Editors: There's a better way to store media.

How I finally consolidated my old hard drives into 1 organized system, and made it impossible to lose my data.
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00:00 Portrait of a Data Hoarder
01:42 My Data Storage & Backup Goals
02:44 What's a NAS and what does it do?
05:45 QNAP TVS-h674T
08:06 Costs & Investing in a NAS
09:23 Setting up the NAS
11:18 Security
11:55 Consolidating all my drives
14:51 The automated backup system
18:25 Cheaper/more simple alternatives
20:21 Dawn of a new day

[@user-zv7lm8uk7h]

I am going to sue you for harassment, I feel very... targeted in this video.

[@smokingkippers1173]

Yeah. It's not just you, less than a minute in, and I don't like the personal attack vibe...

[@user-zv7lm8uk7h]

I am compiling all our complaints and putting them on one of my western digital external drives for safekeeping. Helps to build our case in court @@smokingkippers1173

[@notyrpapa]

The stack of old hard drives on my desk also feels very seen. That NAS is fab.

[@neilfullframe]

😂😂😂 I feel the same way and I’m sick of all this single drives laying around.

[@Supercon57]

14:24 Just a suggestion, I personally wouldn't recommend having your NAS right next to your subwoofer, that would subject your NAS to a lot of vibrations that would not be good for the drives I would also recommend elevating the NAS off the ground, this would help reduce the amount of dust it sucks up off the floor, with the fan running 24/7 it acts like a vacuum and can get dirty pretty fast

[@Consequator]

This .. spinning drives do NOT like vibrations including sounds. You can yell at a magnetic drive and watch the performance go down while you're yelling.

[@kernzilla]

all valid points 👌 sidenote: I've got a reoccuring reminder every 90 days to open up my raid to vaccum out the fans/clean it up. this dirt/debris/pet hair etc turns into fans working harder > potentially higher temps in box/lower performance > shortened HD/mobo life

[@sonny01red]

@@Consequatordo they also start crying? Because they remind me of myself

[@nrgao]

“Get cho NAS off tha Flo’” could be the biggest tech rap song ever lmao

[@Rays_Bad_Decisions]

Also speakers are a big electro magnet so you data corruption wouldnt be unthinkable

[@coralfish12g]

I just did this for all my storage last month. This was hilarious. SCROTUM! LOL Well done :)

[@wavelogic8471]

oh you missed the "lets get into the nuts.... and bolts" soon after

[@birkelandmedia]

Hey George, cool to see you here ;)

[@smalldoguser69]

$2400-$2900 for a NAS system with no drives is actually insane. You can build your own NAS system using a low spec computer with a case that fits the number of drives you need. You can also run it with all free and open source software.

[@mrdogpoopstudios]

Most people wont be able to do that, but you can get other systems for much less money. It is really convenient to just plug it in and go. Most cheap units will hold 4-10 drives and you can buy inexpensive drives as well as plug in USB drives on other shares. Since you will probably create separate folders anyway, you can plug in your usb drives. But those wont have the advantage of RAID like the main array.

[@hhkk6155]

Dammmn, it's more expensive than my gaming PC 😎😅 2400$ is really expensive 🫰 you can make a Nas out of you old PC for free 😅

[@MaddJakd]

​@hhkk6155 sure you "can" but not everyone nor business is interested in putting in that work. Many just need something that works as opposed to playing IT on top of what's probably more of a time sync as is.

[@hhkk6155]

@@MaddJakd yes it's not for everyone, but even if you consider time investment, DIY Nas from old "free" PC sounds reasonable 😄 I'm more into buying cheaper NAS, like 200-400$, or building if you want more power

[@ambarchakrabarti7520]

I was thinking the same thing a couple of years back. Why I didn't do it, was because I do not have the time or the skill needed to fumble around with things like TrueNAS. Instead I used windows 10. Now I regret it because I still have to fumble with SATA connections. Because my z97 board supports only upto 1 4TB HDD for some reason and I have 9TB in HDD space across 3HDD

[@headmetwall]

One offsite backup option I've wanted to implement for years is the 'friend backup', basically your friend sets up a second NAS on your house and you set up a second one on theirs and once in a while they sync up with their respective counterpart. I convinced one friend and I'm thinking of just setting up a raspberry pi with one large HD on it, after all, it doesn't need to be fast just be there in case anything happens.

