Online Accounts 2025: An American NAS in Mexico ⭐

We flew to Mexico City this past Friday and aside from a trip this coming week to Hawaii for Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Summit, we’ll be here for almost exactly two months, with our flight back to Pennsylvania booked for the week before Thanksgiving. Every trip to and from Mexico is its own story, as we bring things back and forth each time. But the flight here was particularly noteworthy because I brought one of the two NASes I bought this year with me.

? Two NASes

It’s been quite the year. When Google took away our access to the Thurrott.com YouTube channel in January, I recalibrated my approach to online accounts and started this series of articles with the idea of reducing my reliance on Big Tech and the epidemic of enshittification that these companies punish us with.

There’s a lot that goes into that, and the work is ongoing. But one of my big pushes was to finally get a new NAS, something I’ve been meaning to do for years. But this time is different: There are two NASes, not one. One will be kept here in Mexico City and the other will stay in Pennsylvania. And instead of augmenting what I do through Big Tech cloud services, these NASes are now at the center of my workflow, with Big Tech reduced to what is essentially a backup role.

I got the first NAS, a two-disk Synology DiskStation DS224+, this past May and the Synology Drive and remote access experiences were so seamless and without drama that it quickly moved past the experiment stage. I got the second NAS, a four–disk/two-SSD Synology DiskStation DS423+, in August, though I’m currently using it in a two-disk configuration and syncing all my data between both units.

And that’s where we left things.

? Sometimes you just need a little time

Since August, I’ve just kept using both NASes to make sure all was well. And it has been: The data syncs seamlessly between both of them, giving me the redundancy that I want. And now that I’ve brought one of the NASes to Mexico, I have geographical redundancy as well. If there’s a natural disaster, a theft, a hardware failure, or whatever other issue with one NAS, the one should just keep soldering forward without any interruptions or data loss.

With the trip approaching, I had a couple of final tasks to complete.

My archives are already backed up in multiple places, including cloud services like OneDrive and Google Drive, but I wanted to make sure my current working set, which is essentially the contents of three folders in Docs\Current\Work (Code, Book, and To-do) was backed up just in case I got here and nothing worked. So I backed that up to OneDrive the day before we flew.

I also had to shut down the smaller of the new two NASes, the DiskStation DS224+, and move the bigger NAS, the DiskStation DS423+, into the shelving system where it belongs, next to the old NAS (which is shut off) and our Internet router.

Both of those changes went fine, and then it was time to go.

✈️ Flying with a NAS

I like to travel light and one of my key rules is to always carry-on whatever luggage I have and never check any bags. The DiskStation DS224+ I brought to Mexico was small enough to fit in the Rick Steves Ravenna carry-on luggage that I prefer to fly with (since replaced by the very similar Riga rolling case). And since I don’t have much else to bring back and forth—just four dress shirts, two short-sleeved shirts, one pair of gym shorts, and six polo shirts (which I’m leaving here) and small toiletry bag–I figured it would all fit.

And it did: I didn’t have any bubble wrap for the NAS, so I wrapped it in polo shirts and placed it near the top of the bag among my other clothes. I didn’t even have to expand the bag. And oddly, my laptop bag, an HP Renew backpack, somehow seemed heavier: I brought three laptops, my iPad Air, five phones (the three Pixel 10 series review units, my iPhone 16 Pro Max, and my Samsung Galaxy S25+), two sets of earbuds (Google Pixel Buds 2 and Apple AirPods Pro 2), my Beats Studio Pro noise-canceling headphones, and whatever other cables and tech detritus in that bag. It was a bit awkward.

I was more concerned with security at the airport. Since we carry everything on, these two bags, full of what would reasonably be considered a suspicious amount of technology, were sure to garner some attention. I prepared for the inevitable questions, and as the bags went into the scanner in the Philadelphia Airport Friday morning, I was mentally imagining the scene to come: The belt would stop. The TSA person monitoring the screens looking into the bags would squint in disbelief and call someone else over, pointing at the screen. The two would talk and then look up for the imagined terrorist (me). And then they would be detoured off to the side and I would have some explaining to do. It was OK, I kept telling myself. We have plenty of time.

As the bags made their way into the scanner, I walked up to the scanner I had to step through and did so when motioned forward. I didn’t set off any alarms despite the metal in my belt, so I went over to the other side to wait. I was still working on the inevitable discussion with TSA to come.

And then the bags just sailed through the scanner. A small computer-like device in my luggage and three laptops, five phones, and whatever else in the backpack, and … nothing. The belt never slowed down or stopped. Somehow, all this crap was OK to fly with, no questions asked. Hm.

I’ve flown enough to expect problems elsewhere. Maybe there would be a secondary screening experience at the gate and I would be picked. This would be problematic: We were in the first row of the plane, a bulkhead seat with no real storage in front of us, so it’s crucial to get onboard quickly so I can snag the overhead space for four bags (our luggage and our carry-ons). There’s nowhere else to put it.

There was no secondary screening. And we boarded even earlier than usual because my wife fractured her foot this past summer and wears a little medical boot thing while it heals. So they let us board with the wheelchairs, during preboarding. Incredible.

I figured that was it.

But that was not it. I’ve been asked many times about whether I’ve ever been stopped in the Mexico City airport so security there could search my bags and then charge me a fee or tax if I was bringing too many laptops and other electronics into the country. This apparently happens a lot in places like Cancun, and I suspect it’s just about a revenue source and not any real security or reseller-type concerns. I even know one person this happened to (in Merida). But I have never seen such a thing in Mexico City. We always sail through customs and the secure area and just walk through the “nothing to declare” exit.

