Taking advantage of the fact that we have already done the technical review of the UGREEN NAS DH2300 in both desktop and video format, we have decided to make a tutorial where we are going to create a private cloud with UGREEN NAS to store all kinds of files without spending money on subscriptions
Table of Contents
This brand’s NAS devices are very appealing because of what they offer at a very competitive price. In this case, it’s a two-bay NAS capable of holding 64 TB of storage. Its UGOS Pro operating system is very easy to use thanks to its user-friendly interface and menu layout, making it ideal for inexperienced users.
What will our private cloud do with UGREEN NAS?
The network storage capabilities of a NAS go far beyond what we will cover here, but this is an excellent way to get acquainted with a NAS for the first time, as this is its primary purpose, and at UGREEN things are done very simply.
The idea is to connect our personal PC (and many others) and our smartphone to this NAS via the network , both locally and remotely , so that we can send and store all kinds of files and folders on the NAS in shared folders to have them available from anywhere.
In addition to this, we will also use the NAS as a backup storage for the most sensitive files from our PC and the photos from our smartphone in internal user folders.
This way we can add more security to our data , so we can recover it if one of these devices breaks or we want to migrate to a new one.
Create a private cloud with UGREEN NAS
Without further delay, let’s begin the procedure.
Create storage pool
The first thing we need to do is perform the initial configuration of our NAS and keep it connected to a network interface with our router, in this case 1 Gbps Ethernet, since the DH2300 does not have higher bandwidth connections.
Once inside the NAS, we go to the storage application , where we will configure our storage pool and volume to start creating folders and storing files on the device.
In this case, we’ve chosen RAID 0 with both hard drives installed, although ideally you’d use larger drives and create a RAID 1 array to duplicate files on both drives and thus have recovery capabilities in case of drive failure. It’s the only fault-tolerant RAID configuration we can implement with two drive bays.
We select the two hard drives and the possible configurations we can make are automatically activated, assigning a capacity , which will be the total of the units, and as a file system Btrfs .
We chose this system instead of ext4 because it has more advanced features in terms of data recovery, basically transparent compression, copy-on-write , which allows saving new data in free blocks without overwriting previous data, and supports snapshots and subvolumes .
Configure UGREENlink
For this tutorial we will not need to access the router even once, since we will carry out remote access through UGREENlink, a service that provides access to our NAS through a secure gateway from the brand that does not require opening ports .
This service requires a free user account on the official UGREEN website , as the remote access URL will be associated with a user account when using the company itself as an intermediary platform.
Within the NAS, we go to Control Panel > Device Connection > Remote Access.
We activate UGREENlink Remote Access and immediately a window appears to enter our newly created user account .
After this, we only need to assign a custom name to complete the access URL , which will appear below to copy and paste.
From the user account we can also connect to the NAS, which now appears in the My Devices section .
Creating folders and permissions
We can now create folders to create the private cloud on the UGREEN NAS just as we would on our PC.
The folder explorer is very intuitive, as it separates the interface into:
- User folder : This is the main folder for each NAS user; all other folders will be located within it.
- Personal folders : These are internal folders that can only be viewed from within the NAS. This is where you will store non-shared files and backups.
- Shared folders : These will be the folders that will be visible over the network, SMB or FTP to upload or download files to them.
We select create folder , assigning a name, location and whether we want to add any restrictions, such as hiding subfolders from users without permissions.
After creating a folder, we can assign permissions for the owner and any other users on the NAS. In our case, we only have one user, and since they are the owner, we’ll assign read and write permissions ; simple.
This applies to all the folders we plan to create; for example, we have created a shared folder for the PC, another for the mobile phone, and internal folders for backups.
Activate SMB service
To view our shared folders on Windows and other devices over the network, we need to activate the SMB or Samba service , which we find in Control Panel > File Services.
We check the Activate SMB service option, assign a workgroup, which we will leave as is by default, and click on Advanced options .
In general, we activated some of these options to slightly improve security and enabled multi-channel SMB3 to improve compatibility.
In Advanced Settings we also activate the 3 checkboxes so that we can see the folder from the Windows file explorer , from MacOS and from devices with UPnP on the network, for example, our router.
From this moment on, we already have our private cloud on UGREEN NAS created . If we go to Windows or Mac and activate network file sharing , we will be able to see our NAS and the shared folders inside it.
We just need to log in with the user and we will have access to upload and download files on them.
- Locally we can use : “\\NAS IP” or “\\NAS name”
- Remotely, we can use the UGREENlink URL in the browser, access the NAS, and perform actions directly from it if we don’t want to open ports.
- If we want direct remote access , we should open port 445 and activate the DDNS service.
Synchronizing folders from a PC to a UGREEN NAS
To expand the capabilities of the personal cloud, we will have our PC synchronize folders or even entire storage drives to the NAS , since manually uploading folders and files via SMB is quite tedious.
This time, we must use the UGREEN NAS application , which is available for macOS, Windows, tvOS and Android , making it cross-platform.
