I would be very interested to read this in an article format, but I have zero interest in watching a video about it.
NASes are pricey but provide a level of robustness that a beefy external hard drive or cloud storage just don’t provide. In a NAS you can configure drives into an array, meaning drives can be combined to basically form a bigger super drive, by splitting the load of data across each of the drives, increasing the overall speed of the group, and using one drive as redundancy. So that if one drive fails, the whole thing doesn’t go kaput. So if we have more bays, we can consolidate more drives together to make even faster storage.
Affiliate Links to Products Mentioned:
Synology DS923+: https://amzn.to/3BZLFfn
10GBe Module: https://amzn.to/3N0eiPL
Synology DS1821+: https://amzn.to/428bapr
DS1821+ 10GBe Module: https://amzn.to/42dgxUz
Ubiquiti Flex XG: https://amzn.to/3C6dTVH
TP-Link 10GB Ethernet Pcie Card: https://amzn.to/3IInC8B
Samsung 870 EVO 4TB: https://amzn.to/3N0EYQAAffiliate links to YouTube gear I use:
Sony a7siii: https://go.magik.ly/ml/1qb8i/
Sony A7c: https://go.magik.ly/ml/1qb8k/
14in M1 Pro MacBook Pro: https://go.magik.ly/ml/1qb83/
Mac Studio: https://go.magik.ly/ml/1qb8o/0:00 Intro
0:48 Current NAS Setup
3:59 What Do I Use the NAS For?
6:30 My Issues with it
9:20 The Solutions
13:40 What would I recommend?
16:22 ConclusionSome NAS have multi-gig ethernet out of the box, but with our Synology box, we have to install this 10 gigabit ethernet card, giving us up to 1250MB/s per second of data, which is fast. But there’s a catch, to use 10 gigabit, everything between the NAS and your computer, has to be 10 gigabit. So this means the network switch and computer this NAS is connected to has to have a 10 gigabit ethernet port and support those speeds. 10 gigabit is expensive, and replacing everything around the NAS and computer to be 10 gigabit could add up fast. Network switches with 10 gigabit start around $300 for 4-5 ports, 10 gigabit pcie cards for your PC costs around $100, and for your Mac, you gotta have it selected when ordered, or pay $200 for a bulky dongle.
A single NAS alone is not a back up solution, especially if it’s the only place I have my precious files on. For that, you’d want to follow the 3-2-1 rule of data back ups. Having 3 different copies, across 2 different types of devices, and 1 copy stored off site. Hard drives when paired together in raid, and all working together increases read and write speeds significantly, but a nas does not remove the Hard drive’s latency and poor random read and write performance. How long it takes to execute an action and find random files across a storage pool. Even a single SATA SSD is faster than 6 hard drives working together when it comes to random reads and writes. Video editing relies on a mixture of good sequential speeds, and good random speeds. With the 6 Hard Drives in SHR, opening folders and video project files took a few moments longer than if they were running off of my computer. So, really with this NAS I had 3 major issues with it. I’m not really following the best practices of 3-2-1 data backups, I’m running out of drive bays, and editing off of it, I introduced some annoying lag. How did I go about resolving these issues? Well, the first solution I thought of was to cut my losses, buy big jumbo sized hard drives, consolidate my data onto those drives and find a new purpose for those old hard drives. Then install an SSD into one of the drive bays, and use that for my video editing, and sync it to the big drives. Then I’d use a cloud storage provider, like backblaze to back up the whole NAS to the cloud. This would mean I could solve all of my issues. But cloud storage can get expensive fast. Then another solution appeared, why not add a new NAS, that will be all flash, nothing but SSDs to use as a nice, quiet and fast NAS dedicated to just my current video projects. And that’s what I ended up doing.
With this DS923+, I installed a 4TB SATA SSD. Which gives me plenty of space for video projects. By using such a large single SSD now, I can expand with other large SSDs when I need more space, or when video editing gets more intensive. So now I have a single small NAS for my current projects, a bigger nas for archiving purposes, some external hdds I’ve had laying around connected to that for another copy. While I keep these NASes in separate rooms, The really important stuff gets backed up to Backblaze, while less commonly touched files with lesser importance get updated on an external hard drive that I’ll store away.
With what I know now, what would I recommend for someone who’s looking at starting their own NAS journey? Get a good 4-6 Bay NAS and, splurge for 2 20TB drives run in SHR or Raid for redundancy and add more 20TB drives as needed. You could start off with just 1 20TB drive but you’ll need a good backup solution in case it fails. So I’d really consider thinking ahead here and prioritize hard drive size over bigger NASes. It’s really my biggest regret.
NASes are pricey but provide a level of robustness that a beefy external hard drive or cloud storage just don’t provide
Uhh. If this dude thinks the average low proficiency home NAS setup has a level of robustness that a major cloud storage provider doesn’t then I have some beautiful beach front property to sell him.
