Hey everyone, following up on our chat at the first bioacoustics meetup late last evening, I wanted to share the straightforward method we discussed for leveraging Amazon S3 as a reliable, long-term cloud backup solution for data stored on your network-attached storage (NAS) devices.
The easiest approach is to use the built-in backup software provided by most major NAS vendors like Synology or QNAP.
* Log into your NAS's management console (e.g., Synology DSM).
* Install the appropriate backup application from the Package Center/App Center.
* Create a new backup task and select Amazon S3 (or an S3-compatible service) as the destination.
* Enter your AWS Access Key ID, Secret Access Key, and choose your target S3 bucket and region.
* Configure the folders you want to back up and set a regular schedule (e.g., nightly or weekly).
11 December 2025 1:10pm
Do have an idea of the cost of that? I've heard that storage can be quite expensive in the cloud. You might not be doing any processing but the storage costs keep running. No idea how much storage you are expecting though.
An alternative approach might be to use tailscale to easily facilitate VPNs for you and partner up with someone to host a backup host. Could save a heap of money.
13 December 2025 3:57pm
I use almost exactly this setup: Hyperbackup on a Synology NAS, backing up to Backblaze B2 (An S3 compatible cloud storage). Backblaze charge $6 per TB, and egress (getting your data back out) is free, unlike most cloud providers. Pricing calculator here:
Cloud Storage Pricing Comparison: AWS S3, GCP, Azure, and B2
Cloud Storage Pricing Comparison: AWS S3, GCP, Azure, and B2
They also have some neat products I’ve not used yet but think probably have utility to conservation use cases. You can order a portable storage device off of them, and then “upload” to them via shipping it back to them.
One thing to note about using Synology NAS for this, and particularly hyperbackup: the default settings, which keep a lot of replicas of your files to provide a history, really cause storage size to balloon. Make sure you disable that before uploading to the cloud.
5 January 2026 4:43am
The last part of the workflow - configuration - is key in driving overall storage costs. There are quite a few menu options when setting up your S3 storage.
It is important to consider that there is typically a transfer cost in addition to the storage cost. With AWS there is no charge to upload your data (not necessarily the case for all cloud storage services). Standard S3 storage can be $0.021 per GB (per month). For archival storage on AWS S3 (data that is accessed maybe once or twice a year and that you can wait 12 hours to get access to) you could charge as little as $0.00099 per GB. But that's just the storage cost - moving data from storage to the internet (e.g. download to your computer) starts around $0.09 per GB and becomes cheaper the more you download.
Other features, such as security, can add to costs. Also, which region you store your data can affect storage costs. AWS has a menu of costs and their pricing calculator can be helpful in figuring out how different config options change costs.
Kim Hendrikse