We simply need to install it on our PC , and access our NAS with it just like a browser, since we will have its graphical interface and desktop at our disposal, but with expanded functions .
Next, we go to the NAS App Center and install Sync & Backup .
We access the Synchronization section , where we click on Create synchronization task . We choose Synchronize this computer (the one we are accessing the NAS from).
We select the folder or drive on the PC and the folder on the NAS where we will synchronize the files.
We will choose the option to only synchronize data changes from the computer to the NAS ; this way, only if we change something on the PC will it be reflected on the NAS, and not the other way around.
We also enabled the option to replace old files with new ones , and finally we activated real-time synchronization to always have the data on the NAS up to date.
From this point on, all the content we’ve chosen to sync from our PC will be stored in our NAS folder. We can choose a shared folder , to access it via SMB, or an internal folder, for backup purposes.
Share folders from UGREEN NAS to other people
We have seen how to create the private cloud and upload our files both locally, from the file explorer or by synchronizing folders, remotely or by connecting directly to the NAS.
But what if we want to share a certain folder with a friend so they can download their data without modifying anything in it? Well, that’s also possible.
We’re going to take the ProRev folder, where we’ve synced work files, and give it to a colleague. This folder isn’t shared on the network, but even if it were, this method would still work .
We go to Files within the NAS and right-click on the folder , choosing Share .
In the window that appears, we can choose between an internal user , who will already have their own access credentials, or an external user , where we can set a validity period, give them download permissions, assign them an access password, and set a visit limit.
Once we confirm the configuration, a link with a QR code will appear , which we must copy and send to the recipient . We can see that this link contains the basic UGREENlink format , so it is a necessary requirement for sharing folders remotely.
This is what the user to whom we’ve shared the link sees: an interface with the directory tree containing that folder and its contents for download. They won’t be able to edit the contents or access other folders on the NAS.
Backing up PC to UGREEN NAS
We’re going to extend the possibilities even further, and in addition to creating a private cloud with UGREEN NAS, we’re also going to add a folder where backups of our PC data are stored.
To do this, we must access the NAS through the UGREEN NAS application , as this is the only way to activate all available backup options.
To do this, we will go back to Sync & Backup and in its Backup and restore section we will click on Create backup task .
We chose the first option to back up the computer from where we are connected.
The next steps are to choose the source folder(s) or storage drive on the PC and the destination folder on the NAS . We choose “Back up after file change” so that the system updates the incremental backup every time we make changes.
In this case, we encountered a problem when trying to restore backups , as the application doesn’t detect the backup we previously performed. Therefore, we had to restore manually by copying and pasting files. This is an issue that the UGREEN team needs to fix and refine.
Save photos from your mobile to NAS UGREEN
Another task that complements our private cloud on the UGREEN NAS will be to copy our entire photo gallery from the mobile phone to the NAS to have it as a backup.
We can also manage the gallery with the UGREEN Photos app , which is able to organize images into albums and detect people using AI to organize photos.
We started by installing UGREEN NAS on the terminal and registering the device in the list, simply by searching for it on the network. We enabled the biometric login option to avoid having to enter the password every time we log in.
In the interface we can do practically the same as from UGREEN NAS on the PC , but instead of having a desktop as such, the installed applications are presented as icons, and the status bar in sections below the application list.
For example, by accessing File , we can see each and every folder available on the NAS, as well as create new ones or delete existing ones. We can also install applications, create data volumes, and so on.
As before, we click on Sync & Backup and several backup options appear:
- Photo backup : This action takes all the photos on your mobile phone and copies them to the Photos folder > Your phone’s default name.
- Folder backup : In this case, it makes a backup of the source folder that we want, for example, DCIM, and saves it in the destination folder of our choice.
We will choose the second option, Folder Backup, because within the configuration options we can choose to save the content in the folder we want , for example, a shared photo folder , so that we have it available in SMB as an extension of the private cloud.
In addition, this mode also updates the photo list every time we take a new picture, just like in backup mode.
We would then have our mobile phone photos backed up on the NAS and available in the private cloud for ourselves, or to share with other users.
Conclusions on creating a private cloud with UGREEN NAS
In summary, this tutorial shows that UGREEN’s NAS platform is mature enough to easily create your personal private cloud and integrate not only individual files from your PC, but also folders and even entire drives, as well as extend it to your mobile device and platforms like macOS .
Setting up the SMB server is simple and quick , with most of the options we can expect at the level of managing folders, users and credentials through the NAS file application.
The integration of UGREENlink extends the possibilities for remote file management and access, whether through the browser or UGREEN NAS, or even sharing folders with users with a simple click, generating a link in the style of drive, although without the possibility of editing.
In addition, there is the possibility of making full backups , something always essential in a NAS, although in this case we have seen that the restoration option does not work as expected, requiring more work from the brand.
There are also some details that could be improved in the phone backup app when selecting local or shared folders, although this is compensated for by a second folder synchronization option that fully meets our needs.
With time and experience, these NAS devices will have more and more features and applications , but for a brand that has recently started in this segment, the work they are doing is very good, especially for inexperienced users.