This dude also talks about 10gbs and speeds required for video editing. That’s something you don’t get with your average internet connection, and even if, it’s unsure your average cloud service provider can match.
You’re not wrong that the storage itself is undoubtedly more robust on any cloud provider than a cheap consumer NAS box.
However, there are other factors to consider.
A NAS or any storage solution is only useful if you can access it if you need and if the network speed and stability match your expectations.
A cloud solution will be inaccessible if your internet is down. It may also suffer tremendously if your connection is unstable or slow.
In that sense, even a laptop’s drive connected to your switch could prove more robust than any cloud solution.
The hero we need, not the hero we deserve.
I would also prefer article format. I’m just not interested in videos for a topic like this.
This kind of drives me bonkers too – a lot of video content that would do fine in non-video form is in video. Ditto for podcasts, though there I get that there are people who want to listen to a podcast in the background while driving or something.
I think that a lot of people – no idea if this is the case here – post content to YouTube because it’s got a low barrier to monetize a channel. I think that there’s a very valid argument that there should be a written-media equivalent to YouTube. Like, there are blogging services, but AFAIK there isn’t one that does that sort of monetization.
I’m not sure why.
Maybe it’s that hosting video is bandwidth-expensive, so it’s harder for another service to just rip the content or something.
Video ads are a lot more expensive/lucrative than still ads, I’m assuming
You are absolutely correct— major blog hosting, image hosting, and video hosting sites are all “free” for the content creator, but YouTube by far has the largest audience and highest monetization rates of any of them.
This is just creators buying in with their wallets; it makes sense to go where the money is, even if the format sucks for the idealized content consumer.
It sounds like this particular YouTube channel may take money to promote products – it has a bit on “contacting the creator about business opportunities”. I suppose that that would be independent of ad rates, though not of audience size.
I wouldn’t immediately jump to that conclusion. There are plenty of legitimate business opportunities that do not imply “taking money to promote products”. In-line advertising and properly disclosed free samples are standard operating procedure for the tech industry, but they are completely above board, and by themselves do not imply bias.
Nearly every content creator’s YouTube channel About page or website will have a similar line, somewhere.
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because it’s much, much faster and easier to consume content via video
That totally depends on the content. Using your example, yes, a video of an explosion is going be much more efficient than a block of text about the same explosion. But for something like this, I find it MUCH slower to try to glean the relevant information from a video than from an article. An article can be skimmed easily so I only have to focus on the parts that I care about. Skimming a video, on the other hand, is a pain. Also, if the content is a step-by-step how-to, the video might be OK as long as I can follow along in real time. However, if I have to keep pausing and going back to rewatch a section, then an article is going to be easier to work with.
90pc of any google search is someone thinking im going to watch 4 minute video for the paragraph of text i require.
You could try https://www.summarize.tech/
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“I replaced all of my NAS drives with a single 4tb ssd” sounds like a failure waiting to happen already so I guess this guy isn’t done making mistakes to fuel YouTube content yet.
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The biggest mistake users will make is thinking their data is safe JUST because they have a NAS or a RAID. It’s common parlance in Systems Administration that RAID is NOT backup.
To wit— not truly understanding RAID and how it relates to capacity, parity, and especially the time required to rebuild in failed disk situation. It is a crucial mistake to use RAID 5 with greater than 2TB disks, and even that is pushing it, but RAID 5 is at least in the zeitgeist.
There are also some outside concerns such as Drive batch dates and knowing to pre-purchase spare disks well in advance that may hamper recovery.
I am currently using 2 16TB drives in Raid 1 and was planning to move to Raid 5 (or maybe it was 6) if I need more storage by adding a 3rd drive.
What would you recommend instead?
I wouldn’t say “built” if I bought an off the shelf one. Synology is pretty great though, don’t get me wrong.
Spam bro, you’re spamming so much random garbage. What the hell
Nah, Lemmy isn’t exactly drowning in content, and looking at his history it’s usually upvoted. Block him if you like, but I appreciate the content.
I jumped on the NAS bandwagon about 10yrs ago and it really didn’t take that long before I’d reached the limits of the CPU and RAM.
Last year I built an i5 system to replace it and it’s just better. Hardware and softwareb updates are just easier with a desktop. I can run my web server, torrent VM, DB, Plex and file sharing with resources to spare.
If you simply want a device to store/share files, get a NAS, but the second you want to do anything more, build a basic desktop.
Oh and it’s cheaper!
I just use an HP Microserver gen 8 with upgraded cpu and ram. But yea, just a relatively cheap computer is all 98% of the people really need, as long as you can configure enough disks. NAS’es are way overpriced with shitty hardware.
Depends I guess. For me the biggest concern when I bought my Synology was simplicity of usage and idle power consumption which is much lower than I could get with one of the older computers I have lying around.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.
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