Hi Robbie,

I've been following your videos for a while as I consider the upgrade to a NAS system for my film production office in Kuwait.

A couple of years ago I was quite settled on my choice but then the pandemic hit and the change to remote working meant I no longer had the immediate need for NAS anymore, however things are coming back to normal now and I have a few imminent projects that would require several editors working on the same footage in one location.

I don’t need more than 3 terminals connected at the moment, however I want to future proof my purchase with at least 5-8 terminals connecting to the NAS in the future.

As we film a lot with Blackmagic and Arri cameras, I also need good performance from the NAS with heavy video files. We mainly edit with iMacs, however I do have the odd PC laptop laying around that we use for heavy graphics work occasionally.

In terms of storage and size of NAS im having a little internal conflict. I currently hold around 60TB of footage from my last 8 years of work, and selfishly I want the NAS to accommodate this and a copy of any future work I do. However maybe that is overkill and I should focus on just having 40-50 TB for my most important archives and future work (after RAID config size). I already own 120TB of drives for my current double back-up system so I don’t need a very safe extensive RAID configuration as I will maintain a single back-up on these drives.

I've been trying to update myself the last days on best NAS for video editing and definitely the options have grown in the last few years since I checked. Before I was looking at the TVS-128T-i7-32GB but from the newer models now I’m leaning between the TVS-H1688x-w1250-32g and the TS-H973AX - wondering what your opinion is on this or if I missed a better option out there from QNAP?

If you sell these, what would be the cost to ship out to me in Kuwait, including it being fully populated with the required hdd, ssd, etc (largest sizes) and a UPS system as power is very unstable here. Can use my Kuwait business license as well so should not need to pay any VAT.

Many thanks.

Hi there, love your site!
So I just bought the Synology 1522+ and am curious about link aggregation having never used it. I am looking at at the netgear gs308T switch to help offer what I need but have two questions....

a) is it helpful to use 3 or 4 of the ethernet ports on the NAS vs just 2? What would the benefits be?
b) if my computer and the remainder of my network is not setup with link aggregation and other switches in the house with computers are not LA compliant, is it worth the time and money to set it up at all?

I work directly off the nas in graphic design software like photoshop and Illustrator and dreamweaver, along with another computer, as well as will host videos (using Synology Video Station)

Thanks!!!!!!
Again love the site!

I don't regularly make money with my photos...yet, but I'm more than a photo hobbiest, creating wildlife and landscape images. I've got to find a good backup solution for my gigs of images and Lightroom catalog that are currently stored on 1TB SSD drives. My day job is not photography, but I might be able to put a NAS on my work network (maybe) and keep my images off-site from home where I do my image editing after hours.
Which NAS or storage solution is for me? are all NAS drives RAIDs? Why are some raw drives called NAS drives and others labeled as "performance" or "gaming" drives?
-Joel G.

Hello!
I've recently become interested in setting up a NAS for myself. I'm new to the networking side of computing but not new to computers. I have a Jellyfin media server currently running off a windows desktop but offloading that to a NAS would be the main usecase. I'd also like to be able to back up my devices to the NAS, and set it up as Network Storage so I can access files remotely.

I've been doing a good deal of research into which would be best for my usecase. I was looking at the Synology DS 220+ primarily but I am hesitant as the software seems less customizable in some ways. Is there a different product or company I should look into that can fit my usecase well? I like to be able to have the customizability, and having an upgrade path is important for me as well.

Budget is for just NAS, not including drives, and is somewhat flexible if the right product for me is more expensive. Ideally, I think a 2 or 4 bay NAS would be best for me.

Looking to have ‘cloud’ storage alternative.

Primarily for home videos and other files that are too large to store easily on sub-1TB sized laptop SSDs. Would like the ability to stream 1080p video in some capacity for maybe 1-2 concurrent users. Probably only 4-6 users total.

Also looking to back up 2 MacBooks (each 512gb) with full image backups (offsite only would be nice). Time Machine preferred but not necessarily mandatory I guess. Not sure how that would work remotely.