[@6yjjk]

Crashplan used to offer this as a free or very low-cost option using their software, but I think that went away.

[@alexsouthpb55]

You should consider a different geographical location for the backup - a flood would affect you AND your neighbor!

[@peter-gn8ey]

this. I have a second unraid machine in my parents house that I backup to over the vpn. the initial backup was done on site so it was done much quicker. keeps your data off the cloud and retrieval is a lot quicker (depending on how far away your folks are).

[@juicythedj750]

I recently installed a "dad backup" Synology ;) Using Tailscale I can do remote backups and even Time Machine backups to it from my MacBook from anywhere in the world. Awesome service and fairly straightforward!

[@wchorski]

@@peter-gn8ey I have a similar set up, but wanted to hook it into my VPN too. So how do you set up the VPN? Do you tunnel the machine located at your parents house to your home network? Or vice versa?

[@OhanaFilmsMaui]

A cautionary tale concerning the "If my house burns down" scenario. A friend and fellow filmmaker here on Maui always had backups at his home, his office and on the cloud. The cloud seems like overkill because it's not like your house AND your office a mile away are both going to burn to the ground...until they did in the massive wildfires we experienced. So always backup to the cloud at the end of EVERY work day.

[@nebukadnezzar3578]

Great video! Little hint: just configure your NAS to switch to sleep mode during night time, so it doesn’t run 24/7! Increases life time/health of the drives (around 50%?!) and safes quiet a lot of power 😊

[@chasereeves]

Dude, this was so great. Thank you. Literally wached this and spent $1400 on that DAS and refurbished 22TB drives. You're fucking good at this, dude.

[@photorooster8865]

I think I'll follow your lead right from the get go, eventually buying this NAS. ONE WORD OF WARNING. I saw you putting the NAS beneath your wall/window AC unit. My unit is a fridgidare and it clogged and leaked forward instead of outside, ruining my wood floor. If this NAS was nearby it may have been ruined. WATER AND POWER SURGES ARE THE ENEMIES of the NAS. Great Video!

[@StandardStoryCo]

There is simply no escaping the anxiety is there? 💀

[@mySeaPrince_]

​@@StandardStoryCo Keep it off the floor and covered over the top and sides... In practice.. A side table with a middle shelf.. put NAS etc on middle shelf... Then over the top of the table a plastic box larger than the area of the table.. upturned .. so the skirt is lower than the middle shelf.. The main thing is to make sure there is plenty of airflow and heat can't build up in the box.. The whole idea is to stop water damage.. Alternatively put 1 or more Harddrives on a plastic stand in a waterproof storage box (box is upside down, in case of water) .. Then ideally in another waterproof box.. Yes you will have to sort out the cable and make it waterproof.. This then goes in a concrete box entrance on the side, plastic over the top .. this is built under the patio. A friend has one under his shed at the bottom of the garden.. a long cable didn't work.. WiFi too slow.. so he takes his computer to the shed.

[@VideoDepartment_at_evolve]

You should be powering the NAS through a UPS so you don't have to worry about power hits. UPS won't help with water however. :)

[@JevenDovey]

I had a NAS setup with one in my office and one at another location for backup. Was a pain to work with. I have about 80TB footage for my channel and 150TB+ for my production company. Eventually I ditched the NAS after trying to make it work and went to a OWC DAS. So much easier to work with. The Blackblaze cloud solution seems like a good idea until you actually need the backup. Needs to be tested if you can recover all your data and how that process goes especially when you start getting into a huge amount of data. For me the simplest solution has been DAS for my master. 20TB drives to backup sections of my DAS (organized by project numbers or years) and those are kept in climate controlled storage unit. If a project is active I have a 3rd copy on a separate drive. So far its worked out great and I've had multiple hard drive failures. Easy to buy a new 20TB drive and restore that one backup or replace a drive in the DAS raid.

[@sergiubn]

Thank you Javen for sharing your story regarding storage. It's quite a different solution to the problem. I will look in to DAS also.

[@oscardobson-brown9189]

I remember seeing Backblaze had a service where they would send a physical hard drive unit to you to put your existing data on and ship back to them where they would back it up for you, and then you can use the incremental cloud backup from your computer for your new files.

[@vividstudio4651]

I have similar. Local fast drives for live work and blistering speeds. 2 Nas for back up over network. OWC have handy Thunderbolt port splitters so a workstation with just 2 ports can suddenly have 4. Makes for easier handling of BRAW footage.

