, among other things, that content. (And root a Docker folder if that’s how you configured Plex Media Server.)

Network-based access is a good choice for streaming. I can open a video from a PC, Mac, or whatever device and it will just stream locally over the network. The performance and overall quality is excellent, and I noted in the previous post, these activities barely impact CPU or RAM utilization on the NAS. Thanks to how well this works, I’m not even sure I need Plex or another media server given how little I would use such a thing anyway.

? Remote access from a PC (or other computers and devices)

Synology also offers a unique QuickConnect feature that makes it much easier to reach the NAS, whether you’re local (on the same network) or need to access it remotely. Instead of remembering an IP address–which could change unless you configure it otherwise–you can create a personal QuickConnect ID that Synology uses to create a unique network name (for local access) and URL for remote access. This isn’t my real QuickConnect ID, but I can access the NAS from any web browser, on any connection, using a URL like this:

http://quickconnect.to/thurrott-nas-pa

Thanks to my recent travels–Seattle and then upstate New York–I tested this access multiple times with multiple browsers on multiple laptops on multiple remote networks and had no issues. Synology, like other NAS makers, offers a nice web-based management interface that resembles a PC desktop with various utilities, each of which opens in “windows” inside the browser tab. This works really well.

?️ Remote access from a phone or tablet

You can also use this QuickConnect ID to access the NAS from your phone or tablet, or whatever other device. This is something I will not need to do frequently. But in the same way that I may occasionally open the OneDrive or Google Drive app for whatever reasons, it’s possible I will need to do so with Synology, too. No problem: There’s a Synology Drive client for Android and iOS (iPhone, iPad) that connects via this same QuickConnect ID from any network. You have to sign in and authenticate, of course, but once you do, you get the same folder-based access to the content on the NAS as you see over the network from a PC or computer.

So, yes, you can view and download files. But this also means you can stream videos or music. Again, not something I would normally do. But I’ve tested this over cellular data and hotel Wi-Fi networks, and it works fine. Search is nearly instantaneous, and playback starts immediately over Wi-Fi and in a second or two over cellular, depending. Scrubbing works, etc. It’s surprisingly good.

?️ Photo backup on a phone

Given the successes I’ve had accessing my content on the NAS across devices and regardless of where this occurred geographically, I finally took a look at Synology Photos. As with many NAS features, there are two parts to this, the server on the NAS and the client, in this case on mobile. Actually, there are three pieces, as there is a web version of the client for desktop that’s similar to Google Photos.

I’ve only just gotten started with this, so I can’t say too much about the web client apart from that I’ve looked at it, there are obvious features like sharing and albums, and it seems fine. My primary concern was mobile: Ideally, I would back up my phone-based photos directly to this service–alongside the ongoing Google Photos and OneDrive backups–and see them alongside the full photo collection I already copied to the NAS. It’s getting there.

By default, Synology Photos creates a root-level photos folder (outside of home, which I’m not sure I like) with its own access permissions. I just copied over my full photo collection, and it sits there as-is, but the web (and mobile) client uses a timeline view mode (just like Google Photos, actually) and it’s sorted by date taken in ascending order by default (ditto). This works fine, for now.

So far, I’ve only installed the Synology Photos app on the Samsung Galaxy S25+ I’m currently using (and will soon review). It backs up the phone’s photos to a MobileBackup folder that, oddly, is in my user account’s home folder and not in the photos folder. (OK, actually, that makes sense.) In there is a Paul’s S25+ folder, and then a DCIM folder, and then Camera and Screenshot folders. In Camera, there’s a 2025 folder and–wait for it–that contains 05 and 06 folders for May and June. Inside each are whatever number of photos I took each month.

I am OK with this, though my photo collection folder structure is slightly different. And maybe that doesn’t matter. But the mobile app offers a few options that might be useful, for example, a “rename by date taken” option that might help with the multiple backups I’ll make across different phones. We’ll see. For now, I just want the app to back up the photos I take, and it seems to be working well. After I have more content in there, I’ll see what it will look like integrating that into the main photo collection.

The short version is that the Synology Photos app seems about as good as Google Photos or OneDrive, at least from a photo/video backup perspective. I will continue experimenting.

More soon.