I’d like to have one offsite backup and local backups for each as they will be 10+ hours of driving away from each other. Might shy away from a RAID configuration at least for now since continuous operation seems unnecessary in our use case. The plan was snapshot backups (every few hours) locally and (daily) remotely for the main. Only (daily) local for the main’s offsite backup.

Budget is ideally around $700* ish (*including 4 years of ~$19 annual energy) so that it would break even in 4 years when compared to getting the following instead: Family Microsoft 365 (1TB per user. up to 6 users) $100 annually + IDrive (for computer image backups) 5TB for $80 annually.

I already have drives that should have life left in them, but they are mismatched. (1) 2TB + (1) 3TB WD red drives, also (1)2TB + (1)3TB 2.5 inch drives for snapshots. Previously used for WD MyCloud devices that are no longer supported. I have the ability to handle data migration and formatting of said drives. I anticipate minimal issues there.

The plan was to buy 2 Synology’s and use the 2TB and 3TB drives in a ‘just a bunch of disks’ configuration in the main server (at least for the next 4 years or so) with their respective snapshot drives attached, and purchase 2 new larger capacity drives (8-10TB each) for the offsite back-up in anticipation of future storage configurations/upgrades and the expectation of minimal wear on said new drives since they would only be accessed once daily. Also no RAID for offsite of course. Using second drive for snapshots instead.

Saw the DS220J on sale, but hesitant to bite due to low performance (if used for main) and lack of snapshot restoration or snapshot support?? (If used for off-site). Might go ahead and grab 2 10TB WD Red drives while their on sale for $160 each.

Considering waiting for the 2023 units or just grabbing a DS220+ as the main and something less expensive for the offsite. Unsure of what would make a good offsite server at this point with this configuration. Please advise. Thank you.

Also, can snapshots be written to an internal drive on multi bay Synology’s? I assume yes, but it would be a bummer to get a 2 bay for the offsite and find out otherwise.

I am looking for a 4 to 6-bay NAS that supports HDD of different sizes in RAID 5 configuration and allow for expansion as I am able to purchase larger drives. The NAS must be capable of transcoding PLEX media up to 4K on-the-fly. The biggest must-have is dependability, currently on QNAP TS-251 with 4GB RAM and it is a nightmare!

Items I would like:
2 LAN ports with a minimum of 1GB each
USB expansion capability
Cloud support
Remote Access

You offer the best information I have found on the web regarding NAS's. However, I am completely lost in the sea of QNAP, Synology, and TerraMaster. Plus the idea of having to purchase 4 or 6 of the same size HDD when I have 4 to 6 HDD ranging from 3TB to 10TB is just not in my budget. I want to get all 10TB HDD at some point but not in budget. I need the NAS to work for me not me for it.

Thank you in advance for your advice and great content.

I built a TrueNAS server with ASRock Rack X470D4U mb and AMD Ryzen 9 3900X processor with 32 gb ram and a 7 disc array. I currently have an old graphics card in the server and am interested in upgrading the graphics card to an NVIDEA card if it will be capable of hardware transcoding. Will my TrueNAS Core system perform hardware transcoding?

Hello,

I wanted to ask if you would approve/recommend the configuration that I put together.
I am a videographer and want a way to store all my footage and files securely and I want to edit straight from the NAS.
Since I plan to buy a Macbook Pro soon as well, I wanted a configuration wheren both my workstations (My PC and my Laptop) can be connected to.
So i planned this configuration:

Synology DS 1621+ (with 8GB RAM)
Upgraded with a 10Gbe PCI card (with two outputs) so both workstations can be connected to it via 10Gbe
Filled with 6x8TB WD RED Pro in a RAID 5 Array for 40TB usable storage
2x WD Red SN700 500 GB NVMe SSD for Caching

Thank you so much for all the work you put into the website and the youtube channel, helped a lot!

Greetings,
Jannik

I want a NAS to store photos and videos, currently using lightroom and got circa 45000 images on there, less than 1tb, but aware that i want something futureproof

Hi,

Over the years having upgrading my NAS and various PCs I am left with a mixture of redundant drives 300GB - 4 TB mostly working, but not all. Any ideas of what to do with my collection of old drives, anything useful or creative?

Thanks,

CR
ASUStor AS5304T