[@daoudconsumption]

I have wacthed so many videos on this very topic, but this one was by far the most accessible in terms of actual action steps that I'm going to implement

[@aidanhennebry]

Ok, the dialogue at 4:40 onward had me rolling. So well written. Formerly when I was a wedding photographer, I would keep a 1TB SSD in my car as my "offsite backup location". When I'd get home from a wedding, I'd back up all my memory cards to internal drives I kept in the house at all times, and the car-only backup drive. The discipline was walking it back out to the car in an hour when I was done backing up my photos lol. I kept it in a discrete location in my car so that, even if my car was broken into in the night, they likely wouldn't find this unsuspicious black rectangle. I also figured it was very unlikely my house would burn to the ground in the same day my car was stolen. I went my professional career without issue. Saved me from dumping 100GB of raw files to the cloud for every wedding. Maybe not a 1:1 solution for a filmmaker, but it worked well for me.

[@bananavirus]

I’m a relatively new editor and I’ve been having trouble storing and organizing files for a bit now, so this video came right about when I needed it. Thanks!

[@soulkeephl]

TEST YOUR RESTORES! This is the only thing I didn't see covered in the video. Whatever the solution is, whether local or cloud based, make sure that it's actually picking up all the files you think you're backing up, and that it's picking up appropriate new folders/files.

[@PalmettoGD]

Bro reads my mind with every upload

[@yukonica4560]

Very enjoyable ‘movie’. This is a step beyond a typical KZbin video. It is well written. - informative as well.

[@mgonzalezperna]

Oh man, I went through the rabbit hole and I can understand your fears and frustration. As a Software Engineer I wanted to use TrueNAS, an OS that uses ZFS filesystem, basically allowing you to travel back in time in case you made a booboo with your files. It also syncs with backblaze using the plugins and a lot of other things. In the end I save a lot of cash on hardware, but the time I'm investing in building up everything securely is crazy. So far, around a month of research and execution and I'm still halfway through my goal...

[@StandardStoryCo]

😭

[@gicknardner]

One thing to keep in mind is that Truenas syncs with backblaze B2 which is $6/TB/mo, not the backblaze unlimited personal subscription.

[@Supercon57]

5:00 NAS drives are also designed to better withstand being in a dense hard drive environment, better at handling the vibrations from being next to other drives

[@masonrietz2763]

so unhinged bruh XDDDD

[@karllautman]

Excellent solution and description, Kent. Thanks. One corner-case you may want to consider is what you'd do if, God forbid, your house actually burned down. Restoring over the net would take as long as uploading, plus you'd have to acquire and set up the NAS all over again first; you'd be out of commission for weeks. Fortunately, Backblaze can send you your files on a drive (or several?), so that can speed things up, but it's still going to take days, especially since the drives won't have the data properly formatted to just plug into the NAS. My point is, you may want to think about what things you'd want access to immediately and treat those differently than the rest of the things on your NAS. You should also try a trial restore of just a folder or two to make sure what you think is being saved is actually being saved, and in a restorable format.

[@StandardStoryCo]

Great advice!

[@AA-kj4ic]

company like Amazon when they migrate client data to its cloud service they transport by using hard drives (custom built)

[@unstence]

Backblaze will send you a Synology NAS after you pay a deposit.

[@karllautman]

Did not know that. Thanks!@@unstence

[@AlexanderRay92]

BlackBlaze has reportedly cut off *many* people using it like this, btw. Generally speaking, just because you can work around their technical control doesn't mean they won't see this video and say "TOS violation".

[@manankhandelwal1182]

But technically he is just backing up that single 22tb drive that is attached to his mac which he backs up all his data to from the nas first. Is that not a great work around sine it is within the rules of the TOS

[@AlexanderRay92]

@@manankhandelwal1182 BlackBlaze is kind of notorious for just randomly cutting people off who actually use their 'unlimited' data...

[@AlexanderRay92]

@@manankhandelwal1182 Also, just because he was able to circumvent the technical control doesn't mean he isn't in violation of the terms of service which do expressly state it is not to be used for servers, even if he finds a way to trick the software into thinking it isn't one... If BlackBlaze ever watches this video, they could easily use this video as a legal basis for canceling the account.