This time, however, there was a security guard blocking that exit and motioning everyone over to the next area, where everyone would have put whatever bags they had through two big scanners. Oh crap. It was finally happening.

Trying to look as casual as possible, I prepared for the inevitable conversation I’d soon be having with the security in the Mexico City airport. This time, with the twist that I could explain all the electronics by explaining what I did for a living and that I was reviewing most of this hardware. I could show them my website, the emails I’d gotten from the PC makers and Google. It might be time-consuming, but I was determined not to pay a cent just because I was doing my job. Helping matters, a sign explained that we could bring up to $10,000 USD worth of electronics into the country without any issues. I did some quick math and figured I was under that limit.

Then, it was moment of truth time. The bags disappeared into one of the big security scanners, I saw the two security guards staring intently at their screens, and I walked around the back to see what happened.

Nothing happened. As in Philly, the two bags just sailed through this scanner without slowing or stopping. I couldn’t believe it. Surely these bags warranted a second look. I almost wanted to ask. Almost. So we picked up our bags and walked out of security into the airport, got an Uber, and drove to our apartment.

? Initial setup in Mexico

In What I Use: Mexico (July 2025) (Premium), I wrote about my early preparations for the NAS. The apartment here is tiny, just 750 square feet, and no one wants the NAS out in some public space where its disk burbling sounds might get annoying. I eventually decided to put it in our laundry room, a glorified closet. But that would require me to get a third Eero Wi-Fi node that I would place in or near that room. So I bought two items back in July in preparation: A second plastic shelving unit to expand the shelf that’s already in the laundry room and a new Eero Wi-Fi node.

Because the cement in this building is problematic for Wi-Fi, I figured I would need to put the new Eero Wi-Fi node on top of the fridge, which is next to the door into the laundry room, and then drill a hole in the wall next to the fridge so I could snake an Ethernet cable through there and connect the Wi-Fi node with the NAS. But that will happen sometime in the next month or so: Our neighbor has a drill I can borrow, so I will do that after we get back from Hawaii.

We only had two and a half days between our arrival in Mexico City this past Friday and our departure Monday for Hawaii, but I obviously wanted to see whether the NAS would work normally here. And so one of the first things I did Friday was put the NAS in our second bedroom, which my wife uses as a home office. The new Eero Wi-Fi node was already in there temporarily, so this was straightforward. I put the NAS on Steph’s desk, plugged in the power and the Ethernet cable, and powered it on.

I was unpacking or whatever when I heard my wife’s voice from the other room.

“This thing isn’t staying here, right?”

Right. This is temporary. But I also didn’t want to move it, and the only other places we can put it for now are in the living room next to the TV (where the main Eero node and Internet router are) or in our bedroom, where we have another Eero node on a nightstand. She grumbled about something, so I moved the NAS to the floor where it would be less audible if she was sitting at the desk. That seemed to be enough.

I guess I’m not and that surprised that this worked immediately, given how well my Synology experiences have gone this year. But I was worried about some unforeseen issue. I mean, so few things in life just work. But this did. And does. I opened a laptop, clicked the little Synology Drive Client in the system tray and looked to see whether it would just sync all the changes I had made during the flight here, since I had worked on the plane. And it did. It just worked. Immediately.

Then, I accessed the web portal for both NASes using a web browser. Here, too, everything just worked. The two are still syncing with each other, but now this is happening across roughly 2020 miles instead of across about 10 feet in the same room. Excellent.

Next, I installed the Infuse app I use to stream media from the NAS to an Apple TV. I had done this previously in Pennsylvania without issue, so this time I wanted to do the same, but using the Apple TV here.

I had forgotten how I configured this in PA, and I didn’t think to look at this before we left. So I just dove in, but Infuse didn’t find any media servers on the network.

So I went into the “Add Media Center” interface. There, you can sign into Plex and Emby (whatever that is) accounts or add Emby or Jellyfin servers. I never did figure out how to properly configure Plex on Synology, it was surprisingly difficult, but I also figured I didn’t need it: I won’t be streaming content from the NAS to the TV that much anyway. But that means I can’t connect the NAS from here either.

So I tried “Other” under “Available Shares” instead. Here, you have to fill out a form with several fields. But this wasn’t right. And so I gave up on this at the time. But in thinking about it over the weekend, I figured I might know the problem. And sure enough, I found it: The Apple TV is connected to the Internet via Ethernet, but the cable is connected to our Internet provider’s router, not the Eero Wi-Fi node. So today, I swapped that out, made sure the Apple TV still worked, and then restarted Infuse.

And this time, the (local) NAS came up immediately. Nice.

I still had to sign-in, of course, but just with my username and password, since this happens over SMB. Bingo. That worked fine. I ran a speed test, noted that the NAS was now saved in Infuse, and then just added my “Movies” folder to Favorites for now because, again, I’m not really using this a lot. Some movie thumbnails instantly appeared on the app’s home screen.

I tested a few movies, of course, starting with some I know to be large file sizes, to gauge responsiveness and speed. This works as well here as it does in Pennsylvania, which is what I was looking for and expecting.

That will do it for now. We’ll be away this week, so I will be using Synology Drive on my laptop, iPad, and phone from there, and using Synology Photos on the phone to back up photos while we’re away. But to Mexico for the first time. My guess is that this, too, will go well.

More soon.