Why not go with a 4-bay DS413 for the same price?

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You can use two drives and make it SHR (effectively RAID1 with two drives), then expand latter. You can mix drive sizes so with two extra 4TB drives later you can get up to 10TB with redundancy.

Because the 413 isn't further expandable, right? It has an eSata port, but if I'm reading it correctly, it doesn't use the expansion unit, so drives attached to that port or the USBs only function as separate volumes, much like my current problem with the Buffalo NAS.

But I need to hold my horses, because apparently I have a donor running to the bank right now to potentially fund this. I have no idea why people want to throw money at my tech right now, but you don't see me complaining, that's for damn sure. Depending on what she gives me, I may go with the 1512 instead? I dunno!

The 1512 looks pretty sweet.

Yeah, the 413 isn't expandable beyond its four bays.

Okay, the donor came through already. So I'm pulling the trigger on the 1512 & 3 3TB WD Red HDs. Which with the Synology Hybrid RAID should give me 6TB usable space and 3TB parity. Then when the 4TB Reds come out, I'll add two two of them, which will give me 13TB usable space and 4TB parity, if I'm reading the calculator right. And then down the road I'll be able to add two more units if I need them.

Wow!

Plants vs Zombies is free on the App Store today.

Okay, I need to buy a new phone, stat, because mine is out of internal memory and the battery doesn't last the day anymore. I'm likely getting the Samsung Galaxy SIII, which is what my siblings just got.

Are there any good backup options for an unrooted phone? What should I be concerned about? I have SMS Backup and Restore, which should carry over my messages, but it doesn't seem to include multimedia messages; is there a way to save those? My sister sends me pictures a lot. Can I save/backup my Dolphin settings? What is the best way to save all my Angry Birdses progress?

And then when I get my new phone, I should root it, but I have no idea how to do that and what it really means and I am scared.

If you don't know what rooting means, why do you think you should do it? You should at least catch up on that before you make the call. Instructions aren't hard to find, though. If your phone's rootable, that's not an issue.

I reset my phone to factory and then re-installed from my Google cloud backup, and I got what I needed--if you want to save pictures, then save them and copy them to the new phone.

P-C just wants to root it because all his friends are doing it.

Maybe.

If you don't know what rooting means, why do you think you should do it?

I know that it allows you do a lot more with your phone, including the ability to uninstall the bloatware that comes with it. Which probably contributes to the increased battery life.

re-installed from my Google cloud backup

What does this mean? Does the cloud know what I have installed on my phone and will it do it all for me? Or do I individually install the apps (I know all the ones I've ever bought are in my Play account)?

Does the cloud know what I have installed on my phone and will it do it all for me?

I'm not going to speak for the different versions of Android, but there's a backup & reset section of Settings, and it lets you back up your data and designate automatic restore of backed up settings and data when reinstalling an app. When I had to bring this phone back to life, I didn't do it piece by piece.

Since I have three devices and multiple accounts across all of them, I no longer know where I stand, so I would still research it.

I know that it allows you do a lot more with your phone, including the ability to uninstall the bloatware that comes with it. Which probably contributes to the increased battery life

The only things I have wanted to do and can't do are a system-level backup and turning on GPS through code. Turning on GPS is actually no big, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to restore the phone with the level of backup allowed by Android itself. But you should let Gris or another rooter extol the virtues. I was intending to root my phone when I got it, got distracted, and don't feel the loss. Even when I had to do a reset I didn't bother rooting it then either.