[@danh2716]

Another option is to build a dedicated network server out of a PC. You can get all of the functionality of a NAS when connecting to the storage over the network, but then you can run Backblaze directly on the PC (access the network storage server directly through a VNC setup if there is no display & keyboard hooked up to it) for remote backup.

[@danh2716]

Also, running that low voltage data cable through the high voltage electrical outlet box is definitely against code. Something to be aware of if in an apartment.

[@TheGalacticWest]

The "scrotum" didn't hurt but I feel like this is the most honest and genuine of product sponsorships. Maybe SSC has a trustworthy face or maybe its just the way he was open and informative. Either way I would trust him with my SSN.

[@pointblank2890]

The best, and I mean the BEST, video on what a NAS is and how to use it for a normal, everyday, not-super-techy person! I've seen a lot of videos about NAS options, but this takes the cake in accessibility, entertainment, and explaining things succinctly without going overboard. I'm saving this and showing this to everyone I know to encourage a step in the right direction with proper data backup and organization!

[@bloomfilms]

I have filmed every day of my life for the last 1,500 days and storage is a hassle but organizing it is so rewarding. five different 5TB hard drives + Google Photos on overdrive is my system lol

[@macgyverswissarmykni]

As someone who has held client assets for any length of time and felt crippling fear, my heart goes out to you.

[@BryanEnsign]

I don't know how I came across your channel and I don't need a NAS but it was worth watching the entire video for the awesome puns

[@fauland_photography]

Thank you so much for this great video explaining your data-management-workflow. I have some 40 TB+ of photo and video material (2009-today) and run 2x NAS, a few extra Scratch disks, plus 3x 15 TB backup-external HDs ... Now, BACKBLAZE will be added to my system :-)

[@BoxOfVisionsStudios]

This is perfect timing as I just lost data on one of my drives, and want to make a workable plan going forward as the "library" grows. Thank you!

[@davidgardener1152]

thanks for the great vid. I went through this same process recently. one thing i'd add that i love is the app "post haste" that automates folder structures for future projects. really useful to make sure all the future projects all have the same folder structures!

[@somewhatboxes]

another advantage of the DAS setup is that it can sort of incrementally become a NAS over time if you buy something like a mac mini (or buy a new computer and re-purpose the current one) and set it all up someplace else in the home to be accessible remotely. it's a little more involved than a turnkey solution like QNAP offers, but i found that my old mac mini running backblaze in a closet with a DAS attached to it was a lot less pain all at once on my wallet, and it doesn't seem to bother backblaze.

[@nerored6235]

Something to remember, with tax season in the US about to start. If you have your video/film work done under a business, this can be applied to your taxes as a write off. And depending on how you choose to apply that write off, it will save you one big lump tax sum on the year you buy it or can be spread out over several years. Just make sure you have and keep all the proper receipts as you would with anything business.

[@americansafarico]

Been scouring the Tubes trying to get my head around this puzzle. Your video is the definitive answer (s). Thank you!

[@americansafarico]

Sadly, I can’t do Backblaze is because I travel away from home in the summer months. So unless it was a desktop that was always online, which wouldn’t work for my travel video stuff, I’d lose my cloud backups. So I’m going the DAS plus IDrive route. It’s more money, but not too bad at the stage of filming I’m at.

[@Ep1sodeVideoArt]

CCC is one of the greatest pieces of software ever. So good for so long.

[@user-it9jb8xj3i]

This introduction is the best that I have seen from anything tech! Keep them coming!🎉

[@gingerbreadgirlprod]

I had been bumping up against finding a cloud storage solution I could afford since moving to a NAS and you Backblaze solve is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.

[@asherray4969]

This is insanely helpful. I was so confused on the data hoarder subreddit from all the terminology (nas, raid, etc) You cleared up so much thank you.

[@Recapsulate]

This is the first how to setup a NAS video I’ve watched that doesn’t confuse the shit out of me!

[@brianpurnell8578]

This has been so helpful and clearly explained. We have 1.2 petabytes on shuttle drives that need to go on NAS, thank you

[@6shot9]

Dude thanks for caring enough to put out stuff like this

[@TwoWheelsLangley]

Informative, entertaining and totally worth my time. Happy New Year to you.

[@SkippyDa]

I couldn't find this easily in the comments (because searching comments at youtube, who wants to do that....), I would recommend adding an UPS connected to the NAS, so in case of a power failure, no data gets lost, and the ability to safely shut down the device.

