🔍 Read the full analysis: Our AI Fleet Storage Choice: The 6-Bay UGREEN NASync DXP6800 Pro on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
Thorsten Meyer says his team bought a UGREEN NASync DXP6800 Pro after duplicate iCloud backup files nearly filled a database server. The NAS is delivered but not yet connected or configured; the proposed backup plan and two acceptance tests have not been validated.
Thorsten Meyer says he bought a six-bay UGREEN NASync DXP6800 Pro after duplicate files from an iCloud sync folder left a server with 2% free disk space. As of November 1, the NAS has been delivered and fitted with drives and an SSD, but it is not connected to the network or configured; the planned setup has not yet passed its acceptance tests.
Meyer describes the purchase as a response to a backup process that copied errors as faithfully as it copied valid data. On September 17, he says, two machines uploaded database dumps with the same filename to an iCloud folder. The resulting conflict copies accumulated until there were 29 duplicates and the database server was nearly full. On October 29, a separate nightly job failed while trying to delete older dump copies, timing out as iCloud handled the folder.
The NAS has been equipped with four Seagate IronWolf Pro 16 TB drives and one NVMe SSD. Meyer’s planned layout puts the four hard drives in RAID 6, which he estimates would provide about 32 TB of usable capacity and tolerate the failure of two drives without data loss. The SSD would form a separate pool for containers and test databases. These are planned specifications and capacities; the system has not yet been set up or tested.
Meyer says he selected the six-bay model over a less expensive four-bay option to leave room for expansion without replacing the existing drives. UGREEN lists the DXP6800 Pro with six SATA bays, two M.2 slots, a 10-core Intel Core i5-1235U, two 10GbE ports and 8 GB of DDR5 memory, expandable to 64 GB. The product specifications are attributed to UGREEN; the purchase and planned workload are Meyer’s account.
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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A Local Copy for Faster Recovery
The purchase addresses both capacity and recovery risk, but the central issue in Meyer’s account is not a shortage of storage space. It is that a sync folder replicated duplicate files and that cleanup later stalled. A network storage device could give the operation a separate local destination for backups, rather than relying on a syncing service as the first point of recovery.
Meyer says the team’s current backup need is about 6 to 8 TB, based on measurements taken October 6. He reports about 2.6 TB in use on the main desk machine, 744 GB on the database server, and 3.2 TB on the model server; much of the model storage can be downloaded again. A local NAS could make restoring large datasets quicker than retrieving them over the internet, although actual restore speeds have not been measured.
The purchase does not itself establish that the data is safe. Meyer’s plan calls for separate user accounts and quotas for each Mac, snapshots that those accounts cannot access or delete, and an encrypted offsite copy using restic and Backblaze B2 with Object Lock. That approach is intended to keep a local mistake or deletion from automatically removing every backup. The safeguards remain a plan until tested.
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From iCloud Conflicts to NAS
The operation Meyer describes consists of several Macs running around the clock: one holds the main Postgres database for a publishing system, another serves local AI models, and others run content pipelines and tests. The database server has also experienced recurring kernel panics since August. Meyer says the worst period was roughly one crash every five days and cites a two-and-a-quarter-hour database outage after an August 8 incident.
A NAS cannot prevent those machine failures, Meyer acknowledges, but a nearby backup may shorten restoration time. He also wants to move test databases out of a Docker virtual disk on his laptop, which had grown to about 30 GB. The proposed storage plan keeps disk-heavy work to the hours between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., with the aim of allowing the drives to sleep during the working day.
Meyer frames the new device as one part of a layered backup approach, not a replacement for offsite storage. He refers to the familiar 3-2-1 principle: maintain three copies, use two types of media, and keep one copy offsite. He also says the team will not treat UGREEN’s cloud mirror as its offsite backup, will not expose the NAS to remote internet access, and will not give AI agents administrator credentials.
“That was the day I stopped treating a sync service as a backup.”
— Thorsten Meyer, in the November 1 report
Setup and Safeguards Remain Untested
The DXP6800 Pro is not yet on Meyer’s network, and the planned Time Machine test using a non-admin account and the snapshot-access test have not run. The source says either failed test would prompt a return, so the purchase is not yet evidence that the chosen configuration will work.
Other details also remain unverified: actual usable capacity after formatting and RAID configuration, backup and restore speeds, drive noise and sleep behavior, and whether snapshots can be protected as intended. The report is explicitly not a product review or a long-term test. Meyer says the current backups still use local Time Machine disks on two Macs and an iCloud copy of the nightly database dump.
The described storage figures, incidents and planned workflow come from Meyer’s own measurements and account. Product specifications are attributed to UGREEN and Seagate. No independent testing or confirmation from either company is included, and the report says UGREEN did not provide a sample, sponsor the article or review it before publication.
Two Tests Before Rollout
Meyer says the first steps are to connect and configure the NAS, then test Time Machine backups with a non-admin account and confirm that snapshots remain inaccessible to that account. The device will be returned if either test fails. If it passes, the planned rollout would place backup data on the four-drive RAID 6 pool and containers and test databases on a separate SSD pool.
The team’s existing backups remain in place while that process is pending. Meyer says he plans to report back with real results once the NAS is running. Until then, restore performance, security controls and the day-to-day impact on the office remain unknown.
Key Questions
Has the UGREEN NAS been installed?
No. Meyer says it had been delivered and equipped with drives and an SSD by November 1, but was not connected to the network or configured.
Why did Meyer choose the six-bay model?
He says the six bays offer room to add drives later without replacing the existing ones. His planned initial setup uses four 16 TB hard drives in RAID 6, with two bays left open.
What are the acceptance tests?
The team plans to test Time Machine backups under a non-admin account and check that the account cannot access or delete snapshots. Meyer says the NAS will be returned if either test fails.
Will the NAS replace cloud backups?
No. Meyer’s plan includes an encrypted offsite copy using restic and Backblaze B2 with Object Lock. He says the NAS is intended as a local backup layer, not a substitute for an offsite copy.
Has the planned setup been proven to restore data?
No. The NAS has not been configured, and the report includes no completed backup or restore tests. Real-world performance and safeguards remain unverified.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
