🔍 Read the full analysis: Why We Chose A 6-Bay UGREEN NASync DXP6800 Pro For Our AI Fleet, And How We’re Setting It Up on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
Thorsten Meyer says repeated iCloud sync conflicts left a database server with 2% free space, prompting him to buy a six-bay UGREEN NASync DXP6800 Pro. As of Nov. 1, 2026, the NAS has been delivered but is not configured; its planned backup setup has not passed acceptance tests.
Thorsten Meyer says he bought a six-bay UGREEN NASync DXP6800 Pro after duplicate database backups in an iCloud folder left one server with only 2% free disk space. The NAS had been delivered by Nov. 1, 2026, but was not yet connected or configured, so the proposed backup system and its safeguards remain untested.
Meyer, writing on ThorstenMeyerAI.com, traced the September incident to two machines uploading database dumps with the same filename. He says iCloud retained repeated conflict copies, resulting in 29 duplicates and a nearly full database server. A separate backup-maintenance job also timed out on Oct. 29 while attempting to remove older copies from the busy iCloud folder. These are the publisher’s account of events, not independently verified findings.
The purchase includes the NAS, four Seagate IronWolf Pro 16 TB drives and one NVMe SSD, according to Meyer. His planned arrangement uses the hard drives in RAID 6 for backups, with about 32 TB of usable capacity as described in the source, and the SSD as a separate pool for containers and test databases. The intended configuration has not been installed, and the capacity figure is a planning estimate rather than a measured result.
Meyer says two acceptance tests must pass before he keeps the device: Time Machine backups must work using a non-admin account, and snapshots must remain inaccessible to that account. If either test fails, he says he will return the NAS. Until then, the existing backups remain in place: local Time Machine disks on two Macs and an iCloud copy of the nightly database dump.
Infographic 01 · The box
Six bays, two fast slots, two 10GbE ports
What UGREEN lists for the NASync DXP6800 Pro, and how we plan to fill it.
How we fill it
Delivered and equipped; the setup is our plan (1 Nov 2026)
Bays 1–4: Seagate IronWolf Pro 16 TB, RAID 6, Btrfs → ≈ 32 TB usable, any two drives may fail. Bays 5–6: free for growth. M.2 slot 1: the NVMe SSD (ordered: Samsung 990 Pro 1 TB) as its own fast pool. Slot 2: free. Six 16 TB drives in RAID 6 would give ≈ 64 TB.
What else UGREEN lists
From the product page, not measured by us
- Separate 128 GB SSD for the operating system, UGOS
- RAID: JBOD, Basic, 0, 1, 5, 6, 10
- 1× PCIe x4 · 2× Thunderbolt 4 · 8K HDMI · SD card reader
- Power: 43.07 W drives in use · 24.91 W drives in hibernation
- Stated maximum: 208 TB with 32 TB drives · 3-year warranty
Why six bays: with RAID 6, two drives always hold parity. In four bays that leaves half the raw space usable; with all six bays filled it becomes two thirds.
Sources: UGREEN DXP6800 Pro product page, checked 1 Nov 2026; Seagate IronWolf Pro data sheet DS2129.4; our setup plan, 6 Oct 2026.
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Faster Local Recovery, If Tests Pass
The purchase addresses a practical distinction between syncing files and protecting backups. A sync service can reproduce a deletion or a bad file as well as a good one. Meyer says UGREEN’s help material describes its Cloud Drives app as two-way sync, where a deletion on one side also deletes the file on the other. A separate local backup target could give the operation another copy under its control rather than relying on the same sync path.
A local NAS may also make recovery from large files faster than downloading them over an office internet connection, though Meyer has not yet measured restore speeds. The stakes are operational: his small publishing setup relies on Macs running a database, local AI models and content pipelines. He reports recurring kernel panics on the database Mac since August, including one outage of about 2¼ hours on Aug. 8. A NAS would not prevent those crashes, but a tested backup could help restore data after one.
The planned safeguards matter as much as the hardware. Meyer proposes separate accounts and quotas for Mac backups, snapshots that those accounts cannot delete, and an encrypted offsite copy using restic to Backblaze B2 with Object Lock. This is a proposed design, not evidence that the NAS currently has those protections. Its value depends on whether the system can be configured and whether restores work in practice.
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Why Six Bays Beat Four
Meyer says the operation’s measured storage use on Oct. 6 was about 2.6 TB on the main desk machine, 744 GB on the database server, and 3.2 TB on the model server. The database itself occupied about 293 GB. He estimates the current backup requirement at 6 to 8 TB, noting that many AI model files could be downloaded again rather than backed up.
The six-bay model costs more than the four-bay NAS Meyer says his own comparison had recommended. He chose it for the additional drive bays, which he expects to provide room to expand without replacing existing drives. UGREEN’s specifications, as reported in the source, list six SATA bays, two M.2 slots, a 10-core Intel Core i5-1235U, dual 10GbE ports and 8 GB of DDR5 memory expandable to 64 GB. These are manufacturer specifications, not results from Meyer’s testing.
His plan is to schedule disk-heavy activity between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. and allow the drives to sleep during the workday. He says he will not put live database change logs on spinning disks, give AI agents administrator credentials, expose the NAS directly to the internet, or treat a UGREEN cloud mirror as the offsite backup. The approach follows the general 3-2-1 backup principle cited in the source: keep three copies, on two types of media, with one offsite.
“That was the day I stopped treating a sync service as a backup.”
— Thorsten Meyer, ThorstenMeyerAI.com
Deployment and Restore Results Pending
As of Nov. 1, the NAS was not on the network, and neither acceptance test had run. It is unknown whether Time Machine will operate as intended with a non-admin account, whether snapshots can be protected from that account, or how quickly the system can restore files. No long-term reliability, noise, power-use or performance results are available.
Meyer says he paid for the NAS and storage himself, and that UGREEN did not provide a sample or sponsor the article. He also says the piece is not a review or long-term test and contains no affiliate links. The account’s incident figures and measurements are presented by Meyer; the source does not provide independent verification. Whether the proposed offsite copy and deletion protections will be configured successfully also remains open.
Two Tests Before Rollout
Meyer says the next step is to connect and configure the NAS, then run the Time Machine account test and the separate snapshot-access test. If both pass, he plans to proceed with the backup layout and offsite copy; if either fails, he says he will return the hardware. The existing Mac disks and iCloud copy remain the active backup arrangement while those checks are pending.
He says he plans to report back with results once the NAS is running. That follow-up will be needed to establish whether local restores are faster, whether scheduled disk activity and drive sleep work as intended, and whether the layered protection holds up in actual use.
Key Questions
What prompted the NAS purchase?
Meyer says repeated iCloud conflict copies of a database dump left a server with 2% free disk space. He also reports a later timeout while a job tried to delete older copies.
Is the UGREEN NAS already backing up the Macs?
No. As of Nov. 1, 2026, it had been delivered but was not connected or configured. The Macs were still using local Time Machine disks and an iCloud copy of the nightly database dump.
Why choose a six-bay model over four bays?
Meyer says he chose the DXP6800 Pro for room to expand without replacing existing drives. He has not yet tested the NAS or its performance.
What must happen before Meyer keeps it?
He says Time Machine must work with a non-admin account, and snapshots must remain inaccessible to that account. If either acceptance test fails, he plans to return the NAS.
Does the planned RAID 6 setup replace offsite backups?
No. Meyer’s plan also includes an encrypted offsite copy to Backblaze B2. Neither that setup nor the NAS configuration had been tested at the time of publication.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