[@hedydd_ioan]

Just looking into this because I desperately need a better system, perfect timing!

[@BrendonKPadjasek]

Dude, your play on words in this one are amazing lmao

[@DamienFinn]

Bro, the combination of the music and your hokes... too good. Thanks. Oh... and you definitely stuffed that NAS.

[@jonathanluchow2751]

As a data hoarder myself... i enjoyed this wayyy to much! lol

[@AlexdeluxeIBZ]

Amazing video. Super helpful and informative. We are struggling since years with this problem. Now I know that - and why - we were using the wrong NAS. Thank you.

[@patrickmorrison7161]

this is an awesome solution! I don't mind not having stuff like hot swappable drives or a mobile app with it since it's just me editing my own stuff so i think I'll just build a nas!

[@rioncinematics]

i lost it when you said the word haha... Great video as always

[@JessicaFEREM]

btw if you really want a NAS and have an extra computer laying around, you can repurpose it as a NAS fairly easily, though you may want to get a NAS sometime soon if you plan on using it for any real work

[@EulogioEspinozaGutie]

Love it, I built a small server and although i like it and it works. Your set looks better and easier to do.

[@chairchriss]

So, basically I should be taking hard disks up my NAS. Gotcha.

[@Gedor08]

A lot of thought (overthinking 😂)went into this video!!! What a great video!! This video puzzled all my hours of overthinking this problem together!! Thanks man 🤳

[@AudioSoulHealing]

This video was awesome, thanks for educating on potential solutions for fellow data hoarders like ourselves (great term btw) - now I feel a unique sense of optimism that all my years of data collecting will be able to be accessible til my elder years, and perhaps by my future grandchildren to see all the weird and fascinating things their grandpa digitally collected haha! also appreciate your great sense of humor and story telling, just subscribed!

[@JCSvideography]

Awesome vid man, I’ve got a 20tb archive drive that’s basically full and juggle different working drives. Would love to streamline my data archive and working drive system WITH backups. In the future I’d love this.

[@Wammy]

This is exactly the information I've been looking for. Thanks for sharing!

[@paddleandhook]

Lol wait a minute…if you get up in that NAS 😆 i love the wordplay

[@costafilh0]

Glad you discovered redundancy and cloud backup. But there is still one backup missing. Backup 3-2-1. For ease of use, backup and access, you can have a second redundant NAS, preferably in a different off-ste physical location. And you can always add more to the mix, like magnetic tapes for the best possible backup inside sealed containers that can protect from everything including EMPs, water, fire, etc. And even Blu-Rays, as a last resort cheap option.

[@SyNRG]

OMG... chaos reigns is the best way to describe it... and my collection of drives isn't even that big looking at yours... what a nightmare of the modern world... i suppose this is the solution. Good delivery though 😅

[@GaryStockton]

Good video. I setup a NAS for me and my wife. She would back up every few months.. Now our data is backed up daily, and I have backup sets that backup from NAS to cloud. My main issue was a 4TB drive for work that was getting full and I didn’t want to go larger with local storage, so I archived 5yr old stuff to make room, and implemented the NAS mainly for redundancy.

[@Snitchie]

Awesome tips, hoarder myself. But only started hoarding Jan 2023 so soon this is must here aswell. I don't want it to stretch out how it did for you, so thanks for sharing

[@SeanOptimoa]

I have both NAS and DAS units. I put all my extra files that do not get used as much on my DAS, it doesn't have any connection to the internet but rather a connection to my NAS unit so I can easily move the unused files over. Together, my archive is sitting at over 300TB.

[@Scouppi]

This is so relatable. I have almost 50-67 terabytes of hard drives and SSDs, and I just can't understand why I keep collecting more of them, especially when many of them have the same files. I really need a NAS drive system to collect all my data in one simple place. Thanks for the video. Now I have again a good reason to invest to NAS in the future🍀🍀

[@MikeKeller]

I was really hoping he'd talk more about how he organized stuff on the NAS. If all he did was copy over hard drives and organize the drives themselves into folders, how does he search for assets that he might want to use next week?

[@PresentedbyDaniel]

This is probably the best video ever made

[@Stodgell]

It’s awesome seeing authentic content like this. I’m currently documenting my entrepreneurial journey while being authentic! Keep at it man, you’re gonna make it big!!

[@JaySwanson]

Perfect timing. I neeeeeeed this

[@JebusJones]

I'm wondering if you'd ever also consider a MAM or DAM or are you organised enough to find the data you need quickly and easily?

[@eduardo_gama]

Nice, now I "need" exactly this setup. Thank you 😢

[@jeremias3363]

Make sure you don't have compression enabled on your share with video footage, it's pointless and kills performance. Also, snapshotting backed up media is pretty pointless, so get rid of that too. If you want snapshots for something like editing projects, which I wouldn't 100% trust, create a share just for that with it enabled. Compressions makes sense for documents only.

[@sanderdelft]

Uhhh, not to spoil your day but snapshots are the only thing really missing here. Due to the automated backup process any ransomware attack will affect production and backup systems. The use of snapshots eliminates that risk. Furthermore, snapshots only lock the files in a way that only a new version would consume disk space, so completed projects only consume their nominal size in disk space. In other words: enable those snapshots! Your setup is not sufficiently secure.

[@JonasHolmqvistSweden]

Great video about this issue! Thank you.

[@rolithesecond]

Made the jump to a qnap nas a few years back. By now, I have switched to throw archived projects I basically never need onto old HHDs anyway and putting them in the closet again haha. The NAS has the stuff I actually need now.

[@S1L3nCe]

Great video! Even though I'm very familiar with all this stuff, I found it very entertaining. It will be very helpful for many people 🙏😄

[@SamRiesgo]

DUDE, what a great video!! Thanks for this! :)

[@sehkhyro]

god damn it this video was perfect thank you so much, I have like 50TB of footage, not sure if I should get rid of raw footage for old clients and just keep final cuts - but legit thanks for making this video this was dope; definitely investing in this setup soon

[@bluenightsky]

I have been looking into this and considering options for a while now. I wanted a NAS but the limitation of not having the NAS backed up unless I literally duplicated the setup with another NAS was the biggest problem I ran into as you stated. I have cloud storage but again, the space is limited based on cost per amount of storage. Backing up large amounts of data, this setup doesn't work. I've never heard of Backblaze before. Who ever heard of unlimited storage?? Wow. For now I think I will go with Backblaze and a huge external HDD because that's all I need right now. But a NAS is in the future once the my work flow necessitates it. Thank you for this video! It has been helpful for me, but especially since my laptop space is running low and my cloud storage is full right now.

[@creatancremanova7097]

haha, nice end :D😄 the data storage/hoarding really seems like an endless problem. thx for the suggestions! Might consider Backblaze :)

[@GabrielCarusetta]

Literally exactly what I need

[@DanWatts.]

Great Video, I’m in the same predicament myself. I think I have 60/80TB. Would be interested to know the read and write / speed of the QNAP NAS through black magic speed test!?

[@PaulFisherMedia]

I can relate to this vid. I have a huge bin of big hard drives from 2001 and and on. I’m excited for the day you can do this and don’t have to pay a year’s salary

[@mahutaproductions8498]

For the DAS solution, personally I just built my own RAID within my computer, I used a (paid) software called Stablebit Drivepool which is really nice and simple and configurable in a few different ways. If you have enough spare drive slots in your PC tower then you don't really need this enclosure to achieve that. Still I would much prefer having a NAS setup like the one you did there but my business isn't at that stage yet I think. For now a waterfall system where I have the data on cards, then on intermediate SSDs while editing and then moving the projects to archive some time after they're delivered is working good enough, though I did have one situation where changes to a project after delivery were needed while I was on vacation and had to send someone to my house... For that the NAS would've been perfect.

[@anttiranki3690]

One recommendation I'd have for your folders is to add a date structure in front. I have everything labelled e.g. (today is 1st of Feb 2024) 20240201_ClientName_ProjectName. This way everything inside your folders is in chronological order (YearMonthDate) so you can very quickly check from your calender when a specific shoot was on and then just as fast find that folder on your computer/NAS.

[@notta3d]

Great video. As someone that has 2 QNAP devices I strongly recommend applying firmware updates as soon as possible. Unfortunately while QNAP makes some great devices they seem more concerned about the next piece of hardware to release instead of focusing on their software security. Because of this I had to block all Internet access from my 2 devices and only use them internally.

[@Datagram]

It's a hilarious coincidence that I got recommended this video, since I've actually been doing my own research to try to figure out if I can get some of the benefits of a NAS while continuing to use Backblaze Personal. Currently I'm using a 4-bay USB enclosure I got for $90, but I didn't realize that there were DASes with hardware RAID (and they're not even that expensive). Also be careful with that G600 mouse, I gave myself RSI with mine due to how awkward gripping that thing is. My hands have been much happier since I switched to a G602.

[@benjamin.kelley]

I use a 10TB WD hard drive as a backup and long term storage, since I don't yet have the need for more storage. But I'm at 4 x 1 TB SSDs I work from, and that's about all I want floating around.

[@DustinHarrelson]

Thank you for the info and the clip from Castle, very nice very good

[@iTzKatastrophe]

Thanks for the vid I might go with the DAS option

[@asapfilms2519]

Thanks for going through the headache so that we could easily watch a video and learn everything. One thing I struggle with is organising the files on my hard drives. Is there a software that you could recommend to solve this issue.

[@echelecopao]

Also, remember to TEST periodically that you are in fact able to recover your files from your secondary storage (eg: cloud). If you cannot recover your files, you actually don't have a backup.

[@tulgeepit]

Good luck with the backblaze. I tried a similar scheme. The uploads slowed to a trickle after a couple TB. I was creating data faster than it was uploading. Bait and switch. It has been a few years so maybe it works now.

[@StandardStoryCo]

No problems yet from me, it's possible that your ISP throttled you though.

[@LycanVisuals]

I'll keep this noted when I need to move on from editing on my external ssd.

[@Lurker1979]

When I was an animation student. I saw the film students who would carry around stacks of hard drives.

[@mitchlane656]

"Now if I get up in dat NAS" 😆

[@wchorski]

for anyone getting started with NAS, most routers have a usb port that can be used for printer or external drive storage. Plug a big drive into that USB port on the router and connect your computers to it. Right away you'll get a feel of the convince of having a big storage pool that multiple devices can access. As for the privacy. I'd recommend looking into self-hosting a VPN. Some routers have this feature built in, or you could get a super cheap PC or raspberry pi that is always on. That way you can still access your data from around the world without having to worry about sensitive information leaking.

[@connorquigvids]

I'm thankful I never adopted the external drive system lol, went straight to a nas

[@mikeglassburn]

I'm never going to hear NAS the same way again. Immediate follow.

[@elHippieSupremo]

And then there's tape drives for long term storage of large amounts of data. Tape storage is about 2$/terabyte (not counting the drive hardware). You can get a 30TB cartridge for about 50$. The tradeoff is that it's super slow. You could store a library of all your archived footage etc. and load it into your NAS when you want to use it.

[@jamess1787]

I just threw a NAS together; 64TB of usable space. Nice QNAPP.

[@krimke881]

your NAS will just resolve one thing: accessibility. If you want security you need to start from the beginning with single drives, and actually having a systems. You also need to backup the NAS, and have a organised system for the backups, as the NAS quite soon will be filled up. I'm glad you've chosen RAID-6, as it's the only choice that makes sense for media if you use it with thunderbolt. The NAS RAID will also die before your drives, so have backup. I've never seen a high-utillization NAS from synology, qnap and other consumer oriented brands, that haven't had a hardware failure. You're only paying for accessibility with a NAS or DAS, not really security.

[@AlekSearcy]

Strong Michael Longfellow vibes from this guy

[@rklein]

I was really hoping you were going to show exactly how you stripped all the duplicate data between all those drives. I have 8 external drives from 100gb to 16tb. Every black friday I would buy a new drive twice the size and copy all the files from the previous to the new drive. It would be nice to somehow scan the current drive and keep only the most current version of each file while deleting all the other copies.

[@StandardStoryCo]

Fortunately my old drives were organized enough that I could manually do most of it, but Carbon Copy Cloner helped in some instances

[@bubblesculptor]

I believe Microsoft SyncToy will do that for you. Older software but still works

[@androtekman6131]

FreeFileSync is what I use and is a great free program to mirror drives or keep newer data etc. Else, you could use MS built in folder tools to sort by date size etc.

[@ekphotography]

Nice one, I have over 150 hard drives collected over the last 20 years or so, I have copies everywhere, I even have everything 2X copied but all over the place and never really found a neat way to clean all these up and have 2 copies... Every time I start trying to organize them, I give up bc it is overwhelming to say the least... Unfortunately I have WAY over 100TB